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Interview with Matt Fox Conducted by Dominic Smith The Orthophotos Project Hi Matt, thank you for taking the time to talk to FlightSim.Com. Could I begin by asking you (for the benefit of readers who might not be aware) what 'The X-Plane Orthophotos Project' is? The project consists of high quality orthophotos combined with 3D overlay data (autogen, roads, trees, etc.) from the HD Mesh Scenery Project by Alpilotx and the best available elevation data from the USGS. I use Ortho4XP to create the packages, which are then distributed via bit torrent. The packages can be easily installed by anyone without any special technical knowledge. Matt, how did the project come about? I've been using various flight simulators for over 20 years and have always thought orthophotos add a whole new layer of realism to flight simulators. When Ortho4XP was released, I realized what a great program it was, but there were some technical challenges for many users. Also, the commonly used orthophoto sources (Bing, Google, etc.) had issues due to inconsistent coloring. I use imagery from the National Agriculture Imagery Program, which has more consistent coloring. I also use higher resolution elevation data than is available by default with Ortho4XP. At first I wasn't sure if the project would be possible due to the challenges of distributing files that are typically 20+ gigabytes in size. The cost of hosting the files on a dedicate server capable of transferring several terabytes of data every day would be extremely high. I decided to give BitTorrents a try as an experiment and fortunately that has worked out well. The community has been great with seeding the BitTorrent files - FlightSim.Com and Aerosoft have also volunteered to help with seeding the files. Matt, how much coverage do you intend to do? The plan is to do the entire US, including portions of Alaska. I've also done some other countries, such as Mexico and Australia with lower resolution imagery. I'm always looking for new sources of public domain imagery. Maybe I will do other countries with lower resolution imagery. Are all the areas in the same detail, or are some more detailed than others? One of the challenges is that Ortho4XP is constantly being improved. For example, the latest release includes a new feature that smooths out airports and I know further updates are planned. Because of this, there are some variations depending on when the package was created. I will eventually upgrade them all to the best available settings, but it will take some time. As well as the above, I've also completed a couple of "HD" areas, which use higher resolution imagery and will be looking at doing more of those in the future. I've also done some other countries (Mexico and Australia) with lower resolution imagery from the Sentinel-2 project, which covers the entire Earth, but at a lower resolution. What software do you use when creating the different areas? The primary software I use is Ortho4XP by OscarPilote. I also use XnConvert to adjust the coloring of the imagery. Matt, how long does each area/tile take to complete? Probably about 20 hours on average, although much of that time is my computer working by itself processing tiles, downloading imagery, or processing the imagery. The most time consuming part of the process is setting everything up and keeping up with the changes made to Ortho4XP. For example, each state has a custom mask which allows the states to blend together seamlessly. Those took many hours to get just right. Are the sceneries purely for X-Plane 11, or can users of earlier versions of X-Plane enjoy them as well? They can be used by XP10 or XP11, although there are slight differences between the two. As it's quite a comprehensive project, how can the flight simming community (especially those at FlightSim.Com) help you in your work? The number one way they can help is to help seed the files on bit torrent. Is there a particular area you enjoy flying around more than the others? I live in California, so the west coast has always been the area in which I spend the most time in. Lastly Matt, what plans do you have for the future of the project? Just to keep going until I have the entire US covered. I might take a break for a while once that is done! All the best with the project Matt - I hope those that download your work, help to seed! Matt Fox X-Plane Orthophotos Project