Add Iceland, Faroe and Svalbard/Spitsbergen, use Sonny's LiDAR

[jonaseberle]

This fixes several mesh problems in Europe by using Sonny's digital terrain models from https://sonny.4lima.de/.

Affected tile sets: NA (for Iceland), EUR, maybe more due to #15.

For users:

This only changes the elevation model in Europe. Textures and overlays are not changed.

Testing instructions

You need to be technically versed and have experience with AutoOrtho to try this.

Download the assets from these test releases

• v0.0.74-rc.2+eur
• v0.0.75-rc.3+na (only 23-26 are relevant - that's Iceland)

If you are a Github power user, you can use the Github CLI →

gh --repo jonaseberle/autoortho-scenery release download v0.0.74-rc.2+eur
gh --repo jonaseberle/autoortho-scenery release download v0.0.75-rc.3+na
sha256sum --check *.sha256

or if you dare... download, check and unzip: (you realize that I had to do that so many times during testing...)

#!/bin/bash
scenery_path="$(sed -n 's/^scenery_path *= *\([^ ]*.*\)/\1/p' < ~/.autoortho)"
aoScenery="$scenery_path"/z_autoortho/scenery
for rel in v0.0.74-rc.2+eur v0.0.75-rc.3+na; do
  cmdGhRelDl="gh --repo jonaseberle/autoortho-scenery release download $rel"
  $cmdGhRelDl --skip-existing
  for sha in *.sha256; do
    zip=$(basename $sha .sha256)
    # redownload
    sha256sum --check $sha || $cmdGhRelDl --pattern $zip --clobber
    # unzip
    if sha256sum --check $sha; then 
      dir="$aoScenery"/$(basename $zip .zip)
      # if directory not present yet
      [ -d "$dir" ] || unzip -d "$aoScenery" $zip
    fi
  done
done

Setup your AutoOrtho

• Remove (backup) all previous z_ao_* folders from <X-Plane>/Custom Scenery/z_autoortho/scenery (Details: otherwise due to Tiles in multiple tilesets #15 it could be you are seeing the old state)
• Unzip the newly downloaded .zips into <X-Plane>/Custom Scenery/z_autoortho/scenery. The final structure has to be .../z_autoortho/scenery/z_<any name>/Earth nav data.

Setup X-Plane

• Order scenery_packs.ini: start X-Plane and quit. Move the z_... to the bottom in scenery_packs.ini to see overlays. This test release does not include overlays, so if you want to test with autogen, use your existing yAutoortho_Overlays (or any other, for example simHeaven X-WORLD Europe).
• To make sure you really see the new tiles, disable other mesh sceneries like Ortho4XP, Faroes4XP, Svalbard4XP etc. in scenery_packs.ini. Make a backup if you make changes.

To uninstall this

• Delete the added folders and move your backed up folders back. Same for scenery_packs.ini if you made changes there. After stopping AutoOrtho, you can clean up the empty folders <X-Plane>/Custom Scenery/z_* that AutoOrtho created.

Things to look out for

Start locations with very obvious changes are for example

• the Faroes EKVG (was flat before)
• Iceland BIHN, BIAR, ... (was flat before)
• Spitsbergen ENSB (was not included before)
• the famous needle in the SRTM mesh 24NM West of EDDV should be gone

In Central Europe, Sonny's mesh has a similar fidelity to the one used before (J. de Ferranti, still way better than X-Plane default) – but a bit smoother.

I hope to see a smooth transition (towards Ortho4XP/Autoortho) at all coverage edges but would be nice to have that checked in more places (Serbia/Bulgaria/Romania looks like worth checking).

Please report your findings here as a comment. Thank you.

Next steps (dev):

• The Github build uses https://github.com/jonaseberle/autoortho-scenery/releases/tag/elevation-v0.0.1 - I have no problem with that and can maintain it but a release in kubilus1/autoortho-scenery would be nice. It can be changed via a variable or ENV in the Makefile.
• Attribute Sonny in the release notes and the AutoOrtho documentation as per CC BY 4.0. I think we could honour upstream like "If you like the European mesh in AutoOrtho, please consider a donation to Sonny's LiDAR"

Some screenshots from testing

Iceland Sonny's LiDAR ←→ X-Plane

Svalbard: ENSB before ←→ after

the "space needle" at EDDV/270°/24NM before ←→ after

ENSB

Faroes: EKVG

LOWI: X-Plane ← before → after (admittedly there are some areas in the Alps where Sonny is not better)

LOWI

Iceland: near BIHN

To quote Oscar Pilote who we owe so much: Bon Vol!

---

Fixes: #11
Fixes: #12
Fixes: kubilus1/autoortho#247
Fixes: kubilus1/autoortho#38
Relates: #5
Relates: #16
Relates: kubilus1/autoortho#117

[kubilus1]

I'm going to merge this into a pre-release branch if you don't mind so I can take a closer look. Thanks again!

[rthor]

@kubilus1 Are there plans to merge this into main and make a release?

cc @jonaseberle

[mauriziomannini]

[v0.0.74-rc.2+eur]
[v0.0.75-rc.3+na] (only 23-26 are relevant - that's Iceland)

23-26 files from v0.0.75-rc.3+na fix Iceland.

Which files fix Faroe Islands ?

[jonaseberle]

@mauriziomannini Faroe is in the EUR tile set.
It is not trivial to find out in which .zip it is.

Each .zip contains a "chunk" of tiles.

The tiles in https://github.com/kubilus1/autoortho-scenery/blob/main/eur_tile_list get split into chunks with 125 tiles each.
If you find the line number of your tile in that file, you can theoretically deduct in which .zip number it is.

The Faroes are tiles +61-008, +61-007, +62-008, +61-007.

[mauriziomannini]

@jonaseberle many thanks for your quick reply.
At the end I believe it will be easier to download everything from v0.0.74-rc.2+eur, extract the new 'Earth nav data' and replace the old one (after a safe backup).

[rthor]

@jonaseberle @kubilus1 any updates?

[jonaseberle]

I am happy with it and use it exclusively.
I think it would help if people could test it and give feedback.

[rthor]

Alright, I'll set it up and give it a run.

[rthor]

works pretty much flawlessly!