Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

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Pe11e
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Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by Pe11e » Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:05 am

Hi!

So, I'm not searching or asking for a MSFS quality scenery with google map mod (see the picture below) that is equal to ZL18/19 in other sims, but since I love and tend to do a lot of ridge soaring, being 100-200m away from the actual ridge and landscape, everything is so blurry, making it almost pointless to have 50-60gb of one landscape (in this case AA2 0.10) since I rarely find myself high to be able to see sharp scenery below. I love to do shorter ridge soaring races with ghosts.

So, I checked AA2, Big Pyrenees 2, Nephi, and couple of others, and all are more or less ZL15. I really wouldn't mind having smaller area to fly, but sharper ortho for 30-40gb. Is there any landscape like that?

I see that West Germany 2 is UHD, but man it's 200 or so gb, I have no HD space for that. Also, on screenshots also seems a bit on a blurry side.

I think max texture size for one tile is 8192x8192? Not sure what landscapes are using that resolution.


Thank you in advance.


MSFS with google map mod:

Image

juro
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by juro » Fri Nov 25, 2022 10:19 am

I will upload my map of Western Slovakia in few days. I used Bing sat textures downloaded in highest res, then resized to 16384*16384. The feeling of altitude, depth and speed is very pronounced once textures are hi-res. It is my 1st map, so the size is just 115x115 km and overall size over 4GB.

I tested also 8196*8196 textures but it is no good once you get taste of high-res.

6266
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by 6266 » Fri Nov 25, 2022 11:25 am

juro wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 10:19 am
...I used Bing sat textures downloaded in highest res...
Sorry for always being the negative one but I can't help it.

Have you checked the copyrights and license restrictions?

If not, I found on an earlier research a price from another deliverer, not Bing. It was 20 Euro per square km. 115 km x 115 km x 20 Euro = 264.500 Euro. For safety reasons I would check it before publishing. Maybe I'm wrong and it's free, then it's good, but if not you should know what you do.
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wickid
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by wickid » Fri Nov 25, 2022 12:09 pm

6266 wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 11:25 am
juro wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 10:19 am
...I used Bing sat textures downloaded in highest res...
Sorry for always being the negative one but I can't help it.

Have you checked the copyrights and license restrictions?

If not, I found on an earlier research a price from another deliverer, not Bing. It was 20 Euro per square km. 115 km x 115 km x 20 Euro = 264.500 Euro. For safety reasons I would check it before publishing. Maybe I'm wrong and it's free, then it's good, but if not you should know what you do.
Yep, same with the OP above. This mod to MSFS breaks the google maps terms of service and he could face having to pay license fees for all the textures he downloaded for MSFS.
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EDB
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by EDB » Sun Nov 27, 2022 4:59 pm

Pe11e wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 1:05 am
So, I checked AA2, Big Pyrenees 2, Nephi...

I think max texture size for one tile is 8192x8192? Not sure what landscapes are using that resolution.

All those mentioned are 8192x8192 (2,8m/pixel) or higher. But that doesn't say that the source used is 2,8m or higher. And you loose data on re-projecting. Maybe MSF doesn't use an official projection.

Below is 32K 0,7m/pix from 0,6 meter data. But it has the same unsharp mask as the 8K used, so it could be better with a different mask. But not flyable with a GTX1070 and three monitors. I had to resize the image before I could upload it. So no good reference. You also have to take into account that the resolution is for a flat image. On a hill the image is stretched in altitude.

200831-9 - 50%.jpg
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by EDB » Sun Nov 27, 2022 5:33 pm

About prices for image data. They usually don't advertise prices. You mostly have to contact the owners and make a deal. The last time I searched for prizes was 10 years ago.

Yesterday, by accident, I saw a site of an Italian company that had a table... About 40 euro for 1kmx1km @ 0,5m resolution color data. I have not checked what the status of the data was (colour corrected, seasons, clouds, etc.) But I guess it was clean.

Landscape of 115x115km x 40 euro/1sq.km is 529.000,= euro without loss at the borders. Maybe you can get a better deal when you contact them.

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Paul_UK
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by Paul_UK » Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:12 pm

Will larger textures cause more crashes in Condor?

As I understand the software is only 32bit so can only make use of between 3gb-4gb of ram. Once this is passed the software could possibly crash?

With larger textures wont this increase the likelihood of this happening?
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by EDB » Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:44 pm

Paul_UK wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:12 pm
Once this is passed the software could possibly crash?
Yes.

But 32k vs 8k is more about unusable framerates. Even with a i9-9900k, GTX1070 and 32GB CL13 RAM. And the file size of the landscape is ridiculous. 16 times bigger. Editing with such large sizes is also very difficult. You will need very specialistic proffesional tools. Very expensive.

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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by Pe11e » Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:57 am

Such a strange post. I asked in hope that you guys know what landscape has the best resolution ortho, and it isn't 200gb like West Germany one.
The post transformed into a talk of ortho prices for commercial use. In the meantime, a bunch of Google lawyers came up. :)

Not sure why you guys act like that, but as you can see, bunch of C2 landscapes are using Bing and Google ortho as a source. Should I continue?
Ortho4XP for X-Plane 11 and Prepar3D is using any ortho data you throw at the app to create the scenery, and tens of thousands of users using it on a daily basis. Google Map mod for MSFS is also hugely popular, and God knows how many users are using it on a daily basis. Possibly over 100k, I can only guess.

So, Google and other ortho data providers didn't even contacted the devs of Ortho4XP and Google map mod apps, let alone the users of those apps, including me. So, in short, using certain landscapes in C2 that are publicly available, is completely the same as using the apps I mentioned above.

@EDB

Thank you for explaining. That resolution looks amazing, but working with 32k textures is a nightmare even for strong systems. I'm not sure I can even open them with my 32gb of RAM.

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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by EDB » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:07 am

Nephi doesn't use google, bing or any other illegal source.

Pe11e
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by Pe11e » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:16 am

I assume. I know that USA has some good free source ortho, maybe it's USGS? Forkboy's USA ortho scenery for X-Plane 11 use it, and it's a great source.

But what for Europe? Only free source is Sentinel which is pointless to use due to it's resolution, and maybe couple of countries has free ortho source, possibly Austria and Norway, excuse my ignorance.

My point is, it's highly pointless to talk about licenses here, as it's not neither my or any landscape user problem. The problem is on scenery creator side, and on the ortho provider side.

Using the tools I mentioned is kinda the same as using Google Earth on your PC. If you strictly are using the ortho textures for your own private use, the story ends there.

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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by 6266 » Mon Nov 28, 2022 7:26 am

Pe11e wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:16 am
... Only free source is Sentinel which is pointless to use due to it's resolution...
Question is, what do you want to do with Condor. I'm only interested to fly cross country, and I do it without pda, so I have to look outside. In my opinion Sentinels low resolution is good enough to do that, and I really enjoy it.
Pe11e wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:16 am
My point is, it's highly pointless to talk about licenses here, as it's not neither my or any landscape user problem. The problem is on scenery creator side, and on the ortho provider side.
I don't agree with you, that it's not the problem of the landscape user. If it's not legal to create and to share it, it can't be legal to use it. It's the same with software, videos and so on. It doesn't make it better if thousands others do it too.

When I started creating landscapes it was a discussion here on the forum about the licenses opening my eyes. I'm very thankfull for that discussion. We are not talking about peanuts. If you have to pay the price for such a landscape, you are done. Tell your wife, that you have to sell your house because of a game. My personal consequence out of this thoughts were to delete ALL free available landscapes on my pc and using only my selfmade Sentinel landscapes and those from condorworld.

You don't have to agree with me. I could be wrong, but I can't take that risk for myself.

I have said everything I have to say. I'm out of this thread now
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Paul_UK
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by Paul_UK » Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:50 pm

EDB wrote:
Sun Nov 27, 2022 7:44 pm

Yes.

But 32k vs 8k is more about unusable framerates. Even with a i9-9900k, GTX1070 and 32GB CL13 RAM. And the file size of the landscape is ridiculous. 16 times bigger. Editing with such large sizes is also very difficult. You will need very specialistic proffesional tools. Very expensive.
Your bottleneck is the same as mine as I have the same GPU as yourself. I'm keeping my eye out for a 2nd hand 3080 now at a reasonable price. Regardless it still won't prevent out of memory crashes due to hitting the 3-4gb limit.

All very interesting about the license issues. I've not read into this situation yet. Can the textures be used as long as it isn't for financial gain or is it literally the case that the textures are copyrighted and cannot be used for anything else without consent from the creator?
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by wickid » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:39 pm

There are several countries that provide ortho images at various resolutions and with with different terms and conditions.

Some allow non commercial use and allow you to modify and distribute the images. Some are only personal use. There are even a few that allow commercial use. You have to look up for each data source what the terms are.

My guess is that several sceneries on Condor Club violate the copyright. Certainly the mod that OP posted above violates copyright.

EDB's sceneries all use data that is copyright free. As are 6266 sceneries.
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Re: Landscape with a best resolution ortho?

Post by EDB » Mon Nov 28, 2022 4:50 pm

Paul_UK wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 2:50 pm
All very interesting about the license issues. I've not read into this situation yet. Can the textures be used as long as it isn't for financial gain or is it literally the case that the textures are copyrighted and cannot be used for anything else without consent from the creator?

The aerial images all those services use are not owned by them. They pay a fee for a very specific use (for unrestricted use they would have to pay a lot more), with a lot of restrictions demanded by the owners to protect the data they own. The web-portal use and nothing else. Only as a background layer for the service. For that reason direct downloading of source layers is forbidden on these sites. Read all the use rights info they provide. Even if at some point they use open source data at some locations. Only the stealing of the data would increase server load and by so increase cost for the service they provide. So in a way only the stealing from the servers will already let the service provider loose money. That's a second reason why direct downloading of source data is forbidden from those services. Again, read their use rights. So stealing the images from their servers and use them for something else are two offenses in itself.

And when you take the open-source data they use. Let me give an example.
In know from someone else that you have open source data on your PC. I brake into your house and take the open-source data from your PC. Is this an offense or not? It's only open-source data that I take. So then I'm not a criminal, right? You using open-source gives me the right to brake into your house. Right? That you loose money on the repair of your house is your problem. I'm sure the judge will say I'm right. Right?

I have been working in a big company (800-1500 people) for a short while that did a lot of infra. The use of Google Earth on a daily basis was normal. At some point the CEO's got a letter from GOOGLE that we had to start paying for the use of Google Earth. Everyone (except IT) asked how they knew? Well, they know everything you do on their servers. IP's, data usage, everything. They log everything. They are smart enough to figure out were you live. When they think they can take money from you, they will go after you.

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