Which zoom level is implemented?
Currently, zoom level 16 is fully implemented.
That is too low for me! Where can I find zoom level 17 or 18?
At this time, tiles completely compiled and rendered at zoom level 16 are offered.
What about zoom level 17 or higher?
Every increase of a zoom level quadruples the time, the space, and the amount of images required for a complete latitude and longitude tile.
For example, the tile +51+007 (EDLW) requires 228 renders in total, to be able to construct a full tile.
Therefore, zoom level 17 would already require 912 images at the same resolution, whereas zoom level 18 would quadruple this number once more to 3648 renders - also at the same resolution.
The amount of final DDS images after the conversion in Ortho4XP is similar, and each DDS texture takes up approximately 10 MB of space.
Also, rendering a full tile at zoom level 16 takes about 90 minutes with multithreading and full CPU usage. Therefore, zoom level 17 would need 6 hours (360 minutes) and zoom level 18 would then take 24 hours.
As such, zoom level 16 is the best compromize in size, speed, and quality.
Are you considering higher zoom level nonetheless?
I have done experiments and tests on zoom level 17, but locally limited - for example it could be implemented for airport regions with a defined radius.
Why are buildings and roads missing on the renders?
When the X-World (Pro) scenery package is added to the X-Plane flight simulator, building and many roads will be placed and overlayed exactly at their correct coordinates, thus completing the scenery. This also reduces the amount of data to be processed for every render.
However, with lower rendering distance, and possibly lesser world detail, less geometry is rendered, resulting in "empty" residential areas. For this reason I am working on a mechanism that can place buildings in the renders separately, thus enabling me to offer two versions of each tile - with and without buildings, and roads.
As soon as this becomes available, I am considering offering these tiles under the label Orthographic Pro.
Are you using generative AI in your renders or your work?
No. The engine is developed entirely by me, with only the occasional cross-check of some technical implementations against an AI. This only affected smaller parts or mechanisms of the code to improve its efficiency.
The engine itself is free of generative AI. The resource pool is hand-curated and hand-made from photo-realistic source material from Bing and Google Maps. Some tags receive individual manipulation and post-processing effects, such as a border around farmland or shadows being cast by forest areas.
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