Introducing World2XPlane...

[alpilotx 505]

A few more thoughts on texture photgraphing (I know this from my - limited - experience with creating building objects):

• Make sure, that you capture the house facade with as little obstructing objects (light poles, trash bins, cars, humans, trees) as possible! And believe me, you will suddenly notice how rarely you can see such a "free" / unobstructed faced (there is almost always something between you and the wall of the building )
• Lighting. Tony already gave some good advice on lighting, but I would add to it. Often full sunlight is not the optimal light, because it can cast long shadows, especially at roof edges etc. (long shadows are bad for texturing ... only small ones are still acceptable). Also, usually in direct sunlight,, the different sides of the building have very different light / color conditions. Thus, I would rather recommend taking texture pictures in more "diffuse" light. Lightly overcast conditions are optimal, where you don't get hard shadows, and the scattered light makes the different sides of the building have more "similar" (they can never be identical anyways) lighting. Bringing up contrast, or making the final lighting of the textures identical (matching) can then be done afterwards in your favorite photo editor.

[wolke85 150]

Hi Andras!

First of all: Thank You veyr much for Your information!

Very much appreciated!

 

 

 

how rarely you can see such a "free" / unobstructed faced

 

I know exactly what You mean and kept that in mind from the beginning when i considered taking photos for Tony's great tool here as i know how odd it may look to have a "2D tree" "on" a modeled house but not an aquevalent "3D tree" next to it in the sim so to speak ^_^

 

 

 

I would rather recommend taking texture pictures in more "diffuse" light

Indeed - that's why i am looking very much fowrad to take as much photos as soon as possible because with winter still around here there are just the perfect conditions for capturing some houses now!

All overcast here mostly at the moment ... or in other words:

No sunclasses needed B)

[tonywob 4,769]

Thanks for the info Andras. I'll second the importance of getting as equal light as possible, it's such a pain to photoshop out the shadows, and trees etc. But, I also realise it isn't always possible to get a good shot.

 

I went around my town on Sunday taking pictures, and it was the first day it's been sunny here for a while (just my luck ). It required more work to sort out the textures afterwards than it did to actually model the buildings.

 

Just another word of advice, be careful when taking pictures. I asked my girlfriend to take some pictures of the supermarket when she went shopping, and she was told to leave by security (i.e. They thought she was scoping the place out for burglary ). In the end, they gave permission, but if possible ask the owner of the place first. Also, unfortunately the pictures she took weren't any good, as she took them at an angle (and I forget to mention to this to her).

 

The good news is that I've created a batch of about 20 buildings from my town, and it looks really good when flying over it, as the buildings are actually mostly the correct buildings .

[wolke85 150]

I went around my town on Sunday taking pictures, and it was the first day it's been sunny here for a while (just my luck ). It required more work to sort out the textures afterwards than it did to actually model the buildings.

 

Just another word of advice, be careful when taking pictures. I asked my girlfriend to take some pictures of the supermarket when she went shopping, and she was told to leave by security (i.e. They thought she was scoping the place out for burglary ). In the end, they gave permission, but if possible ask the owner of the place first. Also, unfortunately the pictures she took weren't any good, as she took them at an angle (and I forget to mention to this to her).

 

... we all have our moments, but as it all worked out nicely in the end and by now, at least some good story to tell for sure!

And

... i just can't resist saying, although i know i wont do it, but i at least have to say it ...

Going to take a photo of some security guys now :lol: :wink:

[Humpty 751]

Tony any idea how to convert .hgt to dsf ? i have the srtm .hgt file for the himalayas

[tonywob 4,769]

No, and I'm not sure why you'd want to, since the DSF tile for the Himalayas in X-Plane probably already uses this, or a higher res version. AFAIK, gmaps uses hgt files to create really basic mesh photo scenery for X-Plane 9. On top of that, you'd then have no roads, no forests, no objects and no buildings etc ;-)

[Humpty 751]

No, and I'm not sure why you'd want to, since the DSF tile for the Himalayas in X-Plane probably already uses this, or a higher res version. AFAIK, gmaps uses hgt files to create really basic mesh photo scenery for X-Plane 9. On top of that, you'd then have no roads, no forests, no objects and no buildings etc ;-)

 

 

I am not using Gmaps now, I downloaded the hgt from the SRTM site. Opened the raster in Qgis , downloaded meshtool and the .xres files.

 

Ok cool I just wanted to try it and see how the Jim Corbett National park would look of course without the Orthophotos. thanks man. 

[alpilotx 505]

Tony any idea how to convert .hgt to dsf ? i have the srtm .hgt file for the himalayas

That has absolutely nothing to do with OSM (so, its "a bit" off topic!) .... And the only way - for general public - to do something like that would be via MeshTool:

http://developer.x-plane.com/tools/meshtool/

 

BUT, it does notsupport the creation of XP10 style DSF base meshes (only XP9 stlye --> meaning, the mesh can only look like XP9 default scenery then).

 

Other than that, you can try to fiddle the HGT DEM data into a current, existing DSF (as XP10 mesh DSFs have the raster elevation data in them - but in a bit strange format). This might help (and help increase the mesh density):

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16417

 

Other than this, there are no easy (user friendly ways) ...

 

Or you try to use my HD Mesh Scenery v2 ....

[Humpty 751]

That has absolutely nothing to do with OSM (so, its "a bit" off topic!) .... And the only way - for general public - to do something like that would be via MeshTool:

http://developer.x-plane.com/tools/meshtool/

 

BUT, it does notsupport the creation of XP10 style DSF base meshes (only XP9 stlye --> meaning, the mesh can only look like XP9 default scenery then).

 

Other than that, you can try to fiddle the HGT DEM data into a current, existing DSF (as XP10 mesh DSFs have the raster elevation data in them - but in a bit strange format). This might help (and help increase the mesh density):

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=16417

 

Other than this, there are no easy (user friendly ways) ...

 

Or you try to use my HD Mesh Scenery v2 ....

 

Hey,

 

 I have the HD mesh 2 and you have done a brilliant work on it. Ah you remember I had asked you about India in an another post and you had told me that you need the correct terrain / mesh.  I am not sure if the SRTM is latest or no. just wanted to try it .

 

Thanks for the link, checking it right now.

[alpilotx 505]

The problem is, you need much - much much much - more than just a simple DEM elevation dataset to create a good DSF mesh scenery. You need at least good water / coastline data and also good landclass data (and for example I am lacking the landclass data - thats what I meant). So, with a HGT alone you will not be able to do much  ... anyways ...

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

You need at least good water / coastline data and also good landclass data (and for example I am lacking the landclass data - thats what I meant)

 

I found free landclass data really difficult to come by for certain countries. When I started out toying with the idea of a scenery generator, I was interested in mainly getting the UK to look like the UK, so naturally I turned to the Ordnance Survey OpenData, which is supposed to be "free". Firstly, they only provided the higher resolution "useful" data as raster images, and it seems like they deliberately tried to make everything else difficult, e.g.

 

- The OpenData tiles contained buildings and forests which could in theory be traced, but there was no way of knowing what the building was without simply guessing. Which is also often the case in OSM, but in OSM I can use the landuse=* tag as a backup.

- The vector data was annoyingly much lower resolution, so using the buildings from there was useless. The buildings also didn't contain any metadata. The vector data did contain some landclass information, but it was very low resolution, so there really wasn't any point.

- There is a specific landclass vector product, but it's so expensive that it makes me wonder who would actually bother with it. They also have super high-resolution data which could be used to create some incredible scenery, but you'd need to win the lottery just to have enough money to generate a single county.

 

I'm really surprised that a tax-funded organisation has such a tight-lock on what is essentially products paid for by the tax-payer. 

 

That being said, I've found other datasources for other countries. France is very good, as it seems the IGN data is available, and also for Poland, there are many countries which offer vector data of buildings, forests and land usage which have found their way into OSM.

[Humpty 751]

I wish there was the vector / landclass etc... at least for the Himalayas , wonderful place to fly around.

[alpilotx 505]

Tony, I am already since 7-8 years in the "business" of scouting for newer / better / usable data (for inclusion into any kind of scenery generation process). And indeed, there are lots of extremes on how well or badly a given country supports making this kind of data free (for example New Zealand is one of the shining, positive examples ... thats why I could do my NZ Pro scenery).

 

But on the other hand, I have to admit that neither is it simple to create high quality landclass data (thats a type of data which I have maybe spent the most of my free time over many years). Not so long ago, I have even researched a little bit about the process of creating such datasets ... yes, I have even thought about the possibility of doing it myself (by using free Landsat, multispectral imagery and open source classification tools). But only a few days later I left this topic .... because I learned what complex problems you need to solve, to get halfway sane result. One of the problems - for example - is to homogenize different sat images. You know, you don#t get one, big beautiful sat image covering an entire country ... they usually come in small tiles, taken at different times, different seasons, different cloud cover, different sun angle etc. etc.... My mind was totally confused ... So, yes, I leave this landclass problem to professional organizations, and I am always happy if one such new data set becomes available (I continually follow development in this area).

[captain420 3,099]

Tony thank you for your hard work and efforts on this project to improve XPX's scenery. But it seems to me that this project is more geared and focused in Europe, am I right? I fly mostly in US and Asia and was curious to know how your scenery generator may help improve those areas? From my understanding is that we will be able to use your tool to generate custom autogen that will closely resemble the real world buildings for that particular region? 

[alpilotx 505]

Tony thank you for your hard work and efforts on this project to improve XPX's scenery. But it seems to me that this project is more geared and focused in Europe, am I right? I fly mostly in US and Asia and was curious to know how your scenery generator may help improve those areas? From my understanding is that we will be able to use your tool to generate custom autogen that will closely resemble the real world buildings for that particular region? 

Yes, but the most important part is - and this is where the US is behind Europe - to have good building footprints (as that is the most important info for this type of tools ... and then good tagging). Some cities, like Boston (in OSM) already show you what has to be done for other areas ...