More than a few readers have asked about where to find photorealistic scenery for X-Plane, and for copyright reasons you pretty much have to make your own. The good news is that with the latest version of Ortho4XP, the process appears really quite simple, as I learned from this video:
You can get the latest version of Ortho4XP here (download instructions are in the video), and Python here. Note that I’ve NOT done this process myself, but based on this video I do believe I will give it a try.
I did just that over the holiday season. I am in the UK and on xp10 I had been using UK vfr scenery which at low altitudes was very disappointing. Moving to xp11 and having seen a video on youtube by Nomedia, I was so impressed with his scenery that I thought that I would look into it. I followed the link that he had on his chanel about making the scenery and it worked well. I chose zl17 and with a mediocre Internet connection here and 250gb of scenery later, I have UK and Northern France. It took a couple of days. I am delighted with the result and even on final, the scenery stands up well. You need a lot of ssd storage and time, but the results will lift your immersive experience completely.
I decided to study Ortho4xp this weekend while the winter storm hold me inside home. I first follow the windows installation video from Oscar Pilote” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrSNZt1OYH4” , everything was easy following his video and his example to make a scenery. I also saw the videos from “Explain X-Plane -part 1 and 2”, “ForTheVoyeur”and “Mr Dude”. There are many other videos that will help you learn how do your scenery with Ortho4xp. I did Raleigh, NC last night and the result was fantastic. By now I completed 5 scenery and all looks great, Need buy new ssd storage soon. Interesting, I did the scenery for the section of PR where I lived and where my home airport was, the available photo from BI had clouds. This resulted in areas that looks like snow, while never snow there. So we also depends on the quality of the available data to be used.
I have a quick tip for new Ortho4xp users, something I wish I would have figured out earlier. Make sure you open the Ortho4xp CFG file and add you file locations for X plane and your custom scenery. When you do this in conjunction with batch builds, Ortho4xp will automatically add shortcuts in your custom scenery folder. This keeps everything organized and easier to use.
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