Imports an orthophoto from a GeoTIFF (any coordinate system, several files = mosaic) or from an ordinary image. The Studio makes DDS textures in web-mercator tiles and from them pack A (an overlay with draped polygons) and/or B (baked into a copy of the base mesh). The Orthophoto section of the Terrain & water panel.
Load – reads the inputs and proposes a ZL by resolution. Preview on terrain lays a reduced mosaic on the terrain (image, texture grid, outline) – check the position.
Tiles and quality: Zoom level (ZL), Texture size (4096 / 2048 px; with a base DSF that has a grid the ZL decides it, see below), Resampling, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation (1.00 = unchanged).
Variant:
- A – overlay (draped polygons) – a separate overlay pack over any mesh; .pol polygons in pieces (Polygon piece, Piece overlap), the photo is drawn over the terrain. Layer (LAYER_GROUP beaches +N) sets the order of the photo among draped polygons in X-Plane – it is written into the .pol as LAYER_GROUP beaches N: 0 = beaches, 1 = orthophoto from WorldEditor at airports, default 2 = above them (range −5 to 5, a higher number draws higher). The value is remembered for the next import. You change the layer of a finished orthophoto in the project in the Properties of the draped polygon (see Editor); an orthophoto from a finished pack keeps its own layer (e.g. 1 from WorldEditor) until you change it. Variant B (.ter) has no layer – the photo is the mesh terrain itself.
- B – bake into the mesh (.ter) – a copy of the base DSF: the mesh is cut along the texture edges (heights unchanged), land in the coverage gets the orthophoto terrain, TRNS transitions above the photo disappear, water stays. Optionally Simplify the mesh under the photo with a tolerance. Needs the project base DSF.
- A over a dense mesh – the A result shows a draping estimate: X-Plane lays every polygon onto all mesh triangles below it (about 15 µs per triangle). Over a dense mesh (RenderFarm, Ortho4XP) that means minutes of extra loading (17 minutes measured on Réunion). Use B there.
- Water never gets the photo – it stays native X-Plane 12 water (terrain_Water: waves, reflections, physics). This also applies to Ortho4XP water textures (suffix _sea / _water, or a .ter with WATER_COLOR_MASK / WET).
- In variant B the airport border (apt_border*.lin) is not drawn under the photo. Over a continuous photo it would draw a green jagged band. Segments outside the photo stay.
- Base DSF with a texture grid – DSFs from Ortho4XP and RenderFarm ortho DSFs (ZL14 cells) have a mesh already cut along their grid. The Studio detects this and keeps the grid:
one texture = one cell (exactly a ZL14 cell for RenderFarm, an Ortho4XP texture of its ZL);
the texture size follows from the ZL (for RenderFarm ZL16 = 1024 px … ZL19 = 8192 px);
the mesh is not split and only a triangle lying wholly in the coverage (±10 cm) gets the photo. Triangles on the photo edge keep their original terrain.
For Laminar default scenery and a classic RenderFarm DSF (no grid) the textures are tiled freely by the chosen ZL and texture size. The panel shows which kind of base DSF it is.
5. Optionally Edge and colours (optional):
- Photo area – draw which part of the photo to use (outside it the photo is transparent),
- Soft edge and Edge width – the photo blends smoothly into the terrain at its edge. Works only in variant A; in variant B the photo ends sharply,
- Match colours to surroundings – shifts the mean and spread of the photo colours towards the surroundings; Surroundings from: terrain textures of the base DSF, or a neighbouring orthophoto; Strength, Edge band; Preview before / after.
6. Name › Run import (runs in the background, Cancel). Result: the output folder, textures, verification of packs A and B, what to check in X-Plane. Previous outputs › Load list.
The output is in the orto folder of the cache: YY_orto_<name> (variant A) and ZZ_orto_<name>_sit (variant B). You copy them into X-Plane yourself:
A – copy YY_orto_… into Custom Scenery; in scenery_packs.ini it must be above the scenery the photo should be drawn over.
B – copy ZZ_orto_…_sit into Custom Scenery above the pack that currently provides the mesh of this tile (B replaces the whole tile mesh).
Both variants were verified in X-Plane on the demo (Saint-Denis), with default settings – without the Edge and colours options.
Not verified: orthophoto edge and colours The Edge and colours (optional) options (photo area, soft edge, matching colours to the surroundings) were added after the X-Plane verification and have not been tried in the simulator yet. Check the transition of the photo into the terrain and the colours at its edge.
Beaches
The Beaches button in the editor bar. A beach lies on the water / land boundary of the base mesh, water is on the left in the beach direction, the strip width is given by the type in coastlines.bch (wide 20 m / narrow 8 m of land).
Load beaches and shore – beaches of the base DSF in the window and the mesh shore for snapping (Show mesh shore, Beach strip on land). A project window larger than 0.1° (e.g. a whole tile): the tool works in an area around the camera – a yellow rectangle in 3D and in the window Overview, the panel shows its size. The area follows the camera (when the view centre leaves its inner half) and stays put while drawing and loading. Edits are stored in coordinates and the write applies to the whole DSF.
Types (coastlines.bch) – choose a type (sand, gravel, town, rock, grass…).
Draw – click the start and end near the shore; the section snaps to the shore and follows it along the shorter way. Two clicks on the same spot = the whole closed shore.
Select – a click on a beach selects an edge, Shift+click extends the selection along the same beach, Delete deletes the section (for a selected edit from the list it removes it), Esc cancels a started section or the selection, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo / redo beach edits; in the panel Change to type…, Delete section, Whole beach.
Optionally: Import from OSM › Find beaches in OSM (window up to 0.1°, otherwise the area around the camera) › Preview candidates in 3D › Add selected. It reads the tile's OSM shapefiles from the same folders as Water from OSM (Settings › Scenery folders › OSM shapefiles per tile, without a setting Tvorba\Input-OSM); RenderFarm is not required. An own OSM file cannot be used here yet.
Edits are in the Beach edits list (on / off, remove). Preview (backend) shows what changes.
Write (n edits) – a new DSF with verification (pools unchanged, beaches by type, shore).
Beaches load late in X-Plane After moving to a place, the island first shows without beaches; they appear later. Compare only after they have loaded and in clear weather.
Not verified: beaches in X-Plane Writing beaches is verified by file checks (pools unchanged, beaches by type, shore). How new or changed beaches look in X-Plane has not been verified yet.
Ortho4XP tiles
Ortho4XP creates tiles in which the photo is the terrain texture: each texture has its own .ter in terrain\ and an image in textures\ of the pack, and the DSF has no height raster (heights are only in the mesh vertices). RF Studio recognises such DSFs (by the header and the .ter names) and edits them so that the photos stay in place.
The Ortho4XP pack (e.g. zOrtho4XP_+50+014) must lie in a folder the Studio scans – the default Other DSFs = Custom Scenery (see Settings). In the DSF list it has the Ortho4XP badge.
DSF › Overview › the Ortho4XP tile card: author, pack, textures and ZL, missing files, a sample projection check, Check the whole DSF (every triangle lies in its texture and the photo coordinates match the Ortho4XP projection) and the What is different with Ortho4XP list. In the 3D window with .ter texture on, the pack photos are shown.
Editor › New project › choose the DSF with the Ortho4XP badge as the base. Terrain & water shows the Ortho4XP base notice (Details).
Edit the mesh (terrain, water, DEM, airports, roads, repairs, simplification). For every new triangle that crosses the edge of its texture, the Studio splits it along the texture grid, assigns the .ter by position and computes the photo coordinates from the projection. What it did is shown in the Ortho4XP – textures of new triangles block in the preview and the result.
Open the new version in the DSF list (Studio edits, also with the Ortho4XP badge) › Overview › Test package for X-Plane: choose Textures (copy, hard link – same disk only, no textures) › Build package. The package is created in the Studio cache: the new DSF + the .ter files of the original pack + textures; a check verifies that all files exist.
Try the package via Test in X-Plane with the Ortho4XP package source (it is placed right above the pack that provides the tile mesh today and the whole test can be undone), or copy it into Custom Scenery yourself. In scenery_packs.ini it must be above the original Ortho4XP pack (or disable the original), otherwise X-Plane uses the original mesh. The card shows the exact ini lines with a copy button.
Limitations:
New water is terrain_Waterwithout a photo, and Ortho4XP shore masks (overlays) are not regenerated – the shore shape may differ from the surroundings.
Terrain tools work with the mesh only (the DSF has no height raster).
Ortho4XP with physical sea textures (_sea.ter instead of terrain_Water) would be treated as land by the Studio.
Test in X-Plane copies only the DSF file of an edited DSF – for Ortho4XP build the test package (step 5) and choose the Ortho4XP package as the source.
Not verified: Ortho4XP The support is verified on a synthetic tile built after the Ortho4XP 1.3x format. It has not yet been verified on a real Ortho4XP tile or in X-Plane. Some assumptions (.ter suffixes, mask encoding, Ortho4XP 1.40 changes for XP12) are unconfirmed – when the projection does not fit, the Studio only interpolates the photo coordinates from the data and reports it.
Based on the RF Studio manual (F1 › Manual, version 0.12.0-beta). Post your questions and experience in this thread.
Orthophoto
Imports an orthophoto from a GeoTIFF (any coordinate system, several files = mosaic) or from an ordinary image. The Studio makes DDS textures in web-mercator tiles and from them pack A (an overlay with draped polygons) and/or B (baked into a copy of the base mesh). The Orthophoto section of the Terrain & water panel.
Variant: - A – overlay (draped polygons) – a separate overlay pack over any mesh;
.polpolygons in pieces (Polygon piece, Piece overlap), the photo is drawn over the terrain. Layer (LAYER_GROUP beaches +N) sets the order of the photo among draped polygons in X-Plane – it is written into the.polasLAYER_GROUP beaches N: 0 = beaches, 1 = orthophoto from WorldEditor at airports, default 2 = above them (range −5 to 5, a higher number draws higher). The value is remembered for the next import. You change the layer of a finished orthophoto in the project in the Properties of the draped polygon (see Editor); an orthophoto from a finished pack keeps its own layer (e.g. 1 from WorldEditor) until you change it. Variant B (.ter) has no layer – the photo is the mesh terrain itself. - B – bake into the mesh (.ter) – a copy of the base DSF: the mesh is cut along the texture edges (heights unchanged), land in the coverage gets the orthophoto terrain, TRNS transitions above the photo disappear, water stays. Optionally Simplify the mesh under the photo with a tolerance. Needs the project base DSF. - A over a dense mesh – the A result shows a draping estimate: X-Plane lays every polygon onto all mesh triangles below it (about 15 µs per triangle). Over a dense mesh (RenderFarm, Ortho4XP) that means minutes of extra loading (17 minutes measured on Réunion). Use B there. - Water never gets the photo – it stays native X-Plane 12 water (terrain_Water: waves, reflections, physics). This also applies to Ortho4XP water textures (suffix_sea/_water, or a.terwithWATER_COLOR_MASK/WET). - In variant B the airport border (apt_border*.lin) is not drawn under the photo. Over a continuous photo it would draw a green jagged band. Segments outside the photo stay. - Base DSF with a texture grid – DSFs from Ortho4XP and RenderFarm ortho DSFs (ZL14 cells) have a mesh already cut along their grid. The Studio detects this and keeps the grid:For Laminar default scenery and a classic RenderFarm DSF (no grid) the textures are tiled freely by the chosen ZL and texture size. The panel shows which kind of base DSF it is. 5. Optionally Edge and colours (optional): - Photo area – draw which part of the photo to use (outside it the photo is transparent), - Soft edge and Edge width – the photo blends smoothly into the terrain at its edge. Works only in variant A; in variant B the photo ends sharply, - Match colours to surroundings – shifts the mean and spread of the photo colours towards the surroundings; Surroundings from: terrain textures of the base DSF, or a neighbouring orthophoto; Strength, Edge band; Preview before / after. 6. Name › Run import (runs in the background, Cancel). Result: the output folder, textures, verification of packs A and B, what to check in X-Plane. Previous outputs › Load list.
The output is in the
ortofolder of the cache:YY_orto_<name>(variant A) andZZ_orto_<name>_sit(variant B). You copy them into X-Plane yourself:YY_orto_…into Custom Scenery; inscenery_packs.iniit must be above the scenery the photo should be drawn over.ZZ_orto_…_sitinto Custom Scenery above the pack that currently provides the mesh of this tile (B replaces the whole tile mesh).Both variants were verified in X-Plane on the demo (Saint-Denis), with default settings – without the Edge and colours options.
Beaches
The Beaches button in the editor bar. A beach lies on the water / land boundary of the base mesh, water is on the left in the beach direction, the strip width is given by the type in
coastlines.bch(wide 20 m / narrow 8 m of land).Tvorba\Input-OSM); RenderFarm is not required. An own OSM file cannot be used here yet.Ortho4XP tiles
Ortho4XP creates tiles in which the photo is the terrain texture: each texture has its own
.terinterrain\and an image intextures\of the pack, and the DSF has no height raster (heights are only in the mesh vertices). RF Studio recognises such DSFs (by the header and the.ternames) and edits them so that the photos stay in place.zOrtho4XP_+50+014) must lie in a folder the Studio scans – the default Other DSFs =Custom Scenery(see Settings). In the DSF list it has the Ortho4XP badge..terby position and computes the photo coordinates from the projection. What it did is shown in the Ortho4XP – textures of new triangles block in the preview and the result..terfiles of the original pack + textures; a check verifies that all files exist.scenery_packs.iniit must be above the original Ortho4XP pack (or disable the original), otherwise X-Plane uses the original mesh. The card shows the exact ini lines with a copy button.Limitations:
terrain_Waterwithout a photo, and Ortho4XP shore masks (overlays) are not regenerated – the shore shape may differ from the surroundings._sea.terinstead ofterrain_Water) would be treated as land by the Studio.Based on the RF Studio manual (F1 › Manual, version 0.12.0-beta). Post your questions and experience in this thread.