Good graphical scenery editing tools?

[wsieffert 0]

Any AFCAD modifications would have to come by Lee Swordy, the AFCAD tool designer.In the meantime, visit, download, and install SceneGenX - http://www.airportforwindows.com/ . I think you will be pleasantly surprized.W. Sieffert

[Guest stele]

Wow - lots of stuff to know.I did follow the directions to download from TerraServer, and even combined three parts together in Photoshop to make an RGB image. But the resolution is 30m, and the images I grabbed off Keyhole are closer to 1m, with much better color fidelity, but as I mentioned I have about 16 images that don't quite line up correctly. I wonder if one of those tools that does auto photo stitching would help.Would anyone be willing to look at two of my images and tell me the best way to reproject/stitch them together? My guess is I need to project them to completely flat, stitch them in Photoshop (should be easy once they are "flat"), then project back to some long/lat projection.

[bob.bernstein 0]

have you determined the projection and datum used by keyhole?

[Guest stele]

>have you determined the projection and datum used by>keyhole?The projection seems to be "simple cylindrical projection" (Plate Carr

[bob.bernstein 0]

I understand generally about the cylindrical projection, but knowing for sure how it relates to geographic, and how to find the world coordinates for the top left corner .. not sure.Holger is really the guy to help with this part.HOLGER! HELP! Can you guide Stele thru the conversion of his images...and do you agree that this conversion will allow his images to stich together when they don't align at first?B

[Guest stele]

>HOLGER! HELP! Can you guide Stele thru the conversion of his>images...and do you agree that this conversion will allow his>images to stich together when they don't align at first?Thanks for the heads-up!I found out Keyhole has 2ft imagery for Madison so I'm REALLY keen to get something working. I could theoretically make a fairly photo-real region around my FBO.

[bob.bernstein 0]

You do need to understand something about all this super high res stuff...using photoimages ala megascenery, you'll be limited to a resolution of ~4.75m/pixel. Anything higher res than that will work as source data but you will reduce its res to 4.75m/pixel internally to the process so the results will be nearly the same as when using 4.75 m/pixel original source image. The only way I know to actually see higher resolution imagry in the sim is to paste the image on a polygon, and lay that polygon on the ground. Thus, in that area your ground must be flat over the area of the polygon. That's the main limitation. I think of Madison as flat, but I don't really know. If you don't mind the flatness in the area, then its workable.Bob B

[Guest stele]

>You do need to understand something about all this super high>res stuff...using photoimages ala megascenery, you'll be>limited to a resolution of ~4.75m/pixel. Anything higher resActually 5m is perfectly fine. The "zoomed out" photos I took from Keyhole are probably about that. >limitation. I think of Madison as flat, but I don't really>know. If you don't mind the flatness in the area, then its>workable.Yeah, it's pretty flat. I could do the immediate area with polygons if I really wanted to. Thanks.

[Holger 0]

Howdy,I've never worked with Plate-Carre myself but a simple Google search reveals that it seems to be the same as the "geographic projection" FS uses: http://www.3dsoftware.com/Cartography/USGS...al/PlateCarree/Which makes sense, since FS also divides its world into equi-rectangular squares (measured in degrees): the nested LOD grid.Further, WGS84 is the same datum as used by FS, so your raw images should match up fine.Cheers, Holger

[Guest stele]

>Which makes sense, since FS also divides its world into>equi-rectangular squares (measured in degrees): the nested LOD>grid.>Further, WGS84 is the same datum as used by FS, so your raw>images should match up fine.Hey cool. That will probably help.But my problem is I have a bunch of images that don't line up directly in Photoshop. Do I need to stitch them all together into one large image, which is then split up, or should I just mark the long/lat of the corners of each one and feed them individually to FS? Can I overlay my 5m high-res grabs somehow over the 20m stuff?

[Holger 0]

Hi,"But my problem is I have a bunch of images that don't line up directly in Photoshop."Not sure what you mean - can you attach a screenshot of Photoshop?Normally you'd create one large source image, do all the necessary pre-processing in your image editor, and then feed the single image to resample (back to Bob here: he knows more about that than I do).Merging different resolutions is possible but tricky and probably won't yield a satisfactory result (due to problems with scale, distortion, color matching, etc.).Cheers, Holger

[Guest stele]

>Not sure what you mean - can you attach a screenshot of>Photoshop?Yeah, a picture will help. http://www.fxtech.com/images/tiles.jpgThis image shows two adjacent "tiles" lined up - but you can see they don't match. They are not "rotated" - I think it is the projection on the spherical surface of the Earth that is causing that. Each pair of images has this problem, so it's not a simple matter of just fixing one of the images.I don't know if you have seen Keyhole - what I did was zoom in on a certain area and take a screenshot - then I panned the view to the right and took another, then panned down, etc. You are moving the "sphere" that the imagery is sitting on when you pan - I think it is this that is causing the distortion. I need some kind of tool that can remove that distortion.

[Holger 0]

Hi there,I see. Well, that doesn't look good.Normally, if you have individual distorted images like that you'd georeference them one by one in a (commercial) GIS but I think that would be a lot of work in your case, and it requires the software.Is there no way you can download a larger area at once? At least then you don't have to deal with individual screenshots.Also, you'd need to know the exact corner coordinates of the images.As for free tools that might (!) be able to reproject/georeference those types of images you'd have to go through the ones listed in the thread referenced by Bob above.Sorry, can't offer any direct help. I guess that's why most freeware photoreal projects I know of make hand-colored TerraServer greyscale images, stitched together (automatically) with USAPhotoMaps and reprojected from UTM to lat/long via a GIS or the free utilities listed in the thread.Good luck!Cheers, Holger

[bob.bernstein 0]

If you accept a 4.8m/pixel limitation, for big area work if you select more like a 4 m/pixel, you'll have more area that is all in one image. The smaller area around the airport would be feathered in. I don't know what extent of area you are trying for, like how many of the panels such as you posted are you trying to composit? Could you reduce it to a small problem by working with lower res imagry, and then just apply a rotation to assemble a small number of panels?B

[Guest stele]

>Is there no way you can download a larger area at once? At>least then you don't have to deal with individual>screenshots.Yes, I could do that. But the individual features start to become blurry, and I'm shooting for maximum fidelity. This image was grabbed directly from Keyhole (with a tilt+rotate), and this is what I'm shooting for.http://www.fxtech.com/images/morey.jpg>Also, you'd need to know the exact corner coordinates of the>images.I can get those. I just grabbed another top-down shot, and I grabbed 4 sets of coordinates, one per corner. TL: 43d07'16.87"N 89d32'42.33"WTR: 43d07'16.42"N 89d31'07.05"WBL: 43d06'25.62"N 89d32'44.57"WBR: 43d06'25.15"N 90d31'05.72"WYou can see the top and bottom lattitudes are very close, but the L/R lattitudes at the top/bottom are quite a bit distorted. >Sorry, can't offer any direct help. I guess that's why most>freeware photoreal projects I know of make hand-colored>TerraServer greyscale images, stitched together>(automatically) with USAPhotoMaps and reprojected from UTM to>lat/long via a GIS or the free utilities listed in the>thread.I would go with that if TS maps of my area weren't 30m. The best I could get would be the grayscale 15m image, and maybe I could colorize it with the 30m data. But the 2f stuff off keyhole would be my first priority!Thanks for the tips!