=Hollywood=

Go for Justin's mesh, you can't go wrong with it, for the majority of the world Justin's stuff improves the elevation resolution...

One Word...FPS!well 3 actually but the bottom line is that the current system is so bogged down in back compatibility it's hurting FPS and optimization and the whole development process...people already have a heads up that FSX SDK developed stuff should likely be ok for FS11 so devs have 3-4 years to get compliant...bottom line is that it shouldn't be an issue, *if* devs are smart enough to plan for the future...instead of backwards compatibility from FS perhaps devs should be focused on forward thinking and compatibility... ;-)if they want something in sim, instead of tweaking and doing something non standard perhaps they could submit a feature request to ACES?

Just wondering what everyone's preference for scenery would be in FS in a perfect world (where all the world has high quality and color balanced imagery for most of the globe)...Would you prefer streaming scenery into the sim that is photoreal and also would have a better autogen system based on real world building footprints? A Google Earth type of solution...orWould you prefer a system like the current system of vector polygons and landclass?orWould you prefer a hybrid of the two?Please note this is not a question I'm asking for personal reasons, this is with regards to the FS franchise as a whole...

hahahaha, that doesn't include the 5m DEMs lol...still, good employment for the next 20-50 years lol...

GeoTiffs already have the projection and lat/lon information encoded in them...There's a free program around that can extract the header information called libgeotif or libgeotiff...There's other programs around that can work with GeoTiffs as well...seamless.usgs.gov is a good place for free imagery, public domain so no worries about copyright or licensing etc, just have to follow the USGS guidelines on credit...e.g.Source of National Elevation Dataset: U.S. Geological Surveyor...U.S. Geological Survey National Elevation Dataset used in compiling this product.the above example is for elevation data...I believe that seamless can allow you to download GeoTiffs as well but I think they're all UTM NAD83 projected and need to be reprojected to Geo WGS84...

...to cover the entire landmass in the world with 1m photoscenery at 85% quality...I estimate...126,510,578,267,602 bytes123,545,486,590 kilobytes120,649,889 megabytes117,822 gigabytes115 terabytesJust in case anyone wanted to know...halve that for 70% quality settings on the render with full LOD...

Christian, sent you an important pm...

You know being a developer really gives you a perspective that others don't have because most of what is in the pipeline is under Non Disclosure Agreements...If you only knew what was being worked on and had been in the process of development these rants would be rendered useless and foolish...Everyone I know is developing for FSX...Might I remind the community that it took at least a year of FS??-FS2004 for SDK's to come out, hardly ANY addons came out in that time except from those talented coders who could figure things out without having the SDK's...Also FSX has been a huge improvement and each version of FS usually sees some core feature re-written... e.g. Clouds, Terrain etc...I agree with the post about hearing the same thing every 3 years or so, I wish I could archive this thread and pull it out again when FS11 comes out and people start the usual cycle of FS__ was better than FX__ blah blah blah...After 23 years of flight simming these conversations are nothing new, but I think more and more of us have been through the process and it'd be wise for the younger generations of FS users who have only been with the franchise for 1-2 releases to really pay attention to what we have to say...You will see amazing improvements to FSX, already the ground and flight environment addons that will be coming out for FSX look amazing. Expect to see some amazing things in the AI world, the terrain world and many other areas of FSX...Sorry but after less than a year of being on the market it's not yet time to make these rash type of statements about the new version... Never has been, never will be...

Thanks Michael, but I need something I can do myself as it's for a commercial release and don't want the user to have to manually install it...What I want is to be able to drop the files into a specially created directory and have it also add the entry to scenery.cfg transparently...I'm already down to only a 50% cut of the release revenue so I need to be able to learn how to parse the files myself and create my own install routine I can run at install time...

rapid deco on an interisland flight between the hawaiian islands...oh wait one of the airlines may not like that one

Can anyone give any clues as to how to create a batch file or something that can parse the scenery.cfg file and add new scenery into a users scenery library?I've got some scenery ready for release but the only drawback is knowing which registry keys to look for for the FSX folder as well as being able to parse the scenery.cfg file to add the scenery into the users library...e.g.I want to add the folders c:....Flight Simulator XFSDreamscapesScenery into their scenery.cfg file...

Recently the TanDEM-X satellites were launched which is basically a pair of srtm style satellites which will map the earth constantly with radar...Looking forward to seeing basically srtm data at about 5-15m horizontal spacing being available in future...Hopefully with a full time SRTM style pair of satellites up there high res terrain for the whole earth will one day be available...Only thing is, I wonder how much their pricing will be once the data starts flowing through, how processed will the data be, how many holes and voids? Being that it's twin satellites I believe they have said a lot of the voids can be eliminated, so we'll see what happens in coming years...I know I'm excited about the possibility though...

Hey Luis,I noticed in FSX that it appears that the default mesh has huge shifts in the elevation data, particularly in australia where it is several hundred meters off, also noticed it had been very oversampled and a lot of the detail lost...comparing my own renders with that of the FSG mesh, both our meshes' lined up correctly... i believe the default FSX mesh is very far off but i say that tentatively without having heard from Adam on how the terrain was rendered...Basically tho I did compare an area of SRTM rendered data, default FSX data and 6 foot elevation sampling and the SRTM2 data lined up correctly with the ultra high res data whereas the default mesh displayed a shift...Comparing the SRTM2 FTP data against data from a GPS the figures appeared to be correct... A lot comes down to accuracy of geodetic data in aligning the datasets when comparing them to the real world... but that's a totally different subject lol...Not sure if this helps with the issues you've described above with the shift in data you've seen for your SRTM renders, but personally I don't trust the default elevation data's accuracy, simply because I'd seen such a huge shift in positional accuracy in australia and it was evidenced by a road that was on the side of a known mountain rather than along the top of the ridge line...(edit) I also just looked at the image compare you posted above and you can actually see the error in the default pic along the right hand side as you see a cliff face near the waterline... this is indicative that the elevation data has slid past the coastline and is being 'crushed' by an ocean/water flatten... the granite cliff face shouldn't be there in that rendering of the island, hence i suspect that the SRTM rendering is correct rather than the default FSX mesh...

umm MSFT is working on 7cm per pixel imagery for a lot of the coverage described as well as doing the 3d buildings based on obliques... of course i can't confirm this as this comes from geospatial sources but that is what i've heard from an geospatial company.

yeah the version 2 on the ftp server was correct and didn't contain any pixel shift.it was just the seamless server that caused the issues

Actually I've seen the developers research pics and the shots in the sim are dead on to real world imagery...

Chas, the statement about the inbuilt sim video is where I start to wonder about the validity of the claims, although they may be true...The video part of FS only records position, altitude, pitch and heading information, it does not create a video file like an AVI or WMV or MOV file...I suspect you have somehow done something in your system that has given your system more room to breathe in running FSX but I don't believe that there is a panacea here...

Hi Paul, Mike, Adam and the rest of the gang ;-)You'll probably see this in an inbox somewhere too ;-)I've been collating a lot of GIS data and came across something tonight that could be a really cool addition to the FS franchise if perhaps down the track FS was to implement physx support...If per se FS implemented physx support water would be the main aspect of the sim that could make the FS world very very dynamic...From waterfalls, to tides to river flow and flood data, the ability to see dynamic water based on the physx engine would revolutionize the simming experience...I've been digging around at the USGS site and came across http://waterdata.usgs.gov which has water flow data for a lot of areas in the United States... Not sure how much worldwide data is available...Everything from flood data and water flow and height data is available, and could be incorporated into a 'real world hydro' download link that would work similar to the real world weather system...Some of the key benefits of implementing a physx based water system in FS11/12 would be:* The ability to also incorporate worldwide bathymetric data (i.e. ocean, lake and stream floor data...) With LIDAR projects expanding at an exponential rate and state governments creating 2.5m LIDAR based DEM models that have all drainage and slopes accurately modelled by the time we reach FS11 or 12 there should be a substantial base data set available to see realistic water systems in FS...* On top of that the sim could be expanded to also create new plug in simulator systems... We're talking mariner and submariner simulation, the ability to sail on the ocean surface as well as go below the surface of the ocean...FS has so much potential to become more of a global simulation system, not only modelling flight but also transportation systems (roads/rail), shipping/boating, and also orbital space...If FS's base earth system was used and 'plug-ins' were used for simconnect then the possibilities of not only aviation simulation would be possible, but also many many other forms of simulation... With 2m dem data and accurate vector roads and flat roads being modelled on high resolution DEM data it is now possible to drive up the side of a mountain, with switchbacks and all... No worries about sharp elevation changes with non-fractional elevation points...I believe that FS is almost at the dawn of a new revolution, one in which not only flight simulation is modelled, but also ground and water simulation as well...The other benefit with physx would be with the modelling of air systems, this would allow weather to become dynamically generated, with weather systems being possible (again LIDAR data for air movements and currents can be used), and even the possibility of hurricanes and tornados then become possible in sim...I know I've always been on the edge of looking at the future of MSFS and what may be possible tomorrow and seeing what can be done today... Some of these ideas can be implemented now if I can find a talented programmer who knows about simconnect... Some other smaller scale ideas are also possible, such as modelling seasons on a daily basis based off averages of world climate data and ice/snow cover data...I've got a lot of projects on the backburner now, and once I get my initial high res projects done I want to branch out into expanding FS in ways that haven't ever been seen before...Anyway just a few thoughts from an old time FS user, and futurist...Dean...

I'm still trying to figure out the process I'm using, so I don't really have a lot of details yet, probably your best bet is to use Slarti by Jim Keir tho...

Hmmm, I ran some more tests last night and I think I found a major bug with the Australian FSX default mesh... It's about 200-300m off :(No matter, easily fixed, but I'm wondering now if the vector data might have the same problem, I'll have to double check it tonight...I'll post a screenie tonight to show just how far off the default mesh is...

Hey again Holger...I did originally start writing this reply saying I had had partial success with one of my tests, with the other half yet to come... But I didn't quite get as far as finishing off those thoughts...Upon reaching the end of the successful first part of the test I then has some more ideas on other tests to run, so I switched over to my GIS tools and ran some further tests...Well, at the end of it all, I am very very very happy and excited to say that my entire set of tests worked exactly as expected and more than that I'm very pleased with the results... I have only one more tweak to the setup to do but if that goes well I'll be satisfied...Thanks for your help though Holger, just having your responses spurred me to put on my thinking cap further and allowed me to find the answer I was looking for...This should be a cool little project that I'm sure everyone will like when she's done...

Hey Holger, :-)Firstly I need to thank you for all the help you gave way back when I was doing photoscenery development tests... Your help and advice proved invaluable, and back then I was only a hack at the whole terrain/photoscenery... I wouldn't be working on the stuff I am now if it hadn't been for your input and advice that you gave so freely... You're an excellent teacher and I know a lot of us in the community both appreciate and respect you for your character and willingness to help others...Yeah I found the same thing with photoshop, doesn't like 16bit RAW (grr)... I seemed to remember back in the days of GTOPO30 that we used to be able to use greyscale images and edit the data, but that was sooooo long ago and a different DEM system...Anyway onto another subject temporarily (almost related)...I was working last night on trying to figure out the best way to fill a void in one region, and while using a combination of blackart, globalmapper inerpolated files at 10m resolution along with 90m resolution, as well as srtm30 data layering them and playing with trasparency on the layers, I still didn't quite get what I was looking for...My next step is to have a look at slarti because from what Jim has shown me before it looks like it does a very good job... He also has it working in the way I would have gone about doing it, i.e. adding in elevation points across the void and then interpolating from there...I've manually interpolated some of the voids to look better than globalmapper alone can do, but I'm reaching a point where I'm filling the void one pixel in at a time, and I'm almost at the point where the technique I'm using isn't going to work for many more samplings...Someone on this earth needs to invent an elevation model/formula that is based on RGB or CMYK values, or at least that can produce a 16, 24 or 32 bit RGB raster image that can then be manipulated in graphics software... Exported and then recompiled to a normal dem file...The system could work like:R,G,B0,0,0 = -32xx7128,128,128 = 0255,255,255 = 32xx7(I forget the exact values for the numbers)... But basically there's a lookup table for the values and the program then processes the Raster RGB image pixels and can interpolate values in between... It's an idea still being formulated in my mind, so the exact specs of the system are ones that would need to be worked out...Basically I envision something like:0,0,00,0,10,0,2...253,255,255254,255,255255,255,255With 128,128,128 being at sea level... So any values below 128,128,128 are below sea level, and any value above 128,128,128 is above sea level...0,0,0 = index 0128,128,128 = index 2097152255,255,255 = index 16777216If then we use the values of what are the highest and lowest terrain altitudes on earth (i.e. lowest below sea level - allows for bathy data and the highest being the top of mount everest) and then determining the elevations between both extents (probably have to use bathy values as the ocean is deeper than the terrain is above the water surface), then we can assign the lowest bathy elevation to 0,0,0 and sea level to 128,128,128 etc etc etc)...Now as I think about it I see one flaw in that process and that would be it may be better to use CMYK... More on that later, I'm thinking too hard...I'll do some more research into the possibilities, I have one idea that might work... I just need to find the tools again to extract the geotiff header info again...What I am trying to figure out (just on a thought tangent), is what process did the ACES team go through with their SRTM mesh... I did a comparison of some mesh I was testing last night and the FSX default mesh... The FSX default has lost soooo much detail it almost seems like the mesh was merged with a lower quality DEM... i.e. 90m SRTM merged and interpolated with 250m DEM but then rendered at LOD9...Anyway that's enough to think about in one post... Will do some more tests tonight... If I can find a way to do what I want to do I'll be a very happy camper...

Okay here's the deal...I have some SRTM data I'm wanting to bring in to Photoshop so that I can edit elevations visually, save it back out as a file and then re-import that data into Globalmapper to re-render out a prepared geotiff for running through resample.exe.Now I can get the file into photoshop okay (save as BIL, rename to .raw and open in Photoshop) tweak it in Photoshop and then I save out the file as a RAW file and rename to .bil... Globalmapper is not liking the reworked bil and I'm obviously missing a step somewhere...Now if the process is similar to Geotiff I'm suspecting I'll need to extract header information for the RAW file before use in photoshop and plug it back in once the editing is done?Does anyone know if this is possible or if there's another format that can be used to visually go from Globalmapper to Photoshop and back to Globalmapper?If I can get this process to work then I'll be a very happy camper...Note the end result is I need to edit elevation data visually in Photoshop (can't use other programs for a very specific reason), and save it back out and be able to bring it back in to Globalmapper with elevation data being read from the file...

try turning off bloom, aircraft self shadowing and all water 2.0 effects (basically all shader 2 effects)...Also turn off your autogen (for now) and push your mesh and terrain texture details all the way up...Use clouds at default and keep you AI at low or minimum (maybe even off for now)...Then take a look at your frame rates...I have a P4 2.4 with 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9800Pro and I'm getting rock solid 20fps (locked) with those basic settings...Basically Autogen, AI and Shader 2 effects are the frame rate killers... If you keep them off or set at very low I'm sure you'll find FSX more than enjoyable...

>Hi Holger,>>I have here perhaps the final correction to the above offered>corrections for the current seamless 3 arc sec SRTM. After>observation of several another samples, it seems that there>are missing two data lines causing the positioning problem,>one vertical at Greenwich meridian>>>and the second horizontal, but not at the equator, but>surprisingly at the parallel N01>>>>So the correction for the coordinates depending at the>position on the Earth should be>>ULXMAP : = ULXMAP + sign(lon)*0.00041667 (west minus, east>plus)>>ULYMAP : = ULYMAP + sign( lat