98 replies to this topic

[Jayhawk]

Woo.....l'll try that when Iam off next weekend ....looks cool...

Is it hard to make your on PhotoScenery I mean is it hard to learn??

Edited by Jay, 23 July 2004 - 05:23 AM.

[silentghost]

how do u open gimp, i cant find it please help!

[Timsher]

silentghost, on Aug 10 2004, 11:03 PM, said:

how do u open gimp, i cant find it please help!

You have to download it from gimp.org ...

Download the Windows version here
http://www2.arnes.si...imp/stable.html
Download and install GTK+ and then download and install gimp 2.0

It should be in your start menu after all that

[Fox]

Great tutorial Timsher! I'm working on some scenery for washington.... I thought I found a good spot in FS but when I look at the photo real textures its like a huge city!!!

[flying_eagle]

norwegian_hawk, on Jul 22 2004, 04:14 PM, said:

digitalglobe.com own QuickBird. Eurimage.com sell the imagery (supposedly). Infoterra-global.com sell the imagery for sure. I ordered some recently     . Expect Photo-real Norway soon!

Photoreal Norway!?  

Hawk, your the man!   

[norwegian_hawk]

I wish I was... I made an enquiry and found it would cost £7m to buy 4m-pixel photos. Am very annoyed... I'd happily pay up to say £3000 but no way can anyone afford £7m! Just how do those photoscenery addon companies do it??

[norwegian_hawk]

But I will most likely be releasing my Jotunheimen scenery with 9.6m (LOD12) terrain mesh. This won't display anywhere near full res in FS9 but who cares.

[Timsher]

norwegian_hawk, on Aug 13 2004, 01:28 PM, said:

I wish I was... I made an enquiry and found it would cost £7m to buy 4m-pixel photos. Am very annoyed... I'd happily pay up to say £3000 but no way can anyone afford £7m! Just how do those photoscenery addon companies do it??

Are you saying 7 Million pounds?  

[norwegian_hawk]

I certainly am saying 7 million pounds - 7,700,000 actually. That is, 11 or so million dollars. To me that is beyond extortionate! Even payware like Switzerland Pro with its huge price tag would take forever to pay that back. Even if I made it payware at £500 a copy I'd need to sell 15,400 copies to get the money back. Unbelievable!

[flying_eagle]

norwegian_hawk, on Aug 14 2004, 03:43 AM, said:

I certainly am saying 7 million pounds - 7,700,000 actually. That is, 11 or so million dollars. To me that is beyond extortionate! Even payware like Switzerland Pro with its huge price tag would take forever to pay that back. Even if I made it payware at £500 a copy I'd need to sell 15,400 copies to get the money back. Unbelievable!

11Millions!!?

:jawdrop::jawdrop: :jawdrop:

Btw, now anyone can see why MS aren't including photoreal scenery for the whole world!

[bkahuna]

I emailed Timsher about this, but thought I would post my question here as well in case others are wondering about this.

In step 2 of the tutorial it says, "Open up your B&W satellite JPEG in Irfanview and click image, resize. Reduce the file size to 25% (equivalent to 4m, the max FS9 can handle)".

My question is...

What image size was selected in USA Photo Maps? I assume it was either 8m or 4m.  If the downloaded map was at 8m and then resized to 25%, wouldn't that be 2m?  Shouldn't it only be reduce 50%?  Or if the scale in USA Photo Maps was set to 4m, I would think you shouldn't have to reduce it at all.

Perhaps my thinking is messed up here.  Can anyone clear this up for me?

Thanks.

[norwegian_hawk]

It's ok - very common mistake to make, my maths teacher back in school used to get this wrong! It's because it's a 2D image. If it was a 1D line, 8m long, then 8 x 0.25 = 2.
But it is 2D, it is a flat area. So 8m x 8m = 64 metres squared. x 0.25 = 16m which is the same as 4m x 4m.  
The rule to remember is: Area scale factor is the linear scale factor squared.
So 8 x 0.5 = 4m. But 8 squared has to be multiplied by 0.25 which is 0.5 squared.
Tell me if I make no sense... I assure you it's right!

And Flying Eagle - I think that photoscenery is made by aerial (plane based) survey not satellite data... I know that the VFR photoscenery for the UK was. I wish they'd ###### well hurry up and survey Norway!

[Timsher]

The answer is a little more simple  

When you run bigjpeg it produces a Jpeg file with 1m resolution no matter what resolution you were viewing it in usa maps (unless you were looking at 8m or greater then it will save it at 8m...)

The max FS2004 can handle is ~ 4.7m (don't know where I got that number from but thats my understanding)  So in order to make the Jpeg easier to work with I recommend you reduce the resolution by a 4th (eg if the original size was 400x400, reduce it to 100x100)

This is only a recommendation but it will reduced the file size to about 1/16th (that's where the math part comes in) it's original size while retaining the highest resolution that fs can handle (which makes life a whole lot easier for people like me with only 512mb of ram).

Edited by Timsher, 14 August 2004 - 01:11 PM.

[norwegian_hawk]

That's right, FS can't display anything smaller than 4.8m. A shame, as the one big fault in FS is the lack of a sense of scale. Makes all my mountains look small  

[bkahuna]

Ok... I now see The USA Map program always saves at a 1m resolution.

The only part I'm still confused about is Timshir said "The max FS2004 can handle is ~ 4.7m" and norwegian_hawk said "That's right, FS can't display anything smaller than 4.8m".

Is it larger or smaller?  And are you refering to meters/pixel or 4.7m or a files size of 4.7 meg?

I'm starting to get it, but I'm still a little confused.  

[Timsher]

Meters per pixel   , (the largest file I've worked with was 2 gigs   )

[bkahuna]

Ok, I got KOSU (OSU airport in Columbus) added in, however the runway is misaligned.

>> Click here to view the runway <<


Any suggestions on how to fix it?

[Timsher]

Yes, and your not going to like it, it's something that I did not know when I did this tutorial.

It call reprojecting the area and it goes a bit beyond the scope of this tutorial, however if I ever write a version 2.0 I will make sure and include it.

(Note, do not color the scenery before you reproject it, because I have not found a way to regain color afterward; If anyone else has please post it here I need to know badly )

tutorial on how to reproject here
http://www.digitalgr..._with_erdas.htm

and a link to one piece of the software (the rest you need are listed in the tutorial)
http://gis.leica-geo...ownloadsPVT.asp

[bkahuna]

Boy, this is starting to get complicated.  

[bkahuna]

Well, I tried the reprojecting and helped a little.  That is runway is now parallel to to one built in to FS2k4, but it's still off a lille in the North/South Latitude.

Humm... wonder what to do now?