Saw this listed on Slashdot today. I wonder if the technique could be used to generate nice scenery for city areas for FS.http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10126--2002cbr600f4i

Looks Good - Wonder if Microsoft have seen it?Geoff

Looks like you need the low-level oblique photo imagery, and possibly some ground-level laser data. As always, the problem is getting this data over the whole world.scott s..

At the end of the day it gets down to getting andapplying textures.This becomes a tedious and boring jobafter a while. Then start placing trees one by one,taxiway signs etc. Now we have moved onto FX a buildingcan have the following textures.Main Texture (day)Light Map (night)Bump MapTransperancyReflection MapSomeone generally has to do all these by hand ,but fortunately all are applied to to the Poly whenyou map the day texture.Then of course you can add baconies etc to your3d model.Personally I think the days of say a large Aiportto the highest FSX quality being free are over.But I stand to be corrected on this in say 3 years timebut not before, as "Talk is Cheap"

Old hat :) People have been doing this for a while. The problem is that it's only semi-automatic and still way to expensive. To give you an example what problems are still unresolved, imagine handling vegetation in front of buildings. So far, noone can solve that. It still costs millions of dollars to build a city model unfortunately...Christian

I don't see anything new. What's the "new way". Its simple to lay down aerial photography for a ground surface, and simple to make models sit on top of it.That's what I see in the image that is referred to.

Bobthis article discusses the AUTOMATIC building of 3D surfaces + texturing. I work with a couple of people who work on similar things - but fully automatic approaches are still in their very infancy.Christian

Thanks Christian for that concept. Nothing is totally automated, I suspect the automation possible would approximate what we do today.I suppose I could be proven wrong thou.Bob