Tile Proxy Test

Tried out a free download tonight. The program is called Tile Proxy and it runs in the background as FSX runs, acting as a Proxy Server and downloading image date from an on-line map provider (in my case, Yahoo Maps since Google apparently got wind of this and threatened to sue). Tile Proxy then converts that data to the format used by FSX and uploads it as you fly. It gives you something like the MegaScenery Earth visuals (see earlier posts), but at no charge. The drawback being that the imagery is not as good, it takes forever to load, and at least on my system, seems to reduce your frame rate making it more difficult to fly.

Once I got it installed and running I took off from Dalton Municipal and headed to town. On the way, I looked for and managed to find my parents house:

Unless you know exactly what to look for, this won't look like much, but trust me, it's down there. Next I flew over town and I think spotted the courthouse. On my way back towards the airport I spotted Heritage Point Park easily identifiable by its baseball fields arranged in circles of five:

I was going straight back to the airport but decided to check out Fort Mountain again. Here's some more Tile Proxy scenery of Murray County:

It's clearly better than the default FSX scenery, but unless I can get it to run more smoothly, I'm not sure it's going to be worth the effort. Anyway, I flew back over Fort Mountain. I was able to see the road leading up to the Fort area, but the resolution wasn't good enough to see much else:

After Fort Mountain I did decide to hang it up for the night and flew back to the airport and landed. The reduced frame rate made it pretty difficult. In fact, I almost stalled and repeated that Titusville Crash, but I reacted to the stall warning a lot faster this time, gunned the engine to full throttle and pointed the nose down (but not too much down because I wasn't more than 50 feet off the ground). That brought my airspeed up just enough that I could cut power again and complete the landing.

No final decision on this yet. I'll fly with it some more tomorrow and maybe try tweaking the settings a bit.