I am back on AVSIM seeking the desire...

[brianbash 26]

That is what seems to be absolutely non-existent at the "Primary" X-Plane forum. All I seem to get over there is a bunch of "Well, you better learn how to if you even think you're going to pull that off...You know, you shouldn't be" blah blah blah. Now, I have embarked on a project that is the shear definition of a complete overload situation. I won't go into much detail as that will be discovered via discussion...at least I hope.

I have taken on the beast gentlemen. I have invested quite a bit of money to literally revolutionize the platform in a way that will be beneficial for all. Just a quick overview of what I have learned and acquired over the past month of 10 hour days teaching myself how this scenery is put together. Main problem, I'm not much of a coder...but I have the tools and I'm seeking those interested in forming a team to take it there...bring people to their knees...tears of joy...you get it :)

What I have:

- 3 Years worth of Permissive Copyright NAIP photo data for almost every state.

- Global Mapper and ArcGIS Pro

- Shape's, Vectors, bells and whistles of everything and anything we need to make jaw dropping simulation a possibility.

For Example, you know those Forest Line releases? The one's that are limited in coverage due to poor OSM coverage in certain areas? Too bad no one is willing to jump on board with me...check this out...

Treelines...check...

How about some 10M DEM data? Coming right up...

In what format's can I export any of this data? Well...let's see...

How do the Tiles look with the NAIP coverage after I edit them to bring out the glory? 

Pretty terrible right?

 

So, this is a call to arms. I will not give up, I refuse. MeshTool has won it's rounds, but I will win... but I wouldn't mind a couple folks to jump on board with me. I've got nothing but time right now thanks to downtime in my career as an Audio Engineer/Producer, courtesy of R. Kelly. Not kidding. I believe I can fly, Ironic isn't it?

 

So, anyone with some knowledge want to go to battle with me? I sure hope so, on the other Forum someone thinks they are a comedian and put a crying emoji as his response to my questions looking for advice.

 

Blue side up gentlemen.

Bash

http://www.Ortho4US.com

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Hi,

I love using Photoscenery with Xplane.  Currently I have all of Arizona done, and about a third of California, the areas where I fly the most.  I used Ortho4xp, pretty much taught myself how to deploy it and use it.  I have all the Python libraries installed inside my Ortho4xp folder.

Only issue I've had is in trying to get autogen to display on top of the photoscenery.  Only one time did it work, then it failed.  Have tried moving my overlays into my custom scenery folder, but then they hide the photoscenery so I had to move them back.

I also use P3d, have MSE V2 covering California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.  In addition I have my own homespun Colorado scenery, avail here at Avsim, which I made using FSEarthtiles.

Photoreal scenery has really made simming come of age, you just can't get any more real.  I used to fly under Light Sport here in the US, and I can say that flying with Photoreal scenery simulates VFR flight to the fullest, especially when it comes to seeing the airfield as you approach it.

Congrats on your efforts, well done!

John

[signmanbob 592]

I don't know a thing about what your talking about, but those screenshots look amazing.  Obviously you know what you're doing.

 

Bob

[brianbash 26]

Holy Sufferin Suckotash! Word's of Encouragment?! That's different lol.

 

Thanks friend. You know, this all started when I defected to the "X-Side" and stumbled into a what seemed like  a dark alley...of nerd's gone wrong lol. I saw many of my fellow simmers, caught in what seemed to resemble the neverending circle of "Flightmare's" known as the config file disease. Lost in trying to configure their sim without ever flying it. I wanted to do something about it while also trying to get a small amount of donation money to get my non-profit off the ground. I've always been the nice guy and it finally got me last year. Still, I will never let the thieves with dark hearts take my good heart. I saw an opportunity to bring that wonderful photo-realistic experience to many that were caught grounded in the making of it and to help me get "The Dreamflight Foundation" off the ground. Imagine "Make-a-Wish" but with a pair of wings. I've got the license, I sold my Piper Aztec and got my eyes on a couple Super Vikings. I'd like to bring some smiles to some faces. I believe Richard Bach said it best....

                               

                                                                 “Never stop being a kid. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead.”

 

 

[tonywob 4,768]

It's great to see other tackling this problem. Photoscenery is great and all, but it needs good autogen on top of it, otherwise it's just lifeless and flat IMO.

For the US, I found lack of data was holding me back creating more regions, and I started to write tools to trace trees from orthos, which works, but it can't distinguish shrubs from trees, so it can make things look a bit green.

 

[brianbash 26]

My goodness...Hello good sir Tony! Just the man I'd like to speak with.  

I need some assistance if you'd be so inclined. 

I have found in my adventures that its not so much the houses I miss for autogen...actually, the houses can kick rocks...its the missing tree's that really kill the immersion.

Now, I've got that data...and boy I've got lots of it. I just can't seem to get W2XP Ver. 0.7.4 to render the stuff. If you could help out I think together we could make a lot of people very happy...I've already got the treelines for 15 states...just need to get them into the sim.

[strider1 575]

7 hours ago, brianbash said:

My goodness...Hello good sir Tony! Just the man I'd like to speak with.  

I need some assistance if you'd be so inclined. 

I have found in my adventures that its not so much the houses I miss for autogen...actually, the houses can kick rocks...its the missing tree's that really kill the immersion.

Now, I've got that data...and boy I've got lots of it. I just can't seem to get W2XP Ver. 0.7.4 to render the stuff. If you could help out I think together we could make a lot of people very happy...I've already got the treelines for 15 states...just need to get them into the sim.

Yes a lot of people would be happy ! + MisterX  HD texture replacement for X-Plane's default trees.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/110560-misterx-library-15-and-airport-updates/&page=4

Tony weren't you working on some CA trees ?

[tonywob 4,768]

32 minutes ago, strider1 said:

Tony weren't you working on some CA trees ?

Yep, I generated California, but I found holes in their data, which is sad. It's ready to release, I'm just away at the moment and not had time :)

8 hours ago, brianbash said:

Now, I've got that data...and boy I've got lots of it. I just can't seem to get W2XP Ver. 0.7.4 to render the stuff.

Hmmm, where is the data from in your screenshots?, It looks liked vectorised landclass data perhaps, but lines instead of polys? In either case, it would need to be simplified somewhat to get rid of the jagged/stepped edges but also to make sure X-Plane doesn't have insane loading times when the polys are too complex. If you send me a sample of the data I'd be happy to take a look at it and see if it can be used. For orthos, I generated most of the west coast using USGS orthos and 10DEM (but I think these are also available as torrents from X-Plane.org by a user called forkboy). Using Ortho4XP is probably much easier than meshtool as it produces beautiful coastlines, so definitely have a look at that.

Anyway, I searched high and low for decent vegetation data for the US and the best I found was raster data from USGS and NASA which I had to vectorise. Both are ok, but not as detailed as I would have liked (hence the tree tracing utility I wrote). My idea for when I get back from my travels is to use the tree tracing tool in combination with third-party data to attempt to get more accurate data.

 

[brianbash 26]

The 

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Yep, I generated California, but I found holes in their data, which is sad. It's ready to release, I'm just away at the moment and not had time :)

Hmmm, where is the data from in your screenshots?, It looks liked vectorised landclass data perhaps, but lines instead of polys? In either case, it would need to be simplified somewhat to get rid of the jagged/stepped edges but also to make sure X-Plane doesn't have insane loading times when the polys are too complex. If you send me a sample of the data I'd be happy to take a look at it and see if it can be used. For orthos, I generated most of the west coast using USGS orthos and 10DEM (but I think these are also available as torrents from X-Plane.org by a user called forkboy). Using Ortho4XP is probably much easier than meshtool as it produces beautiful coastlines, so definitely have a look at that.

Anyway, I searched high and low for decent vegetation data for the US and the best I found was raster data from USGS and NASA which I had to vectorise. Both are ok, but not as detailed as I would have liked (hence the tree tracing utility I wrote). My idea for when I get back from my travels is to use the tree tracing tool in combination with third-party data to attempt to get more accurate data.

 

Correct, it is vectorized woodland landcover. Working on simplifying it as much as possible because, well, for the state of NY, it has 209,283 features :)

 

I also have a large...large amount of NAIP 1Meter ortho collections for the years of 2014, 2015 and 2016 covering...well...I believe I have 23 states in the vault currently. 

 

Just tell me how you'd like the woodland landcover and I'll upload it to my google drive for you to get your hands on. Choices are pretty much endless...

- .shp / .shx / .prj

- Stanford PLY

- OSM XML

- geoJSON

Here was a good reference for me, and I also stumbled upon a thread at .org regarding shapefile scripts for W2XP in which there was discussion of a script file use to import the shapefiles or something of the sort...

http://www.britishideas.com/2009/07/10/getting-us-government-shapefiles-into-openstreetmap/

 

....oh...my...god...I think....it may have worked....

"processed tile: 0 facades, 3541 forests, 0 objects"

That's a lot of forests for 1 tile.

 

I need a cheeseburger man, I'm nervous to check it out...lol

[brianbash 26]

Ladies and gentlemen...boys and girls...

 

IT WORKED!!!! 

 

It's....absolutely....STUNNING...pics coming soon...I've got to redo it with the stock forests excluded...

 

Screw a hamburger, I'm getting a steak baby!!!!

[strider1 575]

4 hours ago, brianbash said:

Ladies and gentlemen...boys and girls...

 

IT WORKED!!!! 

 

It's....absolutely....STUNNING...pics coming soon...I've got to redo it with the stock forests excluded...

 

Screw a hamburger, I'm getting a steak baby!!!!

Pics !!!

[brianbash 26]

10 minutes ago, strider1 said:

Pics !!!

IM WORKING ON IT!!!!!!! GOLLY MISS MOLLY!!!

In all serousness....

I have never seen anything like it. 

AND DON'T YOU EVEN THINK THAT YOU'RE GOING TO GET A PIECE OF IT......Boy o' boy....

::ehhhm..:: excuse me, back to seriousness...

will probably throw a link in this thread by tomorrow morning...That's the smart thing to do. Feedback is crucial in the never ending hunt for perfection :)

 

[strider1 575]

1 hour ago, brianbash said:

IM WORKING ON IT!!!!!!! GOLLY MISS MOLLY!!!

In all serousness....

I have never seen anything like it. 

AND DON'T YOU EVEN THINK THAT YOU'RE GOING TO GET A PIECE OF IT......Boy o' boy....

::ehhhm..:: excuse me, back to seriousness...

will probably throw a link in this thread by tomorrow morning...That's the smart thing to do. Feedback is crucial in the never ending hunt for perfection :)

 

Cool, looking fwd to seeing your creation !

I didn't even see that pic till I replied. What does the before pic look like ?

[brianbash 26]

17 hours ago, strider1 said:

Cool, looking fwd to seeing your creation !

I didn't even see that pic till I replied. What does the before pic look like ?

Oh that pic, well, that's just showing off my tile colorization work.

 

Here is what I have been doing all day...learning the ropes of this...

 

Now, since I am using JSOM and W2XP for the "extra spice" to my line, I will be offering my treeline work and W2XP work gratis. 

 

The Ortho is the real bread and butter. I am combing these bad boys with a spork in order to attain true to life ortho tiles for myself and others who wish to purchase my work. 

 

I've covered all of my bases and am fully allowed to do as I wish with the tiles due to a permissive copyright.

 

Also, this aint gonna be some "Mega-ripoff" :::cough cough::: clone. I am hoping to have NY, ME, VT, NH and MA ready for a release on Halloween. Trick or treat? :)

Introductory price of $19.99 which will include updates as long as I'm steering the ship. Did I mention that I have 3 years worth of ortho's and each represents a different season due to the fact they are acquired twice a year? 

 

Anyways, enough jibber-jabber. Time to throw these tree's in the sim and see how she looks.

 

 

[JYW 2,977]

Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough in this area to help (plain ol' Ortho4XP rendering is the limit of my knowledge) but just wanted to say I love the work you're doing here, and I love your attitude.  That sort of passion and determination will win!   I have no doubt you're onto something fantastic here.  Stick with it and keep that spark!

Keep us updated!