Photoreal world

[Guest antero guerra]

I must be doing something wrong, of course. My texture doesn't become real. I've tried a lot o times and I get always the same!From PSMaker I always get a box with instructions for Imagetool, when converting textures. If I hit OK it stops as it is finished. When I see the final result there is a box with a lot of Targa (tga) files, instead of bmp's. If I try this texture, I find coordinates correct, but photo texture, is a grey area. I used Photoshop, Photo Scenery Maker, Terrabuilder LITE. Is there anybody, with a good heart, to help me step by step? Antero

[kjb 0]

I used Sbuilder to do my first couple of photo sceneries (Prescott, AZ and Albuquerque, NM), then used Photo Scenery Maker for El Paso, TX and Raleigh-Durham, NC (in progress). Sbuilder is a little more intuitive because you get a better feel for how the calibration matches up and can pick individual tiles to be generated. The downside it that Sbuilder uses a different method to build the tiles and at intermediate distances there are small gaps. Doing autogen with Sbuilder tiles requires flipping them vertically. AGenT is an autogen editor that can flip the bitmaps automatically if you use the option.Photo Scenery Maker works really well, but it takes a little more effort to get it right. You'll want to make sure of the extent and calibration. There are two steps, the initial coordinates for the NW and SE corners and the calibration to finalize the scaling. You need to make sure they're in the correct format with degrees:minutes:seconds (eg: -79:08:30.34). If you have the two corners right, you can also use them for the two point calibration. Also, PSM requires the FS2002 SDK. It doesn't work right with the FS9 version.The initial tiles generated with PSM are TGA files. Later they should be converted to bitmaps without any input from you if you let PSM run the whole process. The TGA files will still be on your hard drive along with the final bitmaps. You can delete them when the scenery generation is finished.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Antero,Your textures must be converted to DXT1 format.If your textures are in Windows bitmap format, then you can use Elrond Elvish' FSTextureConverter (available in the Avsim library.)If they are Targa files, then you can use the Microsoft ImageTool that is in the S.D.K.s and also on the FS disks.Custom (photo-real) textures will only display in game if they are in DXT1 format.Best regards.Luis

[Guest antero guerra]

Obrigado Luis. It works, but I still have to correct some coordinates. I'm excited to make this experience, because I have all base textures already prepared (spring, summer...). But I still have a problem. I needed to convert each cell repeatedly, which is a titanic work. If I have to manage by the same way all that hundreds of cells it seems to foolish. I heard that must be a batch process! Can you help me for this?

[kjb 0]

If you're using Photo Scenery Maker, it should be doing the whole process. The tiles should all be ready to use when it's finished.

[Guest antero guerra]

I'll try to reinstall it.

[kjb 0]

It probably isn't a problem with the installation of PSM, but the installation/links to the other apps that are required. Either that or coordinates are off somewhere.

[Guest antero guerra]

Muito obrigado a todos. It's ready and works fine. The main problem was that I changed - after many experiments - the SDK Terrain to version 2002, and Imagetool 2000. I attached the file that you can have a look. I took the main texture SPRING and colorized it in Photoshop, simulating the other seasons. Now I see that the result is not the best. Winter works nice with rain, and I like the night lights (I used Photoshop, to mask the villages and made diferent adjustments for them). The process is very quick and I was astonished... Now I would like to know how to produce a biger file (as the original) with more detail. Imean, witout resampling, or with cells greater than 250 pixels.