Orthophotography

Two approaches exist for photorealistic ground textures. Static generation with Ortho4XP creates DDS tiles in advance and stores them locally — up to zoom level 19 for maximum detail, but storage-intensive and limited to the regions prepared beforehand. Streaming solutions such as AutoOrtho or XEarthLayer deliver tiles at runtime via a virtual filesystem, without pre-generation, at the price of network load during flight. Ortho4XP generates not only textures but also high-resolution meshes, optionally enhanced with LiDAR data for more precise terrain representation.

Concepts & Methods compares both approaches, explains the scenery_packs.ini setup, and matches them to player profiles by flying style and storage budget. Ortho4XP is the hands-on guide for static tiles on Linux: installation, OrthoForge, parameter reference, and LiDAR. The streaming tools have their own section, Ortho Streaming, including the Static + Streaming combination of local tiles and on-demand imagery.

• Concepts & Methods — Overview of static and streaming approaches
• Ortho4XP — Generate static ortho tiles offline