LOD8 scenery (Blue Marble) too dark?

[Guest cbuchner1]

Should I brighten up the Blue Marble scenery (the LOD8 ring) with the next TP update?I find that the inner scenery rings often appear much brighter in comparison. Especially with terrain detail radius set to small or medium, this can look disturbing.Christian

[lliaudais 2]

Christian,First look at included level 8 over edge of Rocky Mountains just west of Denver Colorado.Medium range (3.5)outer ring: new LOD 8 - dull and brownishinner rings: online levels 9,10,11 - lighter and more natural colorIs this what you are inquiring about. Am I seeing what is supposed to be there?If so, then maybe it does need to be revisited. It didn't seem as smooth as just the 9,9,10,11 mix that I use for high altitudeLoydhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/193923.jpg

[Guest vonduck1]

>Christian,>>First look at included level 8 over edge of Rocky Mountains>just west of Denver Colorado.>>Medium range (3.5)>outer ring: new LOD 8 - dull and brownish>inner rings: online levels 9,10,11 - lighter and more natural>color>>Is this what you are inquiring about. Am I seeing what is>supposed to be there?>>If so, then maybe it does need to be revisited. It didn't seem>as smooth as just the 9,9,10,11 mix that I use for high>altitude>>Loyd>>http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/193923.jpg>Loyd - just a question my friend - what settings do you have your LOD at? Currently mine are like this -[service Example 1]cache_folder=F:Microsoft Gamescache.service1network_module=libnettilemodule_config="conn=20|rate=2.0|verbose=0|server=http://a*.ortho.tiles.virtualearth.net|path=/tiles/a%s.jpeg?g=%v|quad=0123|balance=0123|useragent=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)"min_level=9max_level=18map_version=203#level_mapping=9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17#level_mapping=9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 more radius HQ (13->14)#level_mapping=9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 even more radius in HQ (12,13->14)color_hack=Nocolor_level=13bulk_extend=50Would adjusting any of this help me to have better textures further from the aircraft?Many thanks for any help!Doug

[Guest cbuchner1]

There are no INI file settings that could influence the appearance of the outermost ring. However you can push it further outwards by choosing the large terrain radius in the FSX terrain options.That outermost ring covers about 3/4 of the area and used to consume most of Tileproxy's load time. So I placed static photo scenery there. As a result, FSX loads and updates the inner rings faster.All I can do to influence its appearance is some image adjustment before compiling the photo scenery into a BGL. I could try to match its brightness and contrast with what the satellite providers have.If you don't like the ring, you can switch it off in the scenery library. Another tip:With this scenery enabled enabled, use preload_min_lod=9 in the INI.With the ring disabled, use preload_min_lod=8 in the INI file.Christian

[lliaudais 2]

Doug,I see that I mis-stated my settings... easy to get confused with the LOD/QMID level discrepancy:FSX config: LOD_RADIUS=3.500000 gives about 80-90 miles in every direction - that was long range on the AMD3500 but only medium on the new E8400.The image was of just LOD 9-11 photo scenery and the new LOD8 (for high altitude use) limited by the parameters min_level=10max_level=13#level_mapping=11,11,12,13The level 14 and up went to black/white photos in too many areas to bother with so I just skipped them.I didn't know aboout the pre-load settings; I may have to re-visit the LOD 8 and see if that makes a difference.Loyd

[Guest vonduck1]

Thanks Lloyd!RegardsDoug

[Guest cbuchner1]

> I didn't know aboout the pre-load settings; I may have to re-visit the LOD 8 and see if that makes a difference.the only difference would be in a time saving because unnecessary data is not pre-loaded.I have one bug remaining in the code, causing that it still pre-loads some area in the direction of flight, despite the preload_min_lod=9 setting. But regular preload activity for that ring no longer happens.

[Guest cbuchner1]

Some progress report:I have tried brightening up the blue marble a bit by adding Scale=0.7, Bias=76 options to the SDK's terrain resampler tool. While that boosted the brightness, the effect on the contrast was a disaster.I am now working with ImageMagick to first brighten up the overall image and then boosting the contrast without saturating the black and white areas. This can be done nicely with the -sigmoidal-contrast option.Also I've tried providing several seasons. It's one blue marble seasonal image representing three months of the year.The winter image definitely looks greener for the San Diego area. ;)After some fine tuning this might replace the previous version. I am not sure where to host the resulting files - posting the seasonal world scenery for download would become a download in the 1 GB range. That is something that is best served through BitTorrent.I am pretty sure sourceforge would roast me if I put up a 1 GB download. Should I go for Amazon's S3 service? But it's hard to foresee how much that would cost me...I might still make a split between a non-seasonal and a seasonal download. For those with smaller pipes.Christian