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arno

PhotoRealistic Scenery Resolution

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Guest gregcorell

Standard resolution for photos is 4.3m/pixel.I know that with Sbuilder this can be increased to as high as 1.2m/pixel.Does anyone know how products such as MegaScenery can achieve resolutions as high as 1ft/pixel ~ .6m/pixel?

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Hi,Any scenery that uses more than the circa 4.8 meter per pixels that the mesh scenery allows, use the same technique. So the technique used by SBuilder (pre-Fs2004 style ground polygons with high resolution textures) allows any transparancy in theory. You just need the high resolution photos and of course the higher the resolution the bigger the performance hit, as all those textures need to be loaded.


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 FSIntegral

>You just need the high resolution photosHello.Do you mean you can just increase the 256x256px bitmap produced by Resample.exe with Imagetool!?I tried this and all I got was a 1024x1024px bitmap, without any change in FS, as if I did not change anything...Maybe there is someting missing in what I've done... However, I've heard about an Imagetool command line that add a scenery location header in each bitmap covering a LODed ground area. I don't know anything about that, so I suppose that is where I was wrong...Am I correct, or completely out of subject? (:-DKarl

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Hi Karl,>Do you mean you can just increase the 256x256px bitmap>produced by Resample.exe with Imagetool!?No, maybe may wording was not that accurate. But the mesh scenery will never ever display a mipmap above the 256x256 one. Any bigger mip is dropped.>Am I correct, or completely out of subject? (:-DTo use higher resolution textures, you would have to apply them on different ground polygons. These can for example be made with SCASM or GMax. As you can determine the size of these yourself, you can get almost any resolution you can dream of. The only limitations are the photos you have to place on them and the performance (photo sceneries can become very large very soon).


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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Hi Guys,Arno, can you clarify exactly how do they design the high-res scenery? Is it a simple task of using GMAX to create plane objects, assigning them altitude data and textures and exporting them as scenery objects? If that is the case, then I can forsee all kinds of awful problems with seasons, crash boxes, water surfaces, just to start with...


P3D SpacePort Team

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Hi Misho,Let me say by starting to say it is not easy :D.If you are working on an airport, you can in general make the ground around it flat. So in that case all you need to do is to make a grid of polygons in GMax at altitude 0 and place them at the correct location. To make proper ground polygons that display the shadows correctly, you need to use the Fs2002 gamepack and tweak the ASM files to add an ADDCAT command (similar to the SCASM LayerCall command).If you want to use them on a bigger area that is not flat, things do indeed become a lot more complex. You will have to add altitude to your polygons and this altitude must match the mesh scenery very well. I think you also need the ADDCAT tweak here, but I am not sure as I have not tested it myself.Seasons are not really a problem, you just have to code them yourself. The only limitation is that the HW textures are not shown when it snows, like the mesh does.Crash boxes should be no problem, as you can make ground polygons without them. The terrain below provides you with a nice crash function already :).For water surfaces it is probably best to make the texture transparant and put a LWM polygon below. This will give you the default landable, reflective water.Like I said at the beginning it is not very easy and I would only advice it for small areas around an airport in general. For bigger areas the mesh techniques are a lot better.


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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And what sbuilder does, is you load a mesh file which sbuilder will then tessalate into LOD8 LWM triangles. Then the textured ground polys are created for the same size/area, so that you end up with the smae number of LWMs and ground polys. This occurs over the (minimum) of a LOD13 area. This way the textures are created as 1024x1024 for the whole LOD13 (@1.2 m resolution).Arno, thank's for the heads up on the HW problem. I thought I was doing something wrong but haven't had chance to play with it. Is there a recomended work-around?scott s..

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Thanks Arno - I thought this was precisely the case. I just wasn't sure if you are able to lay the polygons over the existing default mesh so that they don't show that horrible interference pattern when 2 polygons are in the same place - I'm sure you know what I mean!I agree, for large areas the default way is the way to go... perhaps in the future there will be a better way!Cheers,Misho


P3D SpacePort Team

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Hi Scott,For a specific area, you might be able to imitate the HW textures just by assigning 5 seasons on your ground polygons. But to show them also with snow is more difficult, I am trying to get it working with my ActiGate module. But that is not yet fully tested.


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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Thanks. I see now what Luis is doing in Sbuilder is using an IfVarRange on the Julian day, and based on that selects the appropriate texture from the list of textures by season (actually a series of these, to give the effect of a CASE or SELECT command). This way if the the day is from 1 to 76 (in my case) it uses the HW texture for the ground polys.scott s..

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Yep, that is how to do it. And with the TMFViewer tool you can figure out the correct days for your area.http://www.scenerydesign.org/forum/showthread.php?t=647


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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>Standard resolution for photos is 4.3m/pixel.>Does anyone know how products such as MegaScenery can achieve>resolutions as high as 1ft/pixel ~ .6m/pixel?Are you sure they use more than the standard 4.8 m/pixel ??I believe they might use standard 4.8 m/pixel meshfollowing tiles and then only additionally put HI-res (scasm type) polys on top where it is needed (on the airport itself).This is a technique I have used for exaple in SwedflightPro ESSA V2Best,Bjorn

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If you look at their latest "Mega" press release they state this:"While the source imagery is resampled up to 4.8 meters per pixel for display within Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004

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Guest FSIntegral

>To use higher resolution textures, you would have to apply>them on different ground polygons.HelloThank you Arno.I thought it was possible to get an 1m/px resolution with the default ground textures as describes in the MSFS9 SDK, but I was wrong.So the only way to get hight (as high as needed) resolution is to built custom 3D polys (elevated) with GMax or whatever tool that can export textured polys (using Scasm too...)Mmmh! that should be very tricky... I'm thinking of those LOD-ed mesh that can vary depending on the distance, so your custom poly does'nt match the relief anymore...I think that I will use the default method (4.8m/px resolution with 256x256px bitmap), but I still have a question :Does a custom 3D poly (not flat) with the Scasm LayerCall command (or ASM ADDCAT command) is still visible even if the mesh is changing when we get far ?Thank you

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Hi,>I think that I will use the default method (4.8m/px resolution>with 256x256px bitmap), but I still have a question :>Does a custom 3D poly (not flat) with the Scasm LayerCall>command (or ASM ADDCAT command) is still visible even if the>mesh is changing when we get far ?I think it is best to mix both techniques in that case. As the GMax/SCASM polygons are always on the same location. But when you are far away you do not see the extra high resolution. So for that distance you can best use the mesh techniques and only use the high resolution when you are close to the polygons.


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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