Size of ZL17 photoreal scenery for the coverage area

[Matthias Geiss]

I am thinking about generating ZL17 photoreal scenery for the whole coverage area using Ortho4XP. If anybody of you already did this, I would appreciate some input about the approximate file size for the complete area.

I am also curious about which orthoimagery source I should choose for SoCal. There are a bunch of options, and USA_1 or 2 seem like obvious choises, but do they have an advantage over Google or Bing?

[ridikamus]

I am still building tiles from the 38 degree latitude line eastward from SFO, but aside from that my PE coverage area is done. Current total at ZL17 is 481 GB. As far as source goes, people tend to be shy about disclosing that - I can only assume it's an attempt to avoid the potential wrath of a large company if the company decides generating your own ortho from their imagery is frowned upon. My suggestion for imagery source is to find a tile with features you're interested in and generate it with various imagery sources to find the one you like best.

[Matthias Geiss]

Thanks David! 481GB is unfortunately more than my system has to spare at the moment, so I will have to get myself another SSD first
I'll generate some tiles using the different sources to see the differences.

[ridikamus]

Google something like 'x-plane hdd vs ssd' and decide for yourself, but I think most folks who use ortho put it on spinny hard drives. I did a wee bit of research and a wee bit of testing and decided there wasn't enough difference in load time (and it's only the initial x-plane load that is affected), so I've put all of my ortho on a Western Digital Black HDD.

You can also use a symbolic link to replace your Custom Scenery directory on the SSD with the one on the HDD, if you want to keep the majority of x-plane on the SSD. Very straightforward on Mac or Linux, less straightforward but still easily doable on Windows.

EDIT: Saying the initial load is the only affected time is incorrect. Any time you change location via the Global Airports or Quick Flight menus you'll get a long load with orthoscenery.

[Matthias Geiss]

That's good news! I always thought that X-Planes load times could be greatly reduced using SSDs, but if the difference is not that big, I could throw all the photo scenery on my backup HD.

[svilenv]

... there wasn't enough difference in load time (and it's only the initial x-plane load that is affected), so I've put all of my ortho on a Western Digital Black HDD. ....

For what it's worth, this has been my experience as well, I also run the orthos from an HDD and as long as it's at least a 7200 rpm HDD and is kept properly defragmented, there are no loading time stutters in the photoscenery when flying between tiles.