My P3D Ortho Project

[PavlinS 179]

Hello, P3D fellow simmers / developers. 

So, from 2 weeks I found the beautiful Ortho4XP_P3D program for creating photo scenery. 

I have as well ScenProc script and I even attempted to add buildings and trees in SimDirector of P3D [ I use the most expensive license of P3D] 

This is my first endeavor into scenery creation so I have a simple question - can someone here tell me how can I create water mask for coral reef? I had asked a guy, that does this, the developer of Flight Sim Jewels French Polynesia society islands scenery, which I own btw. 

He showed me two pictures and told me that he uses resample.exe from P3D's SDK. 

 

I do use Resample from the SDK and it creates files for my P3D addon scenery, but the number of files is too large and their names are not recognizable, so  I can't use them atm to create the masks for the coral reef. 

So, my question is - can someone here give me any pointers for a way to create those masks for my photo scenery? I should mention, I am trying at the moment to create photorealistic scenery for Kuala Lumpur and later on whole Malaysia peninsula and surrounding area. There is coral reefs there and I wanna implement them in the scenery. 

 

Btw I already attempted that once, here's a picture:

 

As you can see there is a slight texture issue, so I am starting from scratch and this time will overwrite the scenery files that are duplicated to look better. Btw, I will use SimDirector with default library and add trees and buildings to the scenery. I do have Blender and I am intending to create 3D objects there for my scenery. 

Edited April 17, 2023 by PavlinS

[PavlinS 179]

28 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

From your other post, it seems you’re a beginner-level user of Ortho4P3D.

I am attempting to add autogen via ScenProc scripts, but often I face the information that 0 autogen objects are created. Also I want to learn how to do Vector data for better roads and transportation infrastructure, to add larger amount of realism. Btw in the topic here about Ortho4XP_P3D I added a message with a problem with Jakarta's main tile, which contains as well the airport. That one I can't build ScenProc data for extraction. It just stops downloading, then ends up with an error and I am back at square one. I'll be glad on support for that. 

 

Edited May 2, 2023 by PavlinS

[PavlinS 179]

Thank for the split. Guys, sorry, for now only I can say I am trying again with the script, hopefully it gives some so-so good result. 

 

There is distinguished problem with Jakarta. 

It starts download like this:

 

Step 1 : Building vector data for tile -07+106 :
--------

Downloading OSM data for ScenProc, this might take some time, please wait...
If OSM server rejects our request due to too many requests, will keep trying until successful.
Attempting to download OSM data from -7, 106 to -6.5, 106.5
Download successful
Attempting to download OSM data from -6.5, 106 to -6.0, 106.5
Download successful
Attempting to download OSM data from -7, 106.5 to -6.5, 107.0
Download successful
Attempting to download OSM data from -6.5, 106.5 to -6.0, 107.0
        OSM server MAP sent us an error code for the data (data too big ?), new tentative in 2 sec...

That OSM server error continues to the number of 256 seconds, then in the command prompt shows this text:
 

Exception in thread Thread-9:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "threading.py", line 916, in _bootstrap_inner
  File "threading.py", line 864, in run
  File "O4_Tile_Utils.py", line 163, in build_tile_list
  File "O4_Vector_Map.py", line 44, in build_poly_file
  File "O4_Vector_Map.py", line 154, in include_scenproc
TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'int'

 

Edited May 2, 2023 by PavlinS
Adding information for errors.

[PavlinS 179]

I wish I could publish here the script I use in ScenProc, but it is too large to be published. 

Anyway, just to clarify - I am working on two projects at the moment - Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia and second Jakarta, Indonesia. 

In the previous posts you seen that I experience relatively errors on ScenProc and Ortho4XP. Any help will be appreciate. 

I do not plan on releasing those sceneries for payware. I am going to use them only as freeware projects. Those of you that want to download and use my work, later on, once this projects  are good enough to release, I will publish them for free. 

[PavlinS 179]

I will be glad if anyone can contact Arno, the creator of ScenProc. I can't contact him, because I am banned in FsDeveloper and even I got rejected when I trait to make a new registration. 

[PavlinS 179]

For now it looks like more landclass, but I am going to work on it more. 

Anyone that can give me information on ScenProc I'll be very grateful. 
 

 

 

 

The water masks are missing, but no worries, I'll download them. Btw, anyone can give me opinion on the shading? Do you like it? Do you want it changed? 

[ggerolamo 108]

Sorry for my ignorance but this is anything but impressive.... !?
Probably I have not quite understood what this is about ...😯

What is this good for ?
What are these strange colors ?
What do you want to show us here ?

[Daube 354]

16 hours ago, PavlinS said:

For now it looks like more landclass, but I am going to work on it more. 

Anyone that can give me information on ScenProc I'll be very grateful. 

 

The water masks are missing, but no worries, I'll download them. Btw, anyone can give me opinion on the shading? Do you like it? Do you want it changed? 

About the shading of the ground textures, I think the main issue is the contrast between their general color tone and the colors of the autogen.

In the second screenshot, the nearby autogen buildings have normal colors, but the ground textures have that blueish tint as if seen from very high altitude or far distance. Maybe you could alter the ground texture a bit to reduce the blueish tint ?

Edited May 4, 2023 by Daube

[dave2013 1,130]

Although I applaud the effort, the photoscenery just doesn't look good.  The colors are just "off", and the autogen clashes with the ground scenery.

This is why I prefer accurate landclass and high quality terrain textures.

Dave

[Daube 354]

Well, yes, but wasn't PavlinS precisely asking about how he should modify the ground textures shading ?

Concerning the autogen, I don't know if it still works in P3Dv5, but in v4 I was using a freeware tree texture replacement pack, which was bringing some slightly transparent textures for the autogen trees. It was reallly helping a lot in having the forests match a bit more closely the underlying terrain textures, and I loved it a lot. In fact, it quickly became a must-have, especially for my low&slow flights, especially with helicopters.

[PavlinS 179]

Unfortunately my shading is not good at the moment, because I can't use Tomato Shade. But I will fix that blue later. 

The ground textures are made from Ortho. I chose the google server and zoom level 18, which is the highest. Those textures will disappear when I am done, I mean, there will be lot more autogen than that. 

 

The color mismatch comes from Ortho. I need to fix the tiles, but the problem is that the tiles are already exported. So I am starting from scratch with it. 

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by PavlinS

[sim4life 24]

I get that you have some newly found love for Ortho and I appreciate your enthusiasm. But sorry, this looks absolutely terrible. If you enjoy doing this project for yourself then by all means continue. But if you think people are going to share your enthusiasm you're going to get very disappointed.

Many of us hade the same kind of enthusiasm when Tile proxy was a thing for FSX some 10-15 years ago. Back in those days photoreal scenery products were also a thing, created by people who just discovererd the Ortho thing as you have now. Those sceneries still didn't look as bad as your screenshots but Tile proxy and the photoreal concept pretty much disappeared anyway.

So I think you're at least 10 years too late to the party, because trying to build a realistic scenery based on 2d textures is a dead end. Many people tried and all of them failed. There's a reason why this is not how it's done anymore. Even if you get extremely detailed hires textures using perfect color matching and seasons, it's still 2d textures. You seem to thing that autogen is going to help you. Sorry, it won't. It will just make things even worse. In fact, autogen is something you should avoid. Autogen was invented as a workaround, not a solution. "We don't know how this area looks so we're just going to throw in some generic random buildings and hope it looks ok". No, this is not how you should do it anymore.

Sorry but someone had to break this to you.

[PavlinS 179]

21 minutes ago, sim4life said:

I get that you have some newly found love for Ortho and I appreciate your enthusiasm. But sorry, this looks absolutely terrible. If you enjoy doing this project for yourself then by all means continue. But if you think people are going to share your enthusiasm you're going to get very disappointed.

Many of us hade the same kind of enthusiasm when Tile proxy was a thing for FSX some 10-15 years ago. Back in those days photoreal scenery products were also a thing, created by people who just discovererd the Ortho thing as you have now. Those sceneries still didn't look as bad as your screenshots but Tile proxy and the photoreal concept pretty much disappeared anyway.

So I think you're at least 10 years too late to the party, because trying to build a realistic scenery based on 2d textures is a dead end. Many people tried and all of them failed. There's a reason why this is not how it's done anymore. Even if you get extremely detailed hires textures using perfect color matching and seasons, it's still 2d textures. You seem to thing that autogen is going to help you. Sorry, it won't. It will just make things even worse. In fact, autogen is something you should avoid. Autogen was invented as a workaround, not a solution. "We don't know how this area looks so we're just going to throw in some generic random buildings and hope it looks ok". No, this is not how you should do it anymore.

Sorry but someone had to break this to you.

All right, can you suggest anything? What program should I use? I am still learning. For me no matter how late that is, it is the beginning of the route. Everyone do their routing till they reach greatness. 

What are you suggesting? I had already attempted using ScenProc with geographical data from QGIS. But that was I get 0 scenery.  

Edited May 4, 2023 by PavlinS

[sim4life 24]

Just now, PavlinS said:

All right, can you suggest anything? What program should I use? 

Trying to fix a broken engine by applying 2d textures and various workarounds is a dead end. It has do be done in the engine itself, either by generating a totally made up world or create one based on real world data. For example, the Unreal Engine is very popular. This would have to be a core part of the software though, you as a user or 3rd party developer can't do much about it if it's not there. Some people still seem to think that P3Dv6 will be based on Unreal although LM pretty much denied it. There are other products already built around such technology but it is a big no no to mention such software here.

More info:

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unreal-engine-5'

Example showcase:

 

If you compare the above scenery to 2d tile textures, do you see why working with Ortho is considered a thing of the past?

If you want to get started working with Unreal and creating content for it there's a ton of tutorials on Youtube and other places.

 

 

[PavlinS 179]

10 minutes ago, sim4life said:

If you compare the above scenery to 2d tile textures, do you see why working with Ortho is considered a thing of the past?

If you want to get started working with Unreal and creating content for it there's a ton of tutorials on Youtube and other places.

 

So, you are suggesting for me to attempt learn programming languages to create scenery for flight simulator? How? And since when Unreal engine creates .bgl and .agn files? I mean, also .dds files? Do you realize how much I'll have to learn so I can create 5 sceneries for P3D? 

That would take decade for me to learn. I don't have that much time. 

Also, your suggestion is a little irrelevant. The engine of an game has nothing to do with the creation of an add-on for a game in most cases. Especially here. 

Have you seen the landclass / photoreal packages of ORBX? I can only wish to have such creation stamina. That's the gold standard for flight sim, not the most contemporary engine on the planet. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by PavlinS