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GaryGB

.025 Meter Photoreal Scenery

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The following are pictures from FSX flying the Ultra Light just East of Half Moon Bay, California. The photo source is the Microsoft Terraserver. The imaged were acquired Using USA Photo Maps by J.D. Cox. Re-projection from UTM and conversion to GeoTiff using Global Mapper. The system is low-end 2ghz with 1gb memory and an ATI9800SE 128mb video card. The size of the high resolution area is a 1.34gb file. Time is spent collecting the images, touching up the colors (-5% green, -15% blue), converting to TIFF, and compiling with re-sample. About 8 hours spent. Re-sample is the longest period so I lowered its priority and did other things on the PC.I remember when Megascenery came out for the LA area. I was fascinated that you could now barely make out the fire roads on the mountains. Well as you can see, they now look even better.For the remainder of the San Francisco area I used 4 meter/pixel photos to cut down on the time factor. The high resolution 0.25 meter/pixel stuff marries very nicely but you have to be about 5000ft above ground when you approach it interface between the two resolutions or you think that SP1 bit you. To avoid SP1 factor I use the ultralight. This reduces the processing load and prevents blurred textures from FSX getting behind in its processing. Also, the 50-60mph speed is a big factor in this regard. And, it is fun flying into the canyons and not seeing blurring.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokehttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174245.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174246.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174247.jpg


regards,

Dick near Pittsburgh, USA

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Guest JohnC

Most impressive! This will create more fans for photoreal scenery for sure. BTW, have you ever successfully used your GlobalMapper to reproject a state plane projection image to geographic projection ? I know it claims to, but so does CORPSCON 6 and it crashes when I try. Anyone who can show how CORPSCON 6 can do this will earn my grateful thanks.

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I think awhile ago I did a NY projection but the color quality was too bad so I erased it. Without decent color it is a waste of time. After I finish SFO will try LAX. Terraserver has large areas here with good color and high resolution. A lot of the state stuff I have seen is not as nice and is done with no leaves on the trees.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke


regards,

Dick near Pittsburgh, USA

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The title is wrong for the message. The decimal point is off. Should be 0.25 meters/pixel. I have tried 0.03 textures and they are big and useless. The re-sampler has a problem showing white areas. However, they may be good for the upcoming train simulator product.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke


regards,

Dick near Pittsburgh, USA

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WOW!!! :-) Congratulations, Dick, that really looks great:-beerchugBefore I re-discovered FS, I was great fan of flying around Half Moon Bay in Flight Unlimited III.Your screenies put MegaScenery to shame in that area!;-) I would love to be able to try out that scenery you created if you ever make it available. :-roll Any thoughts about enhancing it even further by annotating it with some foliage or placing any FS library objects later on?Please keep us informed about your projects in this area; keep up the excellent work! :-sun1 GaryGB

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Dick -- Have you tried using a blend mask at all along the border of your hi-res? In FS9 I found that could help quite a bit by doing a gradient from white to black in the alpha channel (FS9 doesn't have blend per se of course).scott s..

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Gary,I have no intentions of making this public since the files are so large and there are some border issues that may be fixed as per Scott in following message. Anybody can do this. You have to use the poorly written SDK to make the INF for resample. Trick - just use the Mellenium INF and change the file naming. The process is dependent upon re-projecting (resizing in normal language). The only reliable program that I have found that re-projects (UTM to WGS84) is Global Mapper $$$$$. The same program allows you to re-balance the colors which are usually a bit off. Gottfried Razek has a series of 4 meter/pixel photo sceneries that are excellent for giving a taste of the results. He has done these for FS9 but they work equally well in FSX - available on AVSIM. I use some of them as background where I do not plan to place high resolution photos. He has a Half Moon Bay high resolution (1.2meters/pixel) that inspired me to try. One trick in all this is to set your texture slider to 30cm. Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke


regards,

Dick near Pittsburgh, USA

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Hi Dick:Thanks for those tips; I haven't yet applied USAPhotoMaps and Global Mapper to the photoreal process, but had planned to do so shortly with another favorite scenery area.Regarding your SF project, if we try this with our own systems with our own downloaded imagery derived from the BigJPEG tool in our own copy of USAPhotoMaps and Global Mapper, would you consider posting a step-by-step tutorial which shows your method in greater detail for this area you made? Photoreal seems still to be a rather under-documented and challenging aspect of FS scenery design in spite of what little well-intended info that I have been able to find on this subject thus far.Also, I was wondering if you by any chance did a higher detail section of Alcatraz Island and Commodore Center seaplane base (near Sausalito north of the Golden Gate bridge) in your SF project?Very impressive results with this!:-) GaryGB

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I have never found anything that Global Mapper couldn't reproject. The toughest job I did was antarctic mesh which was in polar stereographic. I looks pretty gruesome in geo since there is so much distortion.I do state plane to UTM and Geo all the time.scott s..

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Well first you have to get the photo maps source. Terraserver has very limited coverage with some areas crude and useless. You should first go to its page and see if it meets your objectives. Fortunately California, a very scenic area, has some excellent photos. jdmcox.com is the place to get the program to collect a photo area.Gather some photo area and understand the time element in loading 0.25 meter versus 4.0 meter elements. Play with the BIG JPEG feature to fully understand it and where files are placed. Once you have that experience in-hand you need to look at the JPG file. Any viewer will show you this file in the program's main folder. It contains the BIG JPEG collected picture and the LAT/LON extents. It will be projected (shown) in UTM format(different than lat/lon) with a NAD83 projection (rules for computing & showing). The first thing is that there is no zone info which UTM requires. So you will have to change that to the zone of interest which is at the top of JD Cox's program display if you view in UTM read out mode. At this point you are in need of a program that will allow you to first set the proper zone and then convert the UTM/NAD83 to Geographic/WGS84. After that your selected program(s) should write the file out in TIFF format. Change the file name parameters in the INF and re-sample to get a BGL.Some of this stuff seems mysterious. It is cloaked in jargon that someone used and became a standard. I do not claim to understand cartography and all the projections and file formats. And I do not care. Unfortunately Microsoft chose a file format that in the majority of cases requires re-projection (conversion). As an example the USGS is a large source of pictures (seamless.com). The also use UTM but write their files in Geotiff format. Close but still needs converted - UTM and all that stuff.It is better to learn the process and then you are able to adapt to various sources of photos. Get, Convert, Re-sample, Enjoy.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokePS: I have only done some airports in 0.25 meter resolution. Overhead view of the Golden Gate toll area:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/174446.jpg


regards,

Dick near Pittsburgh, USA

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Gary, I notice you suggest you plan to use global mapper, if so, you can shortcut your collection of data from usgs. No need for JDcox great proggy, global mapper can download the images diretly, and in doing so, you'll have the georeference established. Of course then the datum and projection can be adjusted, and the geotiff written, all in global mapper.As far as photo real per the sdk, a bit of experiementation and you're there. Just take the sample inf file from the sdk, and substitute your data. Compile with resample.exe.If you export geotiff from global mapper you can use the geotif tag in the inf file, eliminating the need for inputting lat/long data into the inf flie.Bob

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Does Global Mapper have images of KPHL? I want to start on this project but USA Photomaps / Terraserver does not have any images of this area.Shez


Shez Ansari

Windows 11; CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K; GPU: EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1080Ti 11GB; MB: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5; RAM: 16GB; HD: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD, Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD; Display: ASUS 4K 28", Asus UHD 26"

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Hi Dick:Thanks for that additional detailed overview!:-) GaryGB

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Hi Bob:Thanks very much for your helpful heads-up and suggestions about the Global Mapper "direct download option" when the imagery does not need pre-processing in an intermediate graphics program editing step. :-)I had not yet delved into the details of that feature in Global Mapper (GM), and did not realize that it had access to the same imagery that USAPhotoMaps has. It appears that one can even add new URLs to access other data (if one's firewall software doesn't get in the way... I have had to turn off Norton Internet Security while downloading in GM until I find out what rule to create to accommodate TerraServer!); what an excellent "FS-GIS" tool!I did see another one of your informative and related posts about how to pre-process imagery while preserving and verifying Geo-Tiff tags with appropriate utilities at: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...32908&mode=fulland also saw Holger's info on doing intermediate step graphical editing while preserving GeoTiff tags:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...33074&mode=fullThis considerably increases our understanding of how to take imagery that is "ready to use" and get it into FS quickly; and when needed, how to also graphically pre-process imagery through a less complex intermediate process with less risk of errors before getting it into FS. ;-) Thanks to all for adding to this thread... I may try out a FS photoreal project sooner than I'd anticipated! :-walksmileGaryGB

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