Photoshop.

 

Did you check Resample Image and select Bicubic Sharper?

Did you save back as an uncompressed BMP?

 

A question to you command line image modification gurus.

Can the MIPs above 256 be removed from these images and the image resaved uncompressed via a command line process for an entire folder of images?

it will be 10 years on 7/29 since fs9 was released. it's still a good platform to fly the classic tubes and old a/c around for a spin.

 

it's kind of embarrassing to read users trying to convince themselves fs9 is capable of displaying anything better than 256x256 landclass textures after a full decade of use.

 

-------------

 

note to self: accept fs9 for what it is, enjoy it. no secret tricks after 10 glorious years of fs fun.

Screw this kind of logic, if there's room to improve FS9 I'm all for it. If we went with this kind of mind set GE Pro, REX, Zinertech, and add-on's in general wouldn't have been created over the years. Heck feeling like this makes Flight all the more reasonable. If there's room to improve FS9's ground textures let's do it. I would say the same this with FSX or X-Plane if what was thought impossible is actually possible. We know FSX has greater ability but we see FS9 is able with the right textures to once again surprise us. Let's stop with the stagnate outlook...

 

 

I realized after reading this, that this is what had gone missing for a very long time in my simming experience. I was spending all my time trying to find ways to make the sim better, make the computer run faster, rather than just taking what I have spent ten years and more money than I care to think about, and just enjoying it. My rig is my best one so far, and it is running a 27" monitor at 2560X1440. Time to just start flying. And thats what I did this afternoon. Took my Christen Eagle out for a ride and it was great! Not looking at frames, blurries, load times etc. I just enjoyed the ride. I would love to see improvements in FS9, and I think what is going on here is both fun and exciting. However, I think I am just going to take a step back and utilize what I have for what it is. Also, thanks to everyone here who over the years have helped me get my sim to the place it is now. Happy flying!

 

Joe we always need to move forward if we can and not be affable about the situation. I'm enjoying everything I've accumulated over the years as well just the same if I can make improvements that was once thought impossible in what I have why not go for it?  We see it's possible to make the ground textures look better in FS9 even if their 256x256. Let's build on that for the benefit of us all. From this point we need a Zinertech who specializes in making the impossible possible to take a look at what we found here. We have three great options for simming these days and I refuse to let FS9 go into the dust in favor of an OOM riddled, CPU overclocking option that pushes more new users away than brings in. Many FSXer's have said if the ground textures could be improved in FS9 they'd deal with it as it's less problematic than FSX. Let's keep our options as up to date as possible (X-Plane, FSX, FS9) and not settle; this community has never been about that and that's why we have development houses like PMDG that push the bounds of what was thought impossible.  We've pushed Microsoft, other developers, and the like to get to versions called FS9/FSX.  We can a community of thinkers not mindless XBOX noms who can do nothing more than place a CD in a device and deal with what was spoon fed them...  Microsoft left this community but we control the content we currently have and one day MS will be surprised their sims and still around and with a new CEO might pick the franchise back up again. This won't be possible sticking out heads in the sand no matter what sim you use...

Very well said. I'm doing the same but still adding nice FS9 sceneries. I can enjoy GEP textures even at low altitudes.

Nothing wrong with what some people are doing with sharper textures, but I don't think it's for me.

I was pretty excited at first but not anymore.

One thing I really like in my sim is consistency. I use a lot of payware scenery and the last thing I want is to have nice and sharp global textures that transition to blurry textures as I fly over payware sceneries.

I do find this project interesting and will keep an eye on it even though I don't plan to convert textures.

 

If we can get this accomplished with a new exciting payware/freeware option I'd like to see you refrain from buying it... I'm not encouraging that, I'd just be surprised...

Screw this kind of logic, if there's room to improve FS9 I'm all for it. If we went with this kind of mind set GE Pro, REX, Zinertech, and add-on's in general wouldn't have been created over the years.

 

Quite frankly, you need to apology to the poster for your insensitive and inconsiderate response.  His "logic" is just as valid as yours.

 

As for GE Pro, REX, Zinertech, etc., they were all created within the design confines of FS2004 and its respective SDKs.  Most of this topic has centered on attempting to "get around" those confines.  If you can, fine; but don't expect everyone to agree with your altruistic viewpoints.  You've exhibited this darkness in this and other posts.  YOUR viewpoint is never ALWAYS correct.  How 'bout giving some slack to others without being so snippy.  This topic or any other topic regarding Microsoft flight simulation is just not that important that one has to belittle another or their viewpoint.

 

gwillmot

 

 

I'm enjoying everything I've accumulated over the years as well just the same if I can make improvements that was once thought impossible in what I have why not go for it?

Les,

If you notice I mention in my post that I am all for making any and all improvements in FS9.....I stated that I find these possibilities fun and exciting. I am willing  to do whatever is possible for me to do to try and bring some of these ideas to reality. So, I am happy to "go for it". At the same time, I feel I for one, have gotten bogged down in the "constant tweaking, improving and messing with" attitude toward flight sim. I read somewhere that when the computer and sim tweaking become more important that the act of simming, we have missed the boat (that's a paraphrase). The result is, I view simming as a chore to be kept up with, rather than something I can do for pleasure and a little escape from the day to day routine.

 

 

 

This won't be possible sticking out heads in the sand no matter what sim you use...

I fail to see how having a less stressful, be content with what I have attitude is "sticking my head in the sand"? Again I refer to the statements I just made,  I'm all for moving FS9 forward, but I am not willing for that to be the sum and substance of what I do with FS9. In the grand scheme of my life, FS9 or simming in general plays a very tiny role, and with the stresses that day to day life afford I don't need another. Sometimes it's good to take a step back and assess what you are doing regarding something in your life, that's what I'm doing.

Quite frankly, you need to apology to the poster for your insensitive and inconsiderate response. His "logic" is just as valid as yours.

 

As for GE Pro, REX, Zinertech, etc., they were all created within the design confines of FS2004 and its respective SDKs. Most of this topic has centered on attempting to "get around" those confines. If you can, fine; but don't expect everyone to agree with your altruistic viewpoints. You've exhibited this darkness in this and other posts. YOUR viewpoint is never ALWAYS correct. How 'bout giving some slack to others without being so snippy. This topic or any other topic regarding Microsoft flight simulation is just not that important that one has to belittle another or their viewpoint.

 

gwillmot

 

I wasn't trying to belittle this poster. What's got me upset is we're trying to do work to improve this hobby for all and you get some that come in here and downplay what we're trying to do and/or insinuate our work is not worth the bother. This poster shouldn't bare the brunt of this mentality I'm seeing in forums so I apologize for that but I was floored when Outerra came in here and offered to develop a new Flight Simulator asking for our input and donations and most dismissed them outright. It wasn't just here but all over the community. Everywhere from Flightsim.com, Flight1 forums, and Aerosoft was a rejection of the opportunity. If it's not FSX it's not worth the bother, "If Microsoft ain't going neither am I" kind of attitude. I'm sorry but it personally ticks me off when all we're trying to do is find a way to further enhance the experience for all of us and people find all kinds of ways to say what's not going to work.

 

So understand I meant no malice it's just this FSX only mentality where we're overly skeptic of anything or downright hostile to other alternatives is bothersome...

mmann, on 14 Jul 2013 - 05:23 AM, said:

A question to you command line image modification gurus.

Can the MIPs above 256 be removed from these images and the image resaved uncompressed via a command line process for an entire folder of images?

The mips are generated downward from the original full size texture so you'd have to start with 256px to begin with. You can extract mips in the Imagetool GUI, so you could extract the 256px mip level and downwards one texture at a time and then put them all back together again, but I don't see where there's a command line way of doing that. You can use -nomip in an imagetool command to prevent creation of mips, but doing so on a 1024px landclass texture does not force use of the 1024 resolution in FS9 like it does in FSX - you see black squares wherever an unmipped 1024px texture is referenced by the landclass.

 

Type imagetool -? at the command line to see all the available flags BTW:

Quote

Usage:

imagetool [flags] [inputfiles]

 

Where flags are:

-o [string] Specify output file name

-batch Force batch processing

-verbose Verbose output [DEFAULT]

-brief Brief output

-nogui No GUI

-nobeep Turns off batch file beeping

-tga Output files are in targa (tga) format

-dds Output files are in DirectX (dds) format

-bmp Output files are in bitmap (bmp) format [DEFAULT]

-imgui Output format is to be used by IMGUI

-auto Output format is picked automatically

-DXT1 Output format is compressed DXT1

-DXT3 Output format is compressed DXT3

-DXT5 Output format is compressed DXT5

-PTC [Q,[Qa]] Output format is compressed PTC

-32 Output format is 32-bit

-24 Output format is 24-bit

-4444 Output format is 16-bit (4444)

-1555 Output format is 16-bit (1555)

-565 Output format is 16-bit (565)

-8 Output format is 8-bit palletized [DEFAULT]

-1 Output format is 1-bit monochrome

-detail Output format is to be used as a detail texture

-gauge Output format is to be used in a flight sim gauge

-terrain Output format is to be used as a generic terrain tile

-terrainphoto Output format is to be used as terrain photo scenery

-border Create a 1 pixel border around the image

-hasborder The image already contains a 1 pixel border

-lm The image is a light map

-tile The image self tiles

-fold Fold the Edge colors for clamped textures

-vflip Vertical flip

-mip Generate mip maps [DEFAULT]

-addmip [file] Add custom mip maps

-nomip Do not generate mip maps

-dither Use Floyd-Steinberg dithering when reducing color depth

-nodither Do not use any dithering when reducing color depth

-invert Invert the alpha channel

-createalpha Create the alpha channel using the RGB value of the (0,0) pixel

-warning Enable warnings (FS specific) [DEFAULT]

-nowarning Disable warnings

-verify Verify that the image matches the given settings

-stop Show a warning dialog (only used with -verify) [DEFAULT]

-nostop Do not show a warning dialog (only used with -verify) [DEFAULT]

-alpha Allow alpha in the bitmap (only used with -verify)

-noalpha Do not allow alpha in the bitmap (only used with -verify)

-e [string] File extension to use given by [string]

-r Recursively traverse the sub directories

-? [string] Help on the topic given by [string]

-fallback Builds a fallback texture that can be loaded much faster than the base image.

-redCorrection Modifies the red component of colors in the mip chain

-blueCorrection Modifies the blue component of colors in the mip chain

-greenCorrection Modifies the green component of colors in the mip chain

-RedInAlpha Put the red channel in the alpha channel and zero out red

 

Batch processing only occurs if one of the command line options is supplied; otherwise,

the images are opened in imagetool for manual processing.

 

By uncompressed I assume you mean 32 or 24 bit (with or without alpha respectively)? If so, yes, but the sim chokes on 24 bit so you have to use 32 bit even though the alpha will be all white. I've done it, it works, imagetool -32 -brief -e bmp *.bmp will do a folder full of .bmps at 32 bit. The quality difference is very slight if even detectable however and the file size of each texture (at 256px, mipped) goes from 43kb (DXT1) to 342 kb at 32 bit.

 

Jim

Les,

If you notice I mention in my post that I am all for making any and all improvements in FS9.....I stated that I find these possibilities fun and exciting. I am willing  to do whatever is possible for me to do to try and bring some of these ideas to reality. So, I am happy to "go for it". At the same time, I feel I for one, have gotten bogged down in the "constant tweaking, improving and messing with" attitude toward flight sim. I read somewhere that when the computer and sim tweaking become more important that the act of simming, we have missed the boat (that's a paraphrase). The result is, I view simming as a chore to be kept up with, rather than something I can do for pleasure and a little escape from the day to day routine.

 

 

 

I fail to see how having a less stressful, be content with what I have attitude is "sticking my head in the sand"? Again I refer to the statements I just made,  I'm all for moving FS9 forward, but I am not willing for that to be the sum and substance of what I do with FS9. In the grand scheme of my life, FS9 or simming in general plays a very tiny role, and with the stresses that day to day life afford I don't need another. Sometimes it's good to take a step back and assess what you are doing regarding something in your life, that's what I'm doing.

 

 

I can do nothing but agree with you here and sorry for my misunderstanding.  Your point is the exact reason many of us stayed with FS9.  Just the same the city ground textures is the last frontier as far as I can see it for FS9.  We've proved it's possible now comes shopping the idea around to a developer that can make an awesome product like GE Pro.  We've done the testing which is not my intention for any FS9 user to do unless they wanted to help us here.  At this point we need a product where all one has to do is install and enjoy.  Higher resolution city textures is possible in FS9 even if the actual file size is 256x256.  We don't have to have glob looking cities anymore, that argument can be put to rest.  For anyone that see's FSXer's stating this in the future about FS9 they can be pointed to this thread.

The mips are generated downward from the original full size texture so you'd have to start with 256px to begin with. You can extract mips in the Imagetool GUI, so you could extract the 256px mip level and downwards one texture at a time and then put them all back together again, but I don't see where there's a command line way of doing that. You can use -nomip in an imagetool command to prevent creation of mips, but doing so on a 1024px landclass texture does not force use of the 1024 resolution in FS9 like it does in FSX - you see black squares wherever an unmipped 1024px texture is referenced by the landclass.

 

Type imagetool -? at the command line to see all the available flags BTW:

 

 

By uncompressed I assume you mean 32 or 24 bit (with or without alpha respectively)? If so, yes, but the sim chokes on 24 bit so you have to use 32 bit even though the alpha will be all white. I've done it, it works, imagetool -32 -brief -e bmp *.bmp will do a folder full of .bmps at 32 bit. The quality difference is very slight if even detectable however and the file size of each texture (at 256px, mipped) goes from 43kb (DXT1) to 342 kb at 32 bit.

 

Jim

 

 

Outstanding work!   :good:

 

 

By uncompressed I assume you mean 32 or 24 bit (with or without alpha respectively)?

 

Uncompressed as in not DXT compressed. Not 32 or 24 bit but 8 bit as I mentioned in my post earlier about these textures.

Sure:

imagetool -brief -8 -e bmp *.bmp

after which nconvert reports:

027b2su1.bmp : Success
Format : Windows Bitmap
Name : bmp
Compression : Uncompressed
Width : 1024
Height : 1024
Components per pixel : 1
Bits per component : 8
Depth : 8
# colors : 256
Color model : RGB
Bytes Per Plane : 1024
Orientation : Bottom Left
Xdpi : Not set
Ydpi : Not set
Page(s) : 1

 

Not sure why you'd want to drop from 16 million to 256 colors though...

 

Thanks, Jim! I will give that a try.

Wouldn't it be a great 10th birthday present if the ones with the source code would re-compile the dll (my guess is it's the G2D.dll) to support 1024 textures.

It should be a simple thing to do, not requiring a major code overhaul.

No harm in asking nicely

Dillon, on 14 Jul 2013 - 10:14 PM, said:

Higher resolution city textures is possible in FS9 even if the actual file size is 256x256.

Say what? How can the resolution be higher when the size(=resolution) is the same?!? What you surely ment was that the textures can be better looking although the resolution is the same.

 

You keep going on about how something new has "been made possible". No it hasn't. All that's happened is we've switched out the same number of pixels for another set of pixels, they're just arranged differently(=better looking).

 

Think of it as opening a blank 256x256 canvas in photoshop and trying to make the best looking image possible. That's the limit and there is no way of breaking it.

Say what? How can the resolution be higher when the size(=resolution) is the same?!? What you surely ment was that the textures can be better looking although the resolution is the same.

 

You keep going on about how something new has "been made possible". No it hasn't. All that's happened is we've switched out the same number of pixels for another set of pixels, they're just arranged differently(=better looking).

 

Think of it as opening a blank 256x256 canvas in photoshop and trying to make the best looking image possible. That's the limit and there is no way of breaking it.

 

Thanks for clarifying my statement and I agree. Just the same I would like the better looking option. It's easier on the eyes...