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bob.bernstein

Good graphical scenery editing tools?

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<>Easy for me to accept that. The sim has advanced so fast, and changed so much from version 2002 to 2004, that comprehensive tools can't keep up.Terrabuilder is a great example. I own a copy, when it was released (perhaps fs98? maybe fs200..) it was pretty cool. As the versions changed, Misho (Katulic) felt obligated to maintain all the dumb quirks that old fs version threw at him, so that by this time, only a small part of that tool is useful for fs2004. And using that small part may be troubling unless you understand the underlying process so you can interpret when it doesn't compile.He is hard at work to create an fs2004 version, but time is running out!When fs3 came out, I was just learning to fly. I added the vfr reporting points for Boeing Field..probably for the same reason you want to. The only tool then was SEE04 and a text only version of airport. Very rudimentary. You can place a couple objects using simple xml. Why not read the sdk for scenery? It'll show you to write an xml file that identifies the object and place it where you tell it, and you can select an id for a stock library object. If you just want to place reporting landmarks, maybe you can fine stock objects that are close enough?I noticed that another reader was resurecting a discussion from long ago on fuel triggers..it contains snippets of funcitoning xml from both me and Dick (Rhumbaflappy). B

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Guest cwright

Luis, what a beautiful bird. I do hope he gets better soon. Best regards, Chris

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>Because of this, I am in the process of putting together a>list of essential scenery tools and links for beginners.>Hopefully, some of the more experienced designers here (like>Arno, Dick, Edgar, Holger, William, etc.) will consent to look>it over when it is done and provide suggestions, comments, and>corrections. Then, it will be a simple matter to get it pinned>to the top of this forum.Good idea Luis. On my website I have tried to get a list of programs as well (with short descriptions etc), but due to lack of time the list is not as complete as I would like.I would certainly be willing to have a look at it when you are reading or help in another way if needed.


Arno

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.

FSDeveloper.com | Former Microsoft FS MVP | Blog

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Guest JoeW

Bob and I don't usually agree on things, But, On this I agree 100% with him. Way back in the iceage ( or shortly after) I asked Ken " We Bad" Nelson to teach me his method of scenery design. I didn't say anything about the lack of knowledge or posts or anything else. I wanted to learn scenery design period.I will and have many times offered my knowledge ( such as it is ) to anyone who wants to learn. But don't start complaining or telling me how it should be done. I will let you bang you head a while learning. It's really nice to have someone to share thier knowledge in anything.Bob's scenery is right up there with the best and always has been. We just differ in opinion sometimes.Be grateful that anyone answered your post.Joe WatsonLake Placid, Florida

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Hi Stele,I want you to know I was not annoyed in any way in my first response! If I got annoyed by posters, even ones that tell me I don't know anything about computer, I would leave the forums. I provide information to the best of my knowledge based on over 35yrs of computer experience and 20yr of buying flight simulators for the U.S. Navy.My comment, "If you AIN'T got the time to futz...", meant that we don't have readily available tools to do the scenery design without blood, sweat and tears. You are correct when you say the available commercial tools are lacking. There probably isn't enough profit margin to market a limited use tool. That is why we are grateful to the many talented tool designers that share their abilities with us.I don't design tools but use tools provided by the many talented designers from these forums. I beta test software and these tools with the understanding that I am providing a users input to improve the tool or software.I haven't done much in the way of the terrain tools, so can't help you in that area. However, if you read this and the other two forums just below this forum, you will find a lot of good information about terrain and the tools available.W. Sieffert

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Guest stele

I'm sorry we all got off on a bad start. Now that I know that what I am looking for doesn't exist, I'm more amenable to digging into the SDKs and what tools ARE out there. And I appreciate everyone's offer of help when I do have a specific question.Since I was striking out trying to find a good place to get satellite scenery, I went ahead and got a subscription to Keyhole, which has 1-5m terrain information for the entire US. I was able to pinpoint my FBO, house, and surrounding area with decent resolution. The photos are several years old, so I'll have to touch up with some aerial photos that I'll probably take myself, but at least I have a start for my new landscape scenery.The next step will be to check out the tools that take those photos and build them into texture files. Then I'll want to lay down new roads (or maybe I should buy USA Roads 2004?) and adjust treelines, etc. I'll keep you guys posted.

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Guest Tachyon

wow.... kind of scared to post after all that. Anyhoo, I see you've found Keyhole. Cool stuff especially if you have a nvidia gfx card. A site I use that has some nice sat imaging is Microsoft's own Terra server( terraserver.microsoft.com ) Images range from 2-4 years in age and most are 1m to 5m rez.How hard would it be to have say AFCAD also generate the necessary code to replace/exclude elements of the airport. Like taxiway signs. New buildings or replacment buildings. Corrected towers from either stock library items or user defined objects. Just wondering.

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Guest stele

>Since I was striking out trying to find a good place to get>satellite scenery, I went ahead and got a subscription to>Keyhole, which has 1-5m terrain information for the entire US.I now have a 4x3 grid of screenshots from Keyhole, each showing a small rectangle of Madison. When I bring these into Photoshop, I see they don't line up exactly, probably due to the curvature of the Earth and the wedge-shaped dimensions of long/lat rectangles. Is there a tool which will let me stitch the images together into one large image, taking into account alignment differences due to curvature?

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Guest Tachyon

--> no expert nor old timer :-) ...but I realize you're assembling this for terrain. Whenever I've done it it's been for a single airport (to check "real" layouts, proportions and relationships) I've just grabbed .25m rezed, over lapping images and by hand pasted them together so there was no missing areas. hee, at .25m I can see taxiway markings. Gotta love de-classified sat imagery.

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Stele, you mentioned you want to lay down imagry for your area. once you have an image for your terrain area, you will be at a design crossroad. One path is making VTP (vector terrain polygon) style design, in which you define mesh clinging polygons that can have a custom texture, and you draw roads, water, etc. Ground2k4 is a fine tool to make that type of scenery. many gurus are here at avsim to provide guidance (I'm not one of them really...I use Ground2k4, but I'm not a specialist in that area like some of the folks here).The other path you could take is to make a larger photoreal area (maybe you've seen megascenery...the technique they use is this path). This is the area I've specialized in. In this process you will be replacing the textures of the area with photography. You can't draw new roads over top of the image, using this approach, you do edits like that within the image itself. You can place water, lakes, rivers, within this photoregion. This is the output that terrabuilder was intended to provide. I find it much more effective to create my results using the sdk tools directly, and I find the tools from fs2000 sdk to be the best. I would be happy to send them to you if you wish, they are no longer available from ms. If you would like, I'm happy to provide additional help with the second process, if you prefer to go with the first process, then I'm sure Rhumbaflappy, or Luis will jump in...they know that stuff way better than I.Bob

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Stele, what is the projection and datum for your images? It should say somewhere within the source site. You probably know this but there are zillions of ways that the world can be illustrated in 2d. There are some products that can reproject images. By the time you get ready to add your imagry to flight sim, you'll want them to be projected as "geographic", or sometimes just known as "lat/long". If you reproject each image into this projection, they will more likely stich together better.I generally use photoshop for my stitching...its pretty simple once you get the imagry to align. Using partial transparency you'll be able to see when one layer sits right above another.Good luck,Bob

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Guest stele

>The other path you could take is to make a larger photoreal>area (maybe you've seen megascenery...the technique they use>is this path). This is the area I've specialized in. In thisYes, this is indeed what I want to do. I suppose you are right - if I have actual photography of the roads, I don't need to lay any roads down.However, I might want to add tree geometry and airport buildings for when I am sitting on the ground. But my first task will be to get my photography sorted out. As I pointed out, they don't line up exactly in Photoshop, since they seem to be slightly curved in Keyhole (since it uses a spherical representation of the entire Earth). Can you recommend any tools for "straightening" these images before I can stitch them in PS?

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I did a quick look at Keyhole website, but I couldn't find easily what data source they provide. Is it USGS aerial photos? They claim to offer everything from soup to nuts, but the specific high res stuff you are working with for Madison, does it indicate anywhere what you have? Is there any metadata files that define the projection? and the datum?If you can find the projection and datum, then you can probably reproject the images into geographic projection that can be used by flightsim, and will probably composit together well.Tools for reprojection exists, global mapper is well known, but costly. Freeware exists but its fiddly. There was a thread about freeware image conversion on this board. http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchIf that link doesn't work, search this forum on 'freeware reprojection'...this thread was the first return.There is a cool utility that stitches imagry together for you, but it only works with the terraserver.microsoft.com portal for usgs images, which are the black and white doqqs. You probably have color images, which look better.B

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Guest stele

>I did a quick look at Keyhole website, but I couldn't find>easily what data source they provide. Is it USGS aerial>photos? They claim to offer everything from soup to nuts, but>the specific high res stuff you are working with for Madison,>does it indicate anywhere what you have? Is there any>metadata files that define the projection? and the datum?The only information it provides is where the data came from. The imagery is from AirPhotoUSA (it is color).The "Map" (terrain heights data?) is from USGS. I turned off the "terrain height" stuff so I'm basically looking at "flat" images, but they are SLIGHTLY curved because of the spherical projection. I did record the "altitude" I was at when I grabbed the images, so it should be possible, using long/lat/height information, to unproject the images into a truly flat image.I'll take a look at the reprojection tools you mentioned. Thanks.

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I'm surprised they don't composit well, airphotousa was the name of the utility from Doug Cox...I must assume the images are UTM (universal Traverse Mercator) and the thread I reference deals exactly with converting that to Geographic projection.The thread is long, and midway thru the posts between Holger and me, you'll find that the approach we thought would work ended up not working. Somewhere in mid thread we found a new twist that really worked. Finally near the end I had trouble getting the color within the original image to remain. I did solve that with still freeware tool outlined in the post called "success".B

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