Randall: 7.5m resolution TS2 scenery...

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

Randall,HOW IN THE WORLD :-) can this be achieved? I thought Fly!II and Terrascene 2 supported 7.5m resolution not just for DEMs but also for textures. Do you know if it's possible?I'm Terrascening (new verb ;-)) Maine and would like to add additional details around some of the major airports. I created a pretty good aerial image but when I want to paste them onto the Terrascene generated .TGA file, I have to reduce them so much that the resolution is awful. I've selected 7.5m in the Project options. Am I missing something?Thanks,Alejandro AmigorenaCheshire, CTFly! II Beta Team MemberAthlon XP 1800ABIT KR7A-RAID768Mb RAMMSI GeForce4 Ti4600 8xAGP 128MBSB Audigy GamerCH Flight Yoke USBCH Pro Pedals USBhttp://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/banneraa.jpg

[RandallR 444]

Alejandro,Yes, the default Fly! II textures and the TerraScene default texture pack simulate a 7.5 meters/pixel resolution.If you are adding aerial images that are lower in resolution than that, they will actually have to be expanded to fit the scene - they will pixelize and soften. If you add an image =/or higher than 7.5 m/p, it will match or have to be reduced (compressed in physical size) to line up. If this is the case, the image quality should be enhanced or appear superior to the standard textures.Now, this is just based on my experience with working with graphics. I have not experimented personally with adding high-res sat or aerial images to Fly! II - all of my work has been done with the TS textures or adaptations I have made to them by adding a color layer. I did make an interesting discovery when editing the rendering textures - the library texture images are actually moderate quality JPEG images. When combined in the rendering process, they produce 7.5 m/p TGA files. When I created new textures by editing the originals, I started with the original 953x953 JPEG image, edited it and saved it as a PSD project in Photoshop while adjusting it. When satisfied, I saved a new copy as a "good" quality JPEG, which compressed the size back down to the average 300K image. There was no noticeable quality loss between the originals and my adaptations.In the case of adding overlays to edited images, you would be working with the higher-resolution TGA files. I know that you can actually increase the resolution above 7.5 in TerraScene for custom scenery (not using any TS textures, of course). The more you do this the more likely it will have a negative affect on frame-rates. You really need to talk with someone who has generated satellite and aerial-based imagery for Fly! II. Considering the fantastic So-Cal scenery, the results can be astounding with the proper techniques - I just don't know all of the procedures.

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

Randall,Thanks for your response.Each of my TGAs for a global tile weighs in at around 819Mb. Can you tell whether it's a 15m or 7.5m file based on this?Maybe I have to much resolution on the aerial picture...I'll take a look at the SoCal scenery and compare the resolutions of the .RAW files.Take care,Alejandro AmigorenaCheshire, CTFly! II Beta Team MemberAthlon XP 1800ABIT KR7A-RAID768Mb RAMMSI GeForce4 Ti4600 8xAGP 128MBSB Audigy GamerCH Flight Yoke USBCH Pro Pedals USBhttp://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/banneraa.jpg

[RandallR 444]

819MB is about average for 7.5m/p - 15m/p would be much smaller.

[Guest BOB_J]

Just some points...1 - I think that 7.5m/pix resolution is just fine for flying as low as 4000/5000 feet AGL. The following is that's you can expect with ortho 10m SPOT imagery, resized and refined for 7.5m, aniso 4 (nvidia) : http://pro.wanadoo.fr/marieclaude.jeannot/...y!/pyrenees.htm2 - You should use good algorithm for resizing, down and up. This is not always the case with some program better designed for icons than gis photos. Lanczos if fine, S-Spline is the best I've experienced for upsize and refine ortho imagery. 3 - See the pix image counts! 16000x16000 pix at 7.5m/pix is equal to 120km x 120km, a tile dimension, so expect to see a little more, effectively. 4 - The otherwise fine HITW textures should be matched with ones produced by referenced orthophotos before a Terrascene "final" work and blending process. Remember they may be generic for a whole land class and there's some tweaking to do here. In this example case, the generic farmland textures are oversized for the country with the current land cover scheme : pro.wanadoo.fr/marieclaude.jeannot/sitefly!/comparaison.jpg5 - Use some sort of anisotropic filtering in the graphic card functions and parameters, the improvement is uge.7 - Using more detailled textures will produce considerable increase in the amount of data if we use non-generic scenery. Remember : 2 in res is equal to 4 in size, 3.3Go a .tga for a globe tile if the 4.7m/pixel is used. friendly

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

Bob,Thanks a lot for the info but WHERE CAN I GET THOSE SCENERIES? Just in case you ask... ALL OF THEM!I'm using Mapquest's aerial imaging to create a big file that I then paste on top of the TGA. The problem is that a) I don't think they are orthocorrected and :( in some cases they are a little bit blurry.In prior attempts I've had to rotate the image 1 or 1/2 a degree and when I do this the resolution becomes really poor. I'll take a look at Lanczos and S-Spline (if I can get a hold of them).Thanks again, and PLEASE tell me where to get those fabulous sceneries.Alejandro AmigorenaCheshire, CTFly! II Beta Team MemberAthlon XP 1800ABIT KR7A-RAID768Mb RAMMSI GeForce4 Ti4600 8xAGP 128MBSB Audigy GamerCH Flight Yoke USBCH Pro Pedals USBhttp://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/banneraa.jpg

[Guest Colins2]

Alejando,S-Spline is fantastic, the results are unbelievable.I don't have the link but I found it first hit on google.As usual, there is a demo version that lets you play, but not save.Colin

[RandallR 444]

Great stuff! Thanks for all the info!

[Guest BOB_J]

With photo sceneries, no real solution to compress without loss... I think "normal" transfer operation possible with FLY!, but with FLY!II, I should buy DVR writer and tons of plastic! ADSL is just a dream in our beloved rural Are you alone in the dark... No! generate those sceneries isn't as simple as it gets, but is in no way impossible, even for a "glass fitted" senior of the fifties (the best ones, hi) such as me.The battle plan :0 - You've color orthorectified (SPOT5 or others) photos : you're lucky, play spygame or/and have plenty of money (so why the "0" quote for this occurance!). All you need is the purposely built-in FLY! editor. 1 - US : search for digital orthophoto quadrangle (DOQ, DOQQ) and ortho imagery.2 - Europe : the nima freely deliver 10m SPOT georeferenced ortho for most of the Europe.Assemble orthos with Photoshop or the Gimp, etc... , resize (i.e. 133.33.. % for 10m to 7.5) and sharpen with S-Spline, colorize with ColorBMP, go for around 850Mo .tga a tile, slice and enjoy! Some 8 bits black and white conversion and .bmp save everytime a program don't understand another, but it's routine...A typical config I use for ColorBMP (be sweet with cursors, colors should blend nicely, such as aromas in a good wine) :Colors (Index) 150102 42 Color set (click spots on Color) From top to bottom : Hue Sat. 0.00 0.000.11 0.18 0.10 0.10 0.16 0.07 0.25 0.15 0.40 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 luminance stdWhy photo sceneries of mountaineous areas : 1 - best visual aspect without precise elevations datas 2 - Precise elevations are difficult to obtain outside USThe imperial, sorry, presidential way : generic scenery with embedded road and cities textures, and of course photo tiles of mountains, so to be clear, just modelling terrain around networks and rabbit's nests for flat areas. Of course, not to mention unmodded far distance textures (not really bad with wide med-res ones circle), mixing process of the "layers" is the problem... Why generic? because most of HITW textures are great and others can be build for adequate representation of wide areas with reduced data amount.

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

Bob,This info is great (and I really mean it) BUT what about the sceneries? Where can I get them? :-) :-) :-)Take care,Alejandro AmigorenaCheshire, CTFly! II Beta Team MemberAthlon XP 1800ABIT KR7A-RAID768Mb RAMMSI GeForce4 Ti4600 8xAGP 128MBSB Audigy GamerCH Flight Yoke USBCH Pro Pedals USBhttp://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/banneraa.jpg

[Guest BOB_J]

These home made sceneries should be considered as "experimental" and the method too... I don't have at present time the required DVD writer! In fact I'm working "hard" on a workstation with enough RAM to overcome problems with files well over the Go. But as I have said in the last msg, you can do the job quite easily by yourself.Even if you don't have professionnal gis program access, you may use std graphic tools for the assemblies. I have released some explanations in French I can translate (try to... hi), such as how to best use nima server and Photoshop ressources, but it's essentially for convenience, so with a little practice, you can do the same. Nevertheless I can help you if you desire. You already have the ColorBMP parameters, for S-Spline, I suggest the above settings if you "down dive" deep into panchro SPOT 10m imagery sport : algorithm S-Spline (of course!), resize to 133.33 %, intensity 1, radius 1.5 or 2