Detailed tiles for ultra-high resolution scenery

[Guest]

Hi everybody again, I'm creating photorealistic scenery for Fly! (not Fly! II). Last week using the replies I got at this forum I managed to overcome the problem of converting UTM coordinates to the appropriate format. Using Orthophotos, Larry Jones's great utilities and Photoshop I managed to create a huge image of 1 meter/pixel resolution. Then using Fly!editor's 1.05 option of creating general "Dem/Satelliteimage scenery" I converted that image to Fly! scenery. The results were not satisfactory though, as the image was at 1m/pixel while the scenery generated was at fly!'s default resolution(15m/pixel). So I thought to use detailed 4x4 tiles to make fly!'s resolution match the image's resolution. Indeed the small test area I made this way looked great (crisper and more detailed than even FUIII's scenery). Here though is where I stumbled into new problems. And here too is where I need your help: 1) The image at hand covers MANY globe tiles. So, how can I create detailed 4x4 tiles for the whole of the image? (seamless scenery). Is there a way to do that automatically? (To enter the info data once and leave the computer unattended to complete the task?) 2) What particular lines the scenery text-infofile required by the 'create detailed tiles' dialogue should contain? (I'm asking this because apart from a general description, the 'create detailed tiles' procedure etc. is not documented or explained in the 'How to" Fly!'s guides). What about the 'blend info file' mentioned in the same dialogue and what it's use? 3) Terrascene's 2.1 documentation speaks of a "1.06 fly!-editor". Has this version ever been released? And if so where can I get it from? Following is the sequence of my actions: I tried to use the detail-tiles feature by moving the editor's position to each globe tile concerned, then choosing X,Z tiles from 0,0 to tiles 63,63 but the 1.05 editorwould crash many times indicating ''access violation", ormessed up the elevations around the edges of the created scenery even though I had unchecked the 'output elevations' option, or still worseleft gaps between what was supposed to be adjacent pieces of scenery even though coordinates for those pieces seemed to match. Obviously I'm doing something wrong. Last, not knowing what text info file to use for the detailed tiles dialogue I used the same one I had used for the creation of general DEM/Satellite scenery described in the official guides. Looking forward to your help, manolis

[Guest]

ManolisIt

[Guest]

Manolis,I am one of those freaks who still use Fly!2K, and I would love to hear more about your experiments. Can you supply a screenshot or two to show us the results you are getting?Thank you and best of luck!Ron A

[Guest]

* bump! * Anyone home??

[Guest]

Hi everybody again, Thanks for your suggestions, particularly to meco. RonA, sorry for not replying immediately but however odd it sounds I have only limited access to the Internet (only for few hours on Sundays and then not via my PC). So to begin with it's a bit complicated for me to offer a screenshot.I hope if I ever manage to complete that project I'll make it available to anyone interested. But there lies a long way ahead till that moment. At the moment suffice is to say that buildings and trees are clearly and distinctly seen from about 500' AGL. But unless the WHOLE area covered by the image is sliced properly (in 4x4 subtiles)it's pointless to try to fly over an area as small as3.5 x 7.5 miles like my test area. So now having received information on the 1.06 editor, there remains to find out how to properly and efficiently use the 'create detailed tiles' feature of the fly! 1.05/1.06 editor ...meaning my previous request for info on this is hereby renewed... best regards, manolis

[Guest]

I keep coming back to check this thread.Sounds very interesting, Manolis. How large of a hard drive will I have to buy?? ;-)Ron A

[Guest]

RonA, So long as I don't get the help I need, do not spend any money onbuying a new hard drive... manolis

[Forkboy2 27]

It's been a loooonnnnggg time since I did anything with the first Fly Editor. I can tell you that what you are trying to do should be possible. That editor is very finicky and will give you errors if one little thing is incorrect.I did create some very high resolution scenery for Fly at one time of the Oxnard, CA area using 256x256 4x4 detail textures, which turns out to be 1024x1024 for each ground tile. Unfortunately, I can't remember all the details. The textures looked great, even when the aircraft was sitting on the ground, there was almost no blockiness or loss of quality.BUT...you may be wasting your time anyway, because to do a very large area with that high of resolution will swamp the texture slots and your frame rate will freeze at 4 fps, or if you have some of the patches installed, the detailed ground textures will flash off. A 64 meg video card may help this, but if you have a 32 meg video card, don't even bother. Also, do the math and I think you'll see to do a large area like this will take up many many gigabytes on your hard drive.The best I could come up with for a large area was 2x2 detail tiles using the 128x128 texture sizes. That gave decent frame rates and avoided the 4 fps bug. See the Southern California scenery I made for both Fly versions to see what that can look like.Matt

[Guest]

Mat, I'll check your scenery out. Nevertheless I think fps is not really an issue provided: a) you have a decent card plus 64mb of memory (like you said) b)you tweak fly!'s render.ini much in the same way as fly!'s II and 3) you lower the visibility sufficiently. Still there are insurpassable problems like the ones I wrote about above while the tons of info that used to be around back in 1999 and 2000 are no longer available. To conclude I suggest that if Fly's developers ever again release an update to FLy!'s II editor: 1) they offer an up to 4x4 subtiles option for textures as well. Nowadays PCs have enough power to handle that amount of textures. 2) An improvement for the elevations-proccessing code MUST be the following: Any elevation-subtile that falls into the area covered by the water mask image (even partially) be automatically set to zero. It's so much annoying to see the sea forming 'mountains' next to the coasts in an otherwise very nice TS2.1 scenery! best regards, manolis