G2XPL Tutorial

By James Lambe

Congratulations on downloading G2XPL. This wonderful program will allow you to create photo-scenery titles for you to enjoy whilst flying X-Plane. The author of the program and myself hope you get many hours of enjoyment from it.

G2XPL is a very powerful program and one that is very easy to use. Following the outlines in this tutorial, you will soon be proficient in the making of your very own photo scenery files.

Note: The use of a fast unrestricted broadband service provider is highly recommended as any tiles over LOD15 zoom will be of considerable size (the higher you go, the larger the size).

So let's get started.

Installing G2XPL

After you have downloaded G2XPL you will need to unzip the files. From your downloads folder, copy and paste the zipped G2XPL file onto your desktop. Right click on the G2XPL zip folder and select extract from the drop down list or use your zip manager (if installed). The unzipped folder will appear on your desktop.

I recommend you place the zipped folder into your recycle bin so you do not use the wrong folder.

Right click on the G2XPL folder and select Cut:

Open your X-Plane folder and select:

C:\X-Plane 11\Resources

Then select the plugins folder and paste the file into it:

It will look like this:

Now please follow the next step closely. Open the G2XPL folder and copy the named file g2xpl.xpl and paste it to the plugins folder, it will end up like this:

That's it, G2XPL is now installed into X-Plane.

First Use

Open X-Plane. You will be greeted by an open box with some files in it. You must click on the bottom file named g2xpl. When clicked the box will automatically close.

X-Plane will continue, then select an airport of you choice.

Making Tiles G2XPL Inside X-Plane 11

We will now learn how to use G2XPL inside X-Plane while the simulator is live (running). After you have selected the airport and the sim opens to that airport, you will notice an LUA file with a message stating G2XPL has loaded successfully.

You can press the Esc button on your keyboard to close the dialog box or use your mouse and left click on the magenta X. Next you will need to set the preferences that you will use to make a photo tile. Go to the top left side of the screen and select Plugins/g2xpllauncher/G2xpl general settings.

The settings menu will allow you to set the size of the tile you wish to make. The default setting is LOD=17 and the radius 7000 meters. The screen shot shows the decrease of LOD to 16 using the down arrow tab and also the increase to 10000 (m) using the up arrow tab. If you have an Nvidia card that uses CUDA then tick the box. Tick the Pause X-Plane icon to allow the tile to load faster. Then click the apply data and close button. You will need to visit the settings menu each time you wish to alter the sizes of your tile selection.

Now it's time to make your first photo tile. First pause the sim at the location you wish to use. Now go up to the left top of the monitor menu bar and select \plugins\g2xpl launcher\G2xpl Internet Services settings.

The launcher window will now show on the screen. From here you can choose which map provider you wish to use by ticking the box next to the ISP. To make the selection, select the upper bottom left button-bar (Apply data and launch G2xpl exe). If you wish to cancel, select the bottom left button-bar.

Once you have selected the launcher button-bar, the screen will open to a DOS menu and begin its work creating a list. This may take some time and will be dependent on your connection speed.

When the DOS window eventually closes, your sim screen will stay in the pause state until the tile is generated into X-Plane. You may have to restart X-Plane if you have chosen a high LOD setting and the scenery has not changed.

By the way, it is possible to create a photo tile on the fly. You simply do the above procedure while flying over an area. This can be achieved from either the inside or outside of the aircraft; just remember to pause the sim first!

Once you have completed the first method of creating a photo tile, there is also a second method of creating larger areas outside of X-Plane. This is achieved by using Google Earth. By using this method, there is no need for the simulator to be running.

Tips And Tricks

Navigate to your X-Plane plugins folder and create a desktop shortcut by right clicking on the G2XPL folder and selecting send to desktop shortcut.

Open your G2XPL folder and you will see a KMZ file exe called 1x1 deg mesh. Select it and Google Earth will open with a red tile generator covering the entire globe.

Remove the tick in the Temporary Places folder above (null).

With the red gone, our normal Earth will now appear. Zoom into the country, state or region that you wish to create the tile for.

Replace the tick in Temporary Places and the 1x1 tiles will reappear. Also ensure that you highlight the (null) sub folder under Temporary Places (failure to do this will cause problems). Zoom into the area you wish to make the tile for and select from the menu bar: Add/Polygon.

Now draw a polygon around the tile area that you wish to make. It may cover up to 4 tiles. When complete, click the OK button in the polybox.

After you click the OK button there will be a lag while the polygon and tile are built by Google Earth. You will also notice a long list of polygons appearing in the left side window. Here you will need to highlight the bottom of the list named 'Untitled Polygon', right click and select Save to my Places.

The Untitled Polygon will now appear above Temporary Places. Highlight the Untitled Polygon, right click and select Save Place As.

Next a window will appear of your G2XPL folder. Give your Untitled Polygon a name (say, poly1.kmz) and press save.

Once you have saved the file, close Google Earth (press the Discard button) do not save.

You will now be returned to G2XPL, where you will see your saved KMZ file.

Now you need to tell G2XPL what tile in Google Earth to use/download. You do this by opening the configuration setting in the G2XPL folder.

Look for the line plane_long= there maybe some numbers after the =. Overwrite the numbers with the name of your KMZ file (poly1.kmz) shown here.

Next, you need to tell G2XPL what zoom level (LOD) to use in the download. The default is set to zoom=17 Delta=3, but you can change it if you wish by altering the IS_zoom_level= and the IS_zoom_level_low_res_delta= lines. Now save the configuration file.

You are now ready to download the Google Earth tile. In the G2XPL folder look for the file named g2xpl, this is the application's exe file. Click on it.

The DOS window (as in section 1) will open and write the files and download.

When the DOS window closes, the downloaded tile will be found in X-Plane -> Custom Scenery -> and then a sub folder named z_g2xpl

X-Plane saves all downloaded G2XPL tiles to this z_g2xpl folder in three sub folders.

Congratulations. That's it, you have now made your tile using G2XPL outside of X-Plane.

Making Large Batch Files, Such As Countries, States Or Regions Using G2XPL

You can create sceneries of countries, states or regions using G2XPL by using multiple tiles for a specific area. However, because X-Plane uses just the one z_g2xpl folder for all the tiles, you will need to follow the instructions given below.

These instructions will show you how to make a state of the USA, but the same procedure can be used to create a country or region.

First you have to empty the z_g2xpl folder in X-Plane's Custom Scenery folder. You do this by making a folder on your desktop called Holding folder. This is to copy any files that you have already made and wish to save for future use.

When making large batch files for the state, you should not make any other files from within X-Plane at the same time. Delete the three files inside the z_g2xpl folder,

to look like this.

Open your G2XPL folder and select the 1x1deg mesh file. When Google Earth opens, un-tick the Temporary Place folder to hide the red mesh. Zoom into the state (area) you wish to use; in this case, Arizona has been selected. Then re-tick the Temporary Place folder to re-establish the mesh.

Now count the number of tiles that are required to cover the state, border to border, on all sides. Then in a text editor, make a rough drawing of the state adding squares to represent the tiles and number them. This is important as it keeps a record of what has been downloaded. Now, just as you did when creating your first GE tile, you are going to use the polygon method, but this time with a little difference. First select your number one tile of the mesh, now add the polygon by keeping it inside the tile and making it small. Then save as normal, for example, az1.kmz and then proceed to the next tile, az2.kmz. This is repeated as necessary.

Complete this method until you have covered the entire state. Remember all your download files will now be inside the main X-Plane Custom Scenery Folder named z_g2xpl and will be contained within the three sub folders.

Create a folder on your desktop and name it, xx_arizona. Then copy the three sub-folders shown above into the desktop xx_arizona folder. Place the desktop xx_arizona folder into your X-Plane custom Scenery folder. Next. empty the g2xpl folder in the Custom Scenery, so as not to confuse X-Plane.

Now run X-Plane as normal so as to read the new scenery folder. If the scenery does not show, close X-Plane and go to your main X-Plane folder/Custom Scenery scenery_packs.ini and make sure the xx_arizona file is placed in the stack as shown below.

This is the method for making all large batch files. However, always remember to clear your z_g2xpl folder each time before making your next batch area. The best way of using G2XPL is by making named folders for the custom scenery folder and keeping the z_g2xpl folder empty, ready for your next shots.

If you keep your z_g2xpl folder empty, then X-Plane (while running) will tell you there is a problem loading z_g2xpl and will not load the scenery. This is correct as there is nothing in it. Just press the UNDERSTOOD button.

I hope this tutorial serves you well. The tutorial was composed with Windows10 and X-Plane 11.

James Lambe

Download G2XPL here (donationware).