Flight Unlimited vs Megascenery

[adams 1]

There is avaiable a flyable demo at :www.megascenery.comin the downloads area. For those, who would like to test it (15 690 MB). B.Adamski

[Guest Seadog]

You might be interested in reading a review of MegaScenery Vol. 3, Northern California, discussing many of the issues raised in this thread and indicating that the underlying technology may have improved since the first volume, Southern California, was released. Find it at http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/review/mega3.htm-Seadog

[Christopher Low 5,352]

So, does anyone know if the scenery files are in a standard format that could be used in FU3 ?Chris Low.

[Lars Peter 0]

Hello.So, does anyone know if the scenery files are in a standard format that could be used in FU3 ?I Would not think so.In that case it will be a miracle.Flight unlimited series is all in all build on old software from 1995and that includes the FU3.The LG. people was very clever to use all advanteges of all new software for the last realease, but now today the tecknicks of software and systems is different.To make a flight eviroment and detailed graphicks there are mutch moreand other standards today.That means that the developers of software and programmers has a hugetask to solve when it comes to the secret "making an open flightsim,-With a resolution as FU3 series-An interactive ATC, and real lift and real turbulence weather.And real frictions on the ground "SEE seaplanes and crosswind landings"Then it is compatible for any flights.Take care.Lars Peter.:-wave

[Hans_Petter 1]

FS seems to use multi-layered bmp images for aerial photo scenery textures. Here's a screenshot of a freeware scenery texture:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/87084.jpgThere are seven instances of the same bitmap, each one smaller than the previous one. Agtim, what do you think?Hans Petter

[agtim 0]

Hi Hans,It seems that they use 7 levels, FU3 is using 8 levels and when reducing scale they merge more squares together. this here is another technique, about the same as for the mip maps used with our models.The 3D engine of FU3 is very complex and elaborated but the primary input format for a texture is very simple. You need just a square of 4096 by 4096 pixels in TARGA format using Sanfran or Seattle palette. That's all. The levels are then built using my program Genquadrant. Do no longer produce cpd files with poor resolution and bad colors but all level in .bin format works fine, see UK region.From your sample take the square having a resolution of 4 meters per pixel and put as many squares together to have a megatile of 4096x4096 then you are ready to convert to FU3 palette and convert your first megatile using GenQuadrant.I have compared parts of the UK megascennery with our UK and have found that there is another problem - the texture is not an ortho rectified picture so the square you get from MSFS will not be a real terrain square of 16384m by 16384m but rather a trapeze format with 16384m at the bottom and 15897m at the top but still displayed as 4096x4096, that means the scale is not constant over the region ! In FU2/3 scale is constant over the region, compared to the real world this is wrong, but quicker to process and display.A merge of FU3 megatiles with such Megatiles is near impossible, but if you make a new region using MSFS squares only then you will not recognize the small distortion. Try it :-)

[Guest Seadog]

>FS seems to use multi-layered bmp images for aerial photo>scenery textures. >>Hans Petter>The review to which I referred on the flightsim website does in fact clearly state that MegaScenery uses bitmap images, if that's of any use to you. The rest of this is way beyond my pay grade.;-) -Seadog

[Hans_Petter 1]

Well, it's sort of "beyond my pay grade" too but I know this,The latest version of FS (2004/Century of Flight) tends to use DXT bitmaps. These are multi-layer or multi-channel bitmaps that can't be viewed with a basic image editor. Aircraft get sheen and reflections with DXT bitmaps, water textures get glare and reflections and scenery texture bitmaps may have several low-grade layers for distant view. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that we're dealing with multi-layer BMPs, pretty much like the multi-layered GIFs that are being used for simple looping animations.In any event, recent versions of FS use BMP -- either in a basic or a more advanced flavor. Previous versions of FS used AF textures which are bitmaps without a separate, embedded palette for each image. This seems to be identical / parallel to our situation since we need "global" palettes for aircraft and scenery textures.Hans Petter

[Guest R_Driscoll]

So the answer to Chris' question is yes! then? At least for an approximate solution, any BMP could be converted to a TGA, rescaled if necessary and cut into 4096 squares, run through agtim's genquadrant and draped over a terrain. I'm not volunteering, but in principle its easy thanks to agtim's work. But the devil is in the detail - matching lat/long, terrain classification, palette optimisation, making the region.cfg file etc. So I'm not volunteering ...RobD.

[Guest Seadog]

Of perhaps significant interest, MegaScenery announced it will release in October vol. 4, Pacific Northwest; see the announcement and screenshots athttp://www.megascenery.com/vol4-us-full.htmAlso, there's a new page with additional details about some of the new technologies used, including a "MegaCity" feature for display of cities; see,http://www.megascenery.com/enhancements.htmI thought some of you might be particularly interested in those technical details. -Seadog

[JimmiG 244]

"Megacity" is nothing more than higher-detail source images used for cities. The source images for the rest of the scenery is still 5m so once you get sick of flying back and fourth over downtown Seattle you'll have the same-quality textures as the previous sceneries. I suppose they can't afford to use even 2-4m source data for the rest of the landscape like FU3. I've been browsing through the shots but it's hard to tell if it looks better than FU3 without being able to actually fly over it inside FS - what is for sure is that the area that is covered is much bigger than FU3 - this scenery *will* include the coast as well as Mt. St. Helens but sadly not Portland or the Columbia River.