FSX LOD19 photoscenery....worth the price ??

[mehmnoch]

Hi,

We have done a small airport with a LOD18 photosceney (LFOZ). For our next project, an airport near Paris at Pontoise (LFPT), we wanted to go higher, and i started to test some LOD 19 tiles.
BUT..... I wonder if it worth the price.... I mean the size in Mo of the scenery have increased so much....
On the screenshot, the small surrounded tile is a 36mo BMP. The surrounded aera of the airport is the aera for LOD19 resolution. As you can see i need at least 30 or 40 tiles....
Any advice ? Did anyone created such detailed airport (yes I can imagine), any feedback ?

Here you can see the difference between a lod18 tile and a lod19 :

Thanks.

 

[mehmnoch]

Hum maybe I should add that we have planned to use 2048 high resolution textures for the buildings... will that have a effect on performances, combined to the lod19 terrain resolution ?
Here is a screen of a building :

 

[arno]

Hi,

From my experience using a higher resolution for resample does hardly affect performance. So I would not worry about that.

So the question is if you think the extra size is worth the more detail. I think for parts where you are taxiing more detail photo scenery is worthwhile. Especially if you taxi directly on top of the resample layer.

If you don't get so close you won't see the difference and then you are better of with the lower resolution I think.

 

[ollyau]

Yeah, as Arno suggested, there's a bigger deal in regards to file size rather than performance probably.

 

[mehmnoch]

ok, thanks.
So...because we want to favor quality over size, I'll keep the lod19 option...looks like I'll have a lot of work the next few monthes

I'll keep the forum aware of our (hard) work.

 

[arno]

And if you decide to switch back later on it is not much work either. Just modify your INF file and restrict the maximum LOD you want to have. Should only take you a few seconds to change.

 

[hcornea]

My airport project was a combination of LOD18 60cm/px (surrounds) and LOD20 15cm/px (airport environs)

It depends whether the quality of the airport imagery is sufficient to warrant the fileszie.

IMO the "nested" option is best, with a central higher resolution area and an outer lower resolution area.

 

[mehmnoch]

sure, i've planned to make the extra surrounding (outside the red line in the screenshot) in lod 15 or 16, should be enough.

 

[ollyau]

My airport project was a combination of LOD18 60cm/px (surrounds) and LOD20 15cm/px (airport environs)

It depends whether the quality of the airport imagery is sufficient to warrant the fileszie.

IMO the "nested" option is best, with a central higher resolution area and an outer lower resolution area.

How can you nest different areas of photoscenery together like that?

Just compile twice, but include more area for the lower LOD one, and assume the high LOD BGL will take precedence where applicable?

 

[hcornea]

with the exception of the conflicting LODs

You need to force the compilation to JUST the higher LODs for the central area, or nul out the conflicting areas using a Null value.

 

[mehmnoch]

Interesting, hcornea.
Like Ollyau I was doing multiple resolution BGL for the aera, but leaving FSX dealing with the priority, depending of the name I gave to the BGL....
I'll try your method !

 

[arno]

Hi,

I haven't tried it, but assuming that your different imagery sources match well, I guess you could also make a BGL for the high resolution that only contains the extra LODs. For the other LODs it would fall back to your other resample BGL.

 

[hcornea]

The imagery needs to be the same, otherwise the changes as you fly over will be quite noticeable.

For this size imagery source it is quite do-able.

Having tools like globalmapper make it easy to sample a subset of your imagery and combine them so they are the same.

 

[HolgerSandmann]

Hi guys,

just a minor correction to Ian's post: 60-cm pixels are actually LOD16 compiled and 15-cm LOD18. And, personally, I don't think there's a need to go any higher as long as apron and taxi-/runways are modeled via standard FSX textures or custom ground polys.

Usually, if an image provider offers different resolutions they are from different sensors or dates. If the higher-resolution source happens to be more suitable to your needs (which isn't always the case!) then you may be able to negotiate with the provider for a down-sampled version of it at the same cost as the lower-resolution imagery (e.g., the provider sells you a 60-cm file of the 15-cm source). We've done that a number of times with our projects and it has worked out well.

Cheers, Holger

 

[GaryGB]

Excellent and practical info in this thread !


For those curious as to the upper limits of FSX for display of photo-real textures, Richard Ludowise (aka "rhumbaflappy") shared his tests with us here:


3.5cm per pixel

http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?p=152245

The sim is stated as having up to 7cm per pixel photoreal resolution. But the FSX.cfg file can be edited to force 3.5cm per pixel resolution:

[TERRAIN]
LOD_RADIUS=4.500000
MESH_COMPLEXITY=96
MESH_RESOLUTION=23
TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=[COLOR="Red"][B]30[/B][/COLOR]
AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
DETAIL_TEXTURE=1
WATER_EFFECTS=2

As to what good this does is another question. The radius of the LOD20 wouldn't even extend beyond the nose of a large jet... you would never see it from the cockpit!

Happy experimenting !

GaryGB

 

[ALain152]

LOD19 photoscenery....worth the price ??

In France, 30cm orthophotos and below are out of price. So for a freeware project of course it doesn't worth it.
But I guess that's none of your business and you don't feel concerned with licencing...

 

[arno]

But I guess that's none of your business and you don't feel concerned with licencing...

Well if you want to distribute your scenery you always have to be concerned about the licensing. And that can indeed make things harder.

 

[hcornea]

just a minor correction to Ian's post: 60-cm pixels are actually LOD16 compiled and 15-cm LOD18.

D'oh. Confusing QMID grids with LODs again!
Thanks Holger.

Some supposed 30cm imagery is upsampled lower resolution imagery, and most-likely similarly for 15cm. ie no advantage and a much bigger filesize.
It is pretty rare to find anything higher than 15cm / pixel.

I would agree; sharp 15cm imagery completes the illusion quite satisfactorily, if you can get it.

(BTW. I interpreted the 'worth the price' in the original contextused by the OP, as meaning 'worth the added size' and literally translated)

 

[GaryGB]

UPDATE: I restored some (IMHO, 'important') missing images via a saved web page from FireFox for these original thread posts above by the OP:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/lod19-photoscenery-worth-the-price.425664/

Hi,

We have done a small airport with a LOD18 photoscenery (LFOZ). For our next project, an airport near Paris at Pontoise (LFPT), we wanted to go higher, and i started to test some LOD 19 tiles.

BUT..... I wonder if it worth the price.... I mean the size in Mo of the scenery have increased so much....

On the screenshot, the small surrounded tile is a 36mo BMP. The surrounded area of the airport is the area for LOD19 resolution. As you can see i need at least 30 or 40 tiles....

Any advice ? Did anyone created such detailed airport (yes I can imagine), any feedback ?

Here you can see the difference between a lod18 tile and a lod19 :

Thanks.

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/lod19-photoscenery-worth-the-price.425664/#post-634186

Hum maybe I should add that we have planned to use 2048 high resolution textures for the buildings... will that have a effect on performances, combined to the lod19 terrain resolution ?

Here is a screen of a building :