Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Guest allcott

FSX + photoscenery + mesh... Do we need that autogen an...

Recommended Posts

Guest david W.

It's best to right click on the link, select "save as" and let it download to your hard drive. Then open it and watch it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest david W.

>Yes we do. Im sorry but just looking at a 2d picture on a>flat landscape without trees, buildings, bridges, etc popping>up looks completely unrealistic and kills the experience for>me. why cant we have the best of both worlds?Flying across a large flat photo would be 2D and very flat. However that is not the case.See if these screenshots of FS9 and some photo scenery look at all 2d or flat or without trees or buildings etc. (quality of shots had to be reduced for size limit)[http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=147&topic_id=243008&mode=full]I would be surprised if anyone flew around with this scenery and did not enjoy it. Those who would not enjoy it probably would also not enjoy looking out the window of a real plane, because you would see pretty much the same thing.With FSX allowing for even greater resolution, the next generation of Photo Scenery should be even better.regards

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Why there is no need for seasons? At least outside the tropics they are surely a grat improvement of realism.And the pure amount of data is important if you want to "get rid" of autogen and generic textures - there has to be modeled a whole world!There are some more drawbacks of this now 3 years old technology: aerial photos are taken perpendicular from above - so in the textured buildings the side walls will be covered with something awfully blurry, not recognizable as facades. Also the trees will have that look - unless you provide some generic textures for the vertical surfaces of buildings and vegetation. The demo video may be taken with some reason from a quite high altitude.Also, rendering a "living, dynamic" world seems to be more complicated with such terrain (at least no seasons).Another problem could be the high computational power needed for such type of a completely 3D-meshed world. After all, we want to get the physics of flight and some atmospheric processes computed with an increasingly better fidelity - that also needs a fast processor.In my opinion, if ACES will increase the number of landclass zones further (let's say - up to 128), increase the land cover types to.. say 1024, and make smaller landclass tiles (500 m will be sufficient) AND reliable high resolution landuse data for the whole globe are available... (dream) - then the FS11 terrain should look awesome at a comparably low price (in terms of GB harddisk space).But imagination and the ability of our brain to fill the gaps was always an essential part of virtual reality, and we shouldn't forget that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

>I found photoscenery video showing 1 meter mesh geometry with>0,5 meter textures... Do we need that autogen anymore? I think>no. Imagine whole country phototerrain (for example>Switzerland) with 1 meter mesh... (hint to all photoscenery>creators) :) Stunning!!! But why does he land on the taxyway? :-lol Marco


"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." [Abraham Lincoln]

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest allcott

>Why there is no need for seasons? At least outside the>tropics they are surely a grat improvement of realism.>And the pure amount of data is important if you want to "get>rid" of autogen and generic textures - there has to be modeled>a whole world!>>There are some more drawbacks of this now 3 years old>technology: aerial photos are taken perpendicular from above ->so in the textured buildings the side walls will be covered>with something awfully blurry, not recognizable as facades.>Also the trees will have that look - unless you provide some>generic textures for the vertical surfaces of buildings and>vegetation. The demo video may be taken with some reason from>a quite high altitude.>Also, rendering a "living, dynamic" world seems to be more>complicated with such terrain (at least no seasons).>Another problem could be the high computational power needed>for such type of a completely 3D-meshed world. After all, we>want to get the physics of flight and some atmospheric>processes computed with an increasingly better fidelity - that>also needs a fast processor.>>In my opinion, if ACES will increase the number of landclass>zones further (let's say - up to 128), increase the land cover>types to.. say 1024, and make smaller landclass tiles (500 m>will be sufficient) AND reliable high resolution landuse data>for the whole globe are available... (dream) - then the FS11>terrain should look awesome at a comparably low price (in>terms of GB harddisk space).>>But imagination and the ability of our brain to fill the gaps>was always an essential part of virtual reality, and we>shouldn't forget that.>This is true, but if you `faced` the mesh object with an autogen single-sided object you could also manipulate the characterstics quite successfully. I dont think anyone was proposing that 1m mesh could replace the entire landscape of FSX, that's not a practical proposition until much larger, faster storage mediums exist, or online resources with vasr bandwidth capacity can be accessed at the data rates necessary, but it could be used in conjunction with it in certain specific instances - forests and the areas adjacent to airports and airfields, as an extension of the existing photoscenery technique. At the moment, all that can be done with ohotoscenery is hand-map appropriate 3d textures on the flat photo base. A time-consuming and unprofitable resource. If mesh could be landclassed with additional generic traits such as `building, red brick, single storey` then it might be possible to use landclass in a perpendicualr manner. And landclass is very sympathetic to frame rates. The inherent advanatage of generic texture and autogen is repeatability - load it into memory once, use it again and again. Photoscenery - and mesh - is a `one shot` deal which usually requires CPU processing time before the sim launches. If there was a happy medium between the two, then it could be a useful tool for spreading the load more equally between gpu and cpu in peak-useage scenarios such as heavy urban or cityscapes or the dense areas around airports and airfields. in exactly the same way a simmer can now choose more detailed mesh for the areas he/she wants, and leave the generic elsewhere, the option could exist to replace or augment autogen textures with landclass-generated buildings, trees, factories or parkland.A furher use for this high-fidelity mesh might be to provide shading cues for light variation. You don't actually need to see a 3d building from much above 500 feet, the suggestion of the building can be made from a bright side facing the sun, a dark side away from it, and shadow in the lee. Instead of using the fidelity to display actual detail, it might be used to provide very advanced lighting cues to imply 3d objects. If the autogen could be reduced by 2/3rds and the balance replaced by `light sculpture` I doubt most of us would see the difference in anything other than static screen shots. Certainly in the real world I deduce a building rather than see it from the pilots seat. I'm not looking for buildings, I'm looking for the VRP or the bend in the river, or the large quarry. The onyl time the buidling becomes significant is at a very low angle such as when I'm on base, turning to final. Then the substance of the building is much more important as you find yourself noticing things like different coloured tiles where a roof has been repaired, or the white wall on the garage contrasting with the red brick of the house, or the large gates in front of the property, or the pool house and the pool. Allcott

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest davewins

I wish this link wasn't dead. Anybody happen to save the video??

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest davewins

Ok now for some reason the video worked. Simply amazing!! This is very interesting. What exactly is taking place here though?? I read something along the lines of this was taken from an altitude of 20,000 feet?? How did it get so detailed from up there and what was it taken with?? Satellite imagery or from a plane?? I am totally lost. What actually is this video???? Is this a rendition or is this real scenery???? Please help I am so lost. Thank you.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest davewins

Tesla, can you get back to me on this video clip?? Or anybody here that might know. I am very curious how this video was produced. I don't know if this is a rendition or what??

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Holy crap, that looks seriously good, even on the low res clip.


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest davewins

>Holy crap, that looks seriously good, even on the low res>clip.yes, this is why I am so curious as to how this video was made. It had to be some sort of rendition because they wouldn't use numbers regarding pixels etc. What really gets me about this is it's numbers are FSX not even maxed out. It's FSX mesh maxed with some more room for FSX's incredible 7cm/pixel text res!!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest Tesla

>Tesla, can you get back to me on this video clip?? Or>anybody here that might know. I am very curious how this>video was produced. I don't know if this is a rendition or>what?? This is NOT rendition. It is a real-time recorded video.Those videos demonstrates the P-BDAM technique with interactive sequences showing the real-time exploration of the ISTAR high-resolution dataset of the City of Nice, France. Details about the P-BDAM technique (P-Batched Dynamic Adaptive Meshes):http://www.crs4.it/vic/activities/terrainhttp://www.crs4.it/vic/cgi-bin/bib-page.cg...gnoni:2003:IOV'More about those videos:http://www.crs4.it/vic/cgi-bin/multimedia-page.cgi?id='111'Those videos are demostration of V-Planet project, which shold be similiar to Google Earth program. The goal is to produce whole earth with high resolution textures and mesh. Unfortunatly there are no news about V-Planet since 2004... Here is official website of V-Planet: http://vr.c-s.fr/vplanet

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest

Looks awesome indeed, but we won't see this in FS for some years to come... I guess that about 8 years from now something like this should be possible. Maybe. But don't expect an addon for FS X to ever look like this. So for the time being I'll stick with FS X great autogen. Nowadays photorealistic scenery ususally looks bad, but maybe FS X higher resolution possibilities will result in some pretyy stuff. Although without autogen (or anything popping up) it looks too flat and hence not realistic to me, which is also due to the fact that for the last years I only fly low... I guess it's quit nice when you're flying 24K high in a Boeing. Apart from take-off and landing, of course... I also hate it that you (logically) see everything right from one side only: fly the other way and you'll see houses turned over, shadows where you shouldn't see them, etc. Not my cup of tea, really. I prefer Very dense autogen anytime. Until the posted movie becomes reality in FS. ;)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest Tesla

>Looks awesome indeed, but we won't see this in FS for some>years to come... I guess that about 8 years from now something>like this should be possible. Maybe. But don't expect an addon>for FS X to ever look like this. >Why not? Horizonsimulation has already doing 1.2 m/pix textures and 10 m mesh for England and Whales: http://www.horizonsimulation.com/shopeu/in...products_id=213It's not so far from this demonstration. Only question is how much cpu power is needed to render 1 m. mesh and 0.5 m/pix textures in FSX?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest

>Why not? Horizonsimulation has already doing 1.2 m/pix>textures and 10 m mesh for England and Whales:>http://www.horizonsimulation.com/shopeu/in...products_id=213>>It's not so far from this demonstration. Only question is how>much cpu power is needed to render 1 m. mesh and 0.5 m/pix>textures in FSX?You're mistaken, I think: it's lightyears away from what HorizonSim is doing! Did you watch the movie? HorizonSim offers FLAT textures: the only thing that is 3D is the mesh. But when you fly low everything is flat. In the movie however EVERY SINGLE HOUSE is in 3D! So are all trees/forests! When you turn around and fly back you actually see the other side of the house. And it's not autogen, no, the sattelite image has been fed with 3D information so EVERYTHING is truly 3D. No way FS will offers this within a few years! It's not about the 1 m mesh and 0.5 m/pix, it's all about the 3D you can see in the movie. Man, if only I could get that detail in just one small country (or region) I'd be VERY happy!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Photo real and autogens are not mutally exclusive. Phtoreal sceneries are very good and they don't need autogens except maybe tall buildings for high altitude flights. One of the issues with phototextures is, if you fly anything real fast you end up with blurries.Autogens are real good and absolute must in low level flight like Bush flying and approach to land.The best ones are the ones that uses both... selective photoreal textures with intelligent autogen placments. I have two such vendors that speciallzes in this 1. Real scenery Zones like Portland scnery. and 2. Aerosoft's Gernman sceneries. Try the Aerosot's German scenery 4 EDER (Wasserkupe) airport..in a widescreen 24" monitor.. it'll blow your mind.Manny


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...