Perfecting my satellite scenery (pics)

[Guest]

I came up with a better technique for colorizing satellite scenery using Terrascene. I showed some pictures of my scenery a few months ago, but today I really found a way to get the colors right. I thought I'd share a few screenshots with you folks. I'd like to release this scenery on AVSIM when I'm done, but I'm afraid the download will probably be around 200MB. What do you think the max is on a scenery for AVSIM? Here are the shots (the area is Leadville, Colorado USA):http://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...teScenery_A.jpghttp://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...teScenery_B.jpghttp://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...teScenery_C.jpghttp://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...teScenery_D.jpgIn this shot, you can see the difference between the satellite photo, and Terrascene:http://home.earthlink.net/~finsdad/FlyII/p...teScenery_E.jpgI know I promised a tutorial for how to do this, but giving clear instructions sometimes takes a long time to do. I'm spending way more time on Fly!II projects than I probably should anyway :). Perhaps I'll get a chance to do the tutorial in the next few months. As I said before, this technique uses a free program called USAPhotoMaps that downloads black and white satellite imagery for a lat/long area you specify. I then colorize the photo using Terrascene generated tiles and a layer effect in Photoshop.

[Guest]

Very nice work and very real colours really! compliments and thank you !We wait to fly over it :-)Giorgio Gnesda

[Guest]

That looks most promising to me. I am looking forward to this scenery as well as the tutorial I must say. The colour palette seems a tad cold, but the hardest thing - to spread and separate the colours - is done and very well done IMO.Keep it going and update us from time to time :)Prion

[Guest]

feel is realistic. Also, I'm curious: what is the maximum file size you guys would be willing to download for scenery? My Internet access is pretty fast so I'm not often thinking about that. What I like is that even at very low altitudes, this feels realistic to me. I know its a bit blurry, but I definitely get the feel. The scenery is actually a lot sharper than it looks, but I had to compress the JPEGS a lot to get them to a size small enough to share on the forum. Leadville (LVX) is a fun place to fly because its one of the highest airports in the world and the highest in North America. You can also make quick hops over the mountains to Aspen. It is an airport used by Colorado pilots for mountain flying training. It also goes great with Wayne's Leadville airport he released here on AVSIM.

[Guest]

Beautiful scenery, size isn't a real problem for me... but people on dialup won't be may not be ok with 200 mb...cheers

[Guest]

Impressive.I'm using a dialup connection. I can down load 135Meg in about 5 to 6 hours. Sometimes faster.Great work.blkwlsn

[Guest]

Dan,Really nice work. It all looks so detailed. Does your technique include using the Sharpen filter or Unsharp mask? I'm looking forward to your tutorial.Thanks!Rich@KLEWBeige G3 233 MHz DT rev.1 G4 400 MHz NewerTech upgrade OS 9.2.2 /Jaguar384 MB RAM ATI Radeon Mac (PCI) Thrustmaster FCS/WCS

[Guest]

I don't do any sharpening because the original textures are already quite sharp. The only reason they are blurry at all close to the ground is a limitation of the way Fly!II applies these textures. It really is amazing the way that Terrascene generated tiles line up perfectly with actual satellite imagery. Even the shadows from mountains match. I simply place a copy of the terrascene tile in a layer on top of the black and white satellite photo, setting the layer mode to "soft light". I then apply a hue/saturation adjustment layer to the terrascene layer. After running Terrascene again using existing segments, I get the result you see. The time consuming part is in downloading the satellite images and working with 100MB files. Coloring is entirely automated...this is always the part I considered most difficult.

[Guest Eagle]

You may want to try this link for satellite pictures. http://earth.jsc.nasa.gov/categories.html

[Pascal_LSGC 298]

Beautiful Dan!Why not upload a high quality jpeg of your scenery, we can easily convert it to a .tga (with Irfanwiew for example, you don't even need to open the file to convert it). Provide your TS project file with "use existing" on, so we can do ourself the last TS launch! This would result in much smaller downloads. (I think 200 megs is quite large).Regards!Pascal__________________________________________________FLY! II tips Anti-aliasing: On some machines, you must set FSAA to 4x (GeForce2) to make it work. No need to disactivate AGP.Don't like the blurried textures? Try with FSAA on, and these values in the Render.ini :mipLevelCount=4 (if it causes problems rather set 5)mipMapFlag=128

[Guest]

Great tip, Pascal. I'll try changing my TGAs to high resolutions JPGs and see how file size is affected. I'll definitely try to release the scenery in that format. Right now, I'm still building it out and when I'm done it will only be 1/4 tile. But I figure that is a good start and will give other people something to play with.

[Guest]

200MB is not a problem for me as I'm on broadband. Be sure to include a recommendation that people use a download manager. It's too bad to have to start over after a disconnect at 95%. Pascal's suggestion sounds good to me as well as it will drag more people in with dial-up connection, but we will loose people on the other half of the spectrum who want a painless user-friendly install. Whatever, I am looking forward to your sceneryPrion