Elevation Model

[Macflyer 2]

Hi Fly!ers,in my ambition to learn more about Fly! scenery and the goal to create some scenery I would like to ask which elevation model originally is used in Fly!2? I understand that the later SRTM data must be higher resolution but compared to the original scenery by which factor?and my most important question? what would be the easiest way to put in rivers and streets for vfr flying? is there a data set which can be imported with the fly! editor?

[Guest danieletona]

Hi Macflyer,the original relief of FLY! it has a resolution of 900 meters (GTOPO30 or DTED0). The SRTM have a resolution of 90 meters!!!!The more way "easy" to import the rivers and the streets is to realize a scenery.Dan

[Guest tlc8126]

Dan, when you say "realize" do you mean to import a real photograph? VFR flight with terrascene'd terrain seems to work fine. Importing real satellite imagery has always seemed to be a pain (you have to 'find' it first, then scale it, position it just right, then import it). In the end, you may end up with a bunch of colored squares that only look good at 10,000 feet AGL!Remember, you have no 'scenery import' utility on the Mac like you do on the PC. If you want to import satellite imagery into a Mac version of Fly! or Fly! II you have to start on the PC and copy the data files to your Macintosh - thats how I get my TerraScene terrain on my iMac!Can you rephrase what you meant? Thanks.Thomas C.P.S. Does anyone know how to get rid of the misaligned DEM elevations between globetiles that cause 'holes' in the terrain? Does the elevation data for various globetiles have to be 'matched' for the different levels of detail (LOD) in the data directory files before being pod'd? Or is there a utility that has come out that allows us to have multiple pod files checked for matching elevations at the edges of adjacent globetiles for the various levels of detail, which can also re-pod the corrected data?

[Guest danieletona]

Thomas, in FLY! there is not the possibility to only import the data of a river or a road (as in FS).Unfortunately you have to create a scenery with the three different images (water, night and day).The quality of the scenery is given by the graphic engine of FLY! (7,5 meters/pixel) and from the resolution of the image that you use.Dan

[Macflyer 2]

@Thomas: with combination "Apple key" + "E" you enter the editor in Fly!2 to import scenery.@Daniel: thanks for the explanations. Its really hard to do something to improve Fly!2 I guess. Is there a tut for satellite image scenery creation?

[Guest danieletona]

A tutorial to create sceneries with satellite image (A. Rubio (Fonchy)):http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=...y&CatID=trifly2A tutorial to work with the elevations:http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID...na&DLID=&Page=2Dan

[Guest Colins2]

Thomas,Fly!'s elevation model is not as simple as 900m spacing.The scale varies considerably from the equator northwards or southwards.Fly!'s earth model is a sort of Mercator projection which means that the latitude scale is varied to allow for the convergence of the meridians.Fly! divides the world into a 256 x 256 grid of globe tiles.Thus at the equator the size of a globe tile is 360/256 = 1.40625

[Guest tlc8126]

Thanks Colin, I would like to get more information on this. But the problem I seem to be seeing has to do with distance and level of detail. I notice that if I am at 8000 Ft over my TerraScened Salt Lake City scenery, distant mountains have 'holes' for a few seconds along what appear to be the 4x4 grid lines for the files G00, G10, etc. Then suddenly these holes dissappear as if the scenery engine reloads a larger image of the data which maps the edge elevations to the same values - thus the edge of G00 and G01 now line up and the 'holes' dissapear. I wasn't sure if this was an issue with DEM data for a higher resolution mesh being out of sync along the edges with its neighbors. If the issue was that the data points along the edges of the elevation data were not the same spot as the neighbor tile I could see a problem. I am not sure I undertood what you said, but this doesn't seem to be the problem as only the east and west edges (the line of data runnning north and south) would be different from the next tile.Anyway, I'll print out what you said and if you can send me more information I'd appreciate it. (Does the Fly!Legacy documentation talk about this? I can download it by CVS if necessary.)Aloha'sThomas C.

[Macflyer 2]

Thanks for all infos.

[Macflyer 2]

Hi fly!ers,in my spare time I tried to find out how to create some scenery for Fly!2 and this thread is already 6 months old, but I think my research came to a point which limits my possibilities since I am non PPC Mac.Terrascene2 nor 3DEM with all the related tools (esp. FLY!slice doesn

[KenWood 5]

Well, I do not think that method one would work, since the "generic" globe tiles are most likely pretty much hard coded in (may support my idea as to why water areas in TerraScened areas do not always match up like they did in Fly!). All unpodding would do is just take up HDD space... I've not heard of anyone trying the TerraGen idea yet... You might give it a go and see what you come up with. Can TerraGen import / convert Tiger data (for updated roads, etc) as well as the Roads/rivers/hydro files from USGS? I will have to go to 3DCommune website and ask around the forum there to find out. I only recently DL'd TerraGen, but so far as I can tell, it only generates ground data scenes for image export and import into other 3D visual programs (Like Poser, Vue or Cinema 4D).IMHO - if you want VFR flight scenery, TerraScene and the USGS data files are pretty much the only real means of achieving the goal.Randall was kind enough to make a set of the USGS data files for me on DVDs, so I can always try to TerraScene areas for you. I myself am going back to hunting for necessary files for Alaska to begin some work on a Misty Fjords like scenery area(s)! Seems most of the area is gonna be shapefiles, though, so quite low resolution for elevations. :-( Am sure you recall that a full globetile is size prohibitive for uploading / downloading at AVSIM or most any other site.You may just have to break down and get a PC just powerful enough to run TerraScene... :-lol Heck, I was an avid Amiga user till all the companies stopped making their games / updates for Amiga and went strictly to PC. :-( Fortunately, I have the WinUAE Amiga emulator, so I can still enjoy my Amiga stuff (my A2000 barely works now).Ken Wood :-sun1http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/bannernewkw.jpgGateway 700X; Intel P4 2.4GHz; 512MB RAM; NVIDIA Ti4200 4X AGP 128MB; SB Audigy; Thrustmaster TopGun Fox 2 Pro Shock

[Macflyer 2]

Thanks Ken for the info :-)Well, I spent some time on searching the net for info on terragen. There are a lot of plugins around. But I don

[Macflyer 2]

Now its official: Fly!editor crashes after generating textures for maybe 3 globetiles.Of course there is processed data in the data folder according to the globetiles but in the sim it displays the default terrain.Maybe I need to make a pod manually, but I doubt that the effort pays off. Anyone any idea what to do?

[KenWood 5]

Darn! Sorry to hear the editor crashes. I do not see why the processed data in the data folder will not display, since that is where it would be pointing to in the pod file itself (i.e. normally resides in the data folder). More research needed, I guess... LOLOf course, did you try to make one single globetile for each area instead of (from what you wrote) - am guessing you tried to make three areas into one area? I have to go find more info on using the Alaska DEM data, since it is not the normal resolution expected. Sure wish Todd Klaus was still around to offer hints / tips/ ideas! Would be nice had HITW done some special Alaska textures, though the default stuff is not all that bad. Hopefully someoone will chip in with more ideas!Best!Ken Wood :-sun1http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/dfdg/bannernewkw.jpgGateway 700X; Intel P4 2.4GHz; 512MB RAM; NVIDIA Ti4200 4X AGP 128MB; SB Audigy; Thrustmaster TopGun Fox 2 Pro Shock

[Macflyer 2]

Sorry, missed this post of you.....Well, I don