A few findings which may interest ROTW and scenery desi

[Guest]

Over the last few months (on and off) I have been digging a bit deeper into the scenery capabilities of Fly!2, I found several undocumented tricks while poking around and experimenting with .Tga.Raw and .Opa image files. This will only be of interest to the likes of ROTW, Pascal and any other Fly!2 scenery designers, but I also believe it will be of benefit to the lifespan of Fly!2 as a whole.1) All runway textures are capable of the standard 256x256 pixel dimension, but also 512x512 and 1024x1024. I have been using a custom high resolution runway at 512x512 (see second pic).2) The water textureanimation is at 128x128 pixels standard, this can also be replaced with 256x256,512x512 (or even 1024x1024, although I see no need to go this high). I found 256x256 pixels to be detailed enough with a custom animation.3) Fly!2 custom sceneries generated with the slicer are at the default resolution of 7.5, the slicer will only allow 128x128 (medium distance) and 256x256 (high detail) tiles.The old Fly! slicer had the benefit of slicing high resolution custom sceneries which is not an option in the Fly!2 renderer.I was able to manually double my custom Fly!2 sliced scenery files from 128x128 and 256x256 to 256x256 and 512x512 - and I had no problems with Fly!2 accepting the increased file sizes. I believe you could also have a few tiles at 1024x1024 for really detailed areas.So, now there is a possibility to have 3.5 or for smaller areas like airport tiles, 1.75 mpp high resolution scenery (It is not cetain, just a possibility).The problem is you will have to manually overlay the high resolution scenery onto the lower resolution Fly!2 slices, which becomes a little tricky.I am wondering if the original Fly! slicer uses the same file name structure when rendering the same scenery, either way you could use the high detail slice option in Fly! and render out your high resolution .Raw and .Act files, then rename them to what the Fly!2 slicer calls them. It would be a blessing in disguise if the old slicer uses the same naming structure.Finally, just like the original Fly! render ini, you would need to change some values to accomodate the memory usage - but it is well worth it.Anyway, I thought it might be of use to some of you.Kind RegardsAndyPic1. High resolution patch on a 512x512 ground tile.Pic2. 512x512 runway texture.Pic3. High resolution ground texture, actually a flat polygon model with opacity "cuts".

[Damien BRUNET 0]

Hi Andy,Very nice shots !How did you get these shots ? To get these nice textures, do we have to modify the render.ini file or do we get this result only from a scenery made by a designer ? Is there a drop of FPS ?Please keep us posted about it !Best regards,;-)Damien BRUNET (LFQQ)e-mail : udb@fr.stUDB, L'Univers de Damien BRUNEThttp://www.udb.fr.st/

[Guest]

Interesting Andy,I had considered hi-res scanning some UK airfield images and placing them into scenery I've made from multiple jpeg's. I'd love to see crisp images when 'on approach' or 'in the circuit' at an airfield.Wasn't it Dominique Normand who did very hi-res 'Chicago' sceneries, but had to limit it to Fly!1 because of the Fly!2's '7.5' restriction.Any progress on your 'NZ scenery'? Have you learnt any tricks for aligning 'photo-scenery' to Fly!2? A number of us had an interesting discussion in the Avsim 'Fly! Developers Forum' on re-aligning photos, Colin Sare-Soar suggesting just using 'Upper Right and Lower Left'Lat/Long co-ords via the Fly!2 slicer to get over the WGS84/UTM alignment problems. Trying that at the moment and it seems to work.DaveT

[Guest Colins2]

Hi Andy,Very impressive!On the flyslice question, here's my $0.02 (unverified)The basic naming structure seems to be the same.Fly!2 appends a 5 for the hi res textures and a 4 for the lo res.It also appends, where appropriate a W for the water textures, preceded by a 4 or 5.The terrain mapping files are also a lot different.You would need to render the whole thing with Fly!2 slicer first so thgat you get all the different tiles and the correctly generated .trn files.You could then render the hi-res bits that you want with the older slicer and then simply append the 4 or 5 as appropriate.These could be copied to the fly2 sliced data folder, overwriting the originals.I see no reason why this shouldn't work, but it wold be extremely time consuming. The other downside is that you would not be able to share the scenery very easily. The pods would be huge.Colin

[Guest]

Hi Damien,The scenery is a custom render of Auckland Airport which is still sitting in my HDD waiting to be finished, I will be uploading it once I finish uni for the year. Frame rates are still very good, just a few changes via the render ini file.Kind RegardsAndy

[Guest]

Hi Dave,Dominique made some excellent high re scenery for the original Fly as I recall, Chicago was in extremely high detail - just amazing.I`m just waiting for a few more weeks until exams are over, then I will finish the scenery and make it available.Regarding scenery alignment, here is an e-mail I sent Vin from PMDG last year, its a method I used for accurate scenery placement:Sat photos should not be a problem, there is a little known secret I discovered which is very easy and quick for lining up aerial photos.I use Terrascene to create an area around my airport of interest, by typing in the aiport code and specifying an area for the photo size, eg. a 10 mile radius around the airport.Next I get Terrascene to create the image with any default land cover, (but not send it to Fly for slicing), after Terrascene has finished creating the area, you will have a text doc with the co-ordinates for the area and a large TGA file which is for the Fly editor to slice.I load this large TGA file up in Photoshop and overlay a large custom grid of numbered squares, much like a math book.Next I would import this with the Fly!2 scenery editor using Terrascene`s text co-ordinates for accurate placement, once finished you will have a large ugly grid covering your airport within Fly!2.Within Fly!2, I would take a birds eye view screenshot of the airport runway - which should have those ugly grids and numbers you imported as an erial photo.Open up the original big TGA file with the gridsnumbers in Photoshop, open the screenshot you took also, now resize and copy the screenshot onto the big TGA using the grids and numbers to line it up exactly so it fits in where it should. Now you can overlay your aerial photo so the runway on the aerial photo lines up perfectly with the runway on the gridnumbered TGA, you will need to play with the opacity so you can see what you are doing, also a lot of stretching, skewing to get it lined up. Now all you have to do is import it again using the same co-ordinates, it should line up perfectly.I hope this helps Dave, I would love to see some more UK scenery.Kind RegardsAndy

[Guest]

Hi Andy and Colin now that we have just about finished our sceneryfor that "other sim" I would like to get back into doing some stufffor FlyII again. Maybe several of us "old timers" could put ourcolective heads together and come up with something! If you are at all interested email me at dannmartin@telus.net I really would like to hear from you. Dan

[Guest]

Hi Collin,Thanks for the explaination, its good to know your still around.Perhaps this method could be used just for very small areas like actual airport scenery, you could slice the high res tiles in the Fly! slicer and overlay these files onto the appropriate Fly!2 tiles (which would have to be changed to 512x512 or 1024x1024).Another option is to use a Photoshop macro when working with lots of files.It needs further investigation, but the results would be well worth while.The POD sizes would not be too large to upload if only the airport boundaries are high resolution and the surrounding tiles are at the default Fly!2 size. But if you were to make a moderate scenery in high resolution (say a city), you could always burn a master CD and distribute it from one Fly!er to another by mail.Just some thoughts.Kind RegardsAndy

[Guest]

Hi Dan,nice to see your still around, I would love to check out your FS2002 scenery when its ready.I will be in touch, I am going to look into this idea further early next week, just need to download the Fly!2k patches again and re-install the old girl.Kind RegardsAndy

[Guest]

1st thanks for you interest in our CYQT scenery (yup I think you will like it). 2nd,looking forward to hearing from you BTW. Dan

[Guest]

AndyThanks for that, I'm using a similar method but Colin's Terrashape program allows me to 'spot the Fly! runways' directly onto the TS2 image.The UK photo alignment problem is that the photos used are Ordance Survey aligned and we need to 'skew' them to Fly!'s WGS84 world.We want to do big areas, it's been working OK for small ones like my first UK scenery 'Heathrow Zone' (in the Avsim Fly!2 Scenery library). A 'how to' called 'UK4FLY Scenery Manufacture Doc'is also available, which I'll update when the technique is improved further.Pleased to hear that 'Auckland' may get finished.DaveT

[Pascal_LSGC 298]

Hi Andy!Thank you very much!Your findings mean a lot to me about Fly!s future! The video cards go on increasing their power, and soon they will have no problem to handle 3.8 meters resolution sceneries, and why not 1.6!!!And for sure, it good for airport integration to have some high res tiles around. Your screenshots speak for themselves!!! I love the fields in the third screen, you captured the softness and even the movement! And you play with transparent transitions like a master!Dan, good to see you around with some projects! I guess some good thinks are to come! :-)Cheers to all!!!!Pascal