Photo Scenery

[Guest Knikolaes]

I am working on compiling photo scenery for the Greeley, CO area and the training areas that AIMS Community College uses for flight training. However due t being in the school itself and lack of time, I am wondering about the following:I love SBuilder. It makes making photo scenery very easy. However, is there a method in the program where you can compile using a complete area and zoom? I have tried the following but this function does not work properly n SBuilder: * FILE-->ADD MAP--> From Background... * I select the radial button for "56x40 at Zoom = 18" * Click OKI always get one of two possible messages. Either a red dialog that states "Could not make an image" or a yellow dialog that states "Can not display maps! map view was turned OFF", followed by my background disappearing and my havuing to re-initiate it via the VIEW-->SHOW BACKGROUND option.I know the maps are available, because I can zoom in and pan around at zom 18 on the entire area I am trying to make. My main issue is I did not want to compile just one square at a time. Is there something i am missing here? What exactly is the function of the add map from background function if it never functions?Any help or pointers would be appreciaed. I read all of the great tutorials out there, but none of the tutorials available mention the add maps function.

[meshman 109]

>I love SBuilder. It makes making photo scenery very easy. >However, is there a method in the program where you can>compile using a complete area and zoom? I have tried the>following but this function does not work properly n>SBuilder:SBX works the way it's suppose to, so please don't blame it!Your efforts will be rewarded if you work in smaller sections. Instead of trying to do a 56x40 try two at 28x40, though even that may be too large. But you can try.Once SBX gives you the "Can not display maps!" error the only way to resolve that is by exiting and restarting the program.Breaking your project into smaller, more managable tasks will also help should you decide that you want to do some blend or water masking to have the photo area match up into the surrounds.If it were possible to get a 56x40 made the file size would be over 600mb! Want to try and load that into an image editor and start working with it to mask areas? Can you say super slowwww and "Your system has run out of memory."?IIRC, the comfort level on my 2gb of RAM system was at or about 30x30 or in the vicinty of 1,000 total tiles. YMMV, but you can see that 56x40 greatly exceeds that 1,000 tile limit, so the task got broken into smaller pieces.

[Guest Knikolaes]

OH no! I wasn't blaming SBuilder at all. I was emphasizing that eiter something didn' install right on mine or I am doing something wrong. I just found it oddthat whenever I tried to use that map feature for background production I got errors every time.I'll go manual with it as I am starting to get used to that :-) At least it's not a project I am planning on uploading or anything so i can take me time with it :-)On the "what is the function" bit, I wasn't trying to bash the product. I was luiterally asking what the function was as I am misunderstanding the docs somehow.

[Guest REDBARON100]

I love Sbuilder too. But if you are interested in photoscenery creation of larger areas I recomend the "FS Earth Tiles". Since I found out and learned to use it (very user friendly, but read the manul) I can't stop creating photosceneries.

[Guest Knikolaes]

Cool! I will look that up! I always welcome multiple resources. I also have a LOT of photoshopping to do. The images for my area are always off-key for colors :-P

[meshman 109]

Depending upon the scope of your work and level of expertise, the USGS Seamless server contains some excellent photo source. There's always the need to convert to the correct format that FSX needs, but it could allow you to work with larger files than from within SBX.http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Chris,As Lance mentioned, the limiting factor in your project is available memory, not SBuilderX itself. If you select too large of an area, then the bitmap may exceed the capacity of your system. Please note that you may very well have sufficient memory for the bitmap, but putting it together from thousands of smaller tiles will occupy multiple amounts of memory and can easily lead to saturation. The only recourse is to make smaller projects.You can put them together into a single bgl if you want - simply generate the bgl from each separate map, throw out the results, and use the inf files from each map to create a multi-source inf file that will use all the separate maps to create one single bgl.FS Earth Tiles cannot handle bitmaps that exceed available memory either, and if you use it, you will run into the exact same problem. In addition, that tool does not allow the simple use of Blend and Water Masks that SBuilderX integrates seamlessly.Best regards.Luis

[Guest Knikolaes]

Understood. Wow, I cannot wait until I get my 64 bit OS reinstalled to use more memory. Sad when 4GB of DDR2 and 1 TB of disk space isn't enough for appsthese days. Hard to keep up with technology LOL.I actually got good portion of the project done last night. Idecided togive up quality in favor of quantity, using a zoom of 15 instead of 18. It looks like crud below 4000 AGL, bu above that is all that matters anyway.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Chris,Just for informational purposes, and for anybody else who might come across this thread in the future, this problem is not due to memory requirements by programs such as SBuilderX. The cause of the problem lies solely with the user and the Operating System memory limitations.Please consider that you are trying to put together a bitmap from 56 x 40 tiles. This is 2240 tiles in jpg format in all. Each tile is about 7-12 kB depending on the detail and compression; let's say 10 kB each. That comes to about 22.4 MB in memory for the jpg tiles.They must be de-compressed to 24-bit bitmaps, each of which will be 192 kB. Multiply by 2240 tiles and you have to reserve 430 MB more in memory for them.Then, putting the tiles together into one single 24-bit bitmap (over 14 000 x 10 000 pixels) requires working space, probably at least the size of the tiles, perhaps more. An expert on graphics subsystems would have to say, but we could reasonably imagine that this task will require 1.5 times as much memory as the tiles occupy, say 645 MB more in memory.So, all together, creating such a large bitmap will require well over 1 GB of free and contiguous addressable memory.Since a large part of memory is reserved for the System stack and another part is used for everything else that is loaded, it becomes difficult if not impossible to find such large blocks of contiguous memory space. When that happens, the task fails and SBuilderX displays an error message.If the Operating System could address a larger memory space, then this problem could be avoided, at least until the user once again attempts to exceed the new limits (admittedly very high with 64-bit Operating Systems!)However, changing to a 64-bit Operating System will not eliminate the problem, since SBuilderX is a 32-bit program and can only address memory within the limits of that space.Please note that all FS tools at present are 32-bit programs, including Resample itself, and attempting to exceed memory will result in errors with all of them.So, if anybody gets the SBuilderX error message that it "Cannot display maps", then they should understand that they have exceeded available memory and the solution is to reduce the size of their projects.If you could obtain the image as one single bitmap instead of as thousands of tiles, then you could avoid the above memory requirements completely and simply proceed to process the 430 MB image with Resample. Perhaps, as Lance says, the USGS server will deliver large images for that purpose.As for tutorials that explain the use of the SBuilderX maps function, you can find:Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator Xin the Avsim libraryhttp://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=112595Best regards.Luis