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New Ground Poly Tutorial for the year 2014

bob5568 said:
I do have two questions. I note that you make no reference for converting the image to Geodetic coordinates using the WGS84 datum. This was always required in the past to assure the image contains the correct angles and will match the terrain. I would think this would still be needed to have the taxiways and runways take on the correct angles relative to each other. Most of the raw images I remember seemed to be provided in the UTM coordinate system.

Second question, you seem to assume the user knows the corner coordinates. I own a license of Global mapper that can tell me this data, but I remember this was hard to know before I bought that program. How do people determine those values in this day and age?
Click to expand...

Honestly, I am not an expert in Geo Data. I got satellite photo for Gmax reference plan from Sbuilder Map Web site http://www.ptsim.com/sbuilder/gmaps.htm. So it tells coordinate of the corner every time you got the photos. When I do photoscenery, I buy from the provider. They send the photo in Ge0tiff and I don't know how to do with it. I ask them that please send me the coordinate of the corners of the photo to me and they do that for me.

I wish you could write about that for us, bob5568.
robystar said:
I am not quite sure what you mean with 'relate to the building'.
Do you mean that textures should relate or are you referring to positioning the Gpolys?
Click to expand...

When you draw the line, so you know where is the parking and the space that you need to place your jetway and the bridge of the jetway. If everything is on one place, it will give you all the information. Satellite image in my region is not as good as in western world, so the lines that I make would be the best reference. Sometimes I place my static jetway in and the space is too tight for the airplane to park.

To make it shot, I feel more comfortable to see everything in one place to check their posititions, that's all.
 
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To get the coordinates embedded in a GeoTiff, you can download OSGeo4W Shell and run in with the shortcut in the same directory.

"gdalinfo xxx.tif"
 
Tic, as I say, my experience is getting pretty old, I haven't done a terrain exercise in FSX for several years. Otherwise, I'd be happy to contribute. Shaun, your information is helpful, perhaps you could edit Tic's part 1?
 
I think one of the most important thing in the tutorial is the use of grid. I never read any tutorial mention about that. You need to use grid. It is very helpful since you don't need to rotate your reference plane. Moreover, taxiways don't need to be rectangle to the runway.
 
I'm not sure if i've done this correctly. I'm user Sbuilder currently for my imagery, but it seems nowhere near as sharp as yours Tic.

Is it the imagery provider/imagery thats got me wrong or the format i've put it in GMAX with?
1a010e7825.png

Cheers in advance,

Zach
 
Awesome thank you.

I was fiddling with stuff before in the viewports tab but it didn't seem to be doing anything.

Thanks
4378965a64.jpg
 
Make sure you've got it mapped properly in the x,y plane... Otherwise you could be re-doing it all!
 
I'm not getting the boolean merge option. What was the DO NOT DRAW PLAN, from the geometry tab in GMAX?

I recall having to do something before, can't figure it out now.
 
Just dropped by to see what this ground poly business is about and I have to say I'm impressed with your tutorial Tic. Even us aircraft modellers should be able to follow it, LOL!
 
Hi,

Well since this topic seems to continue, I would like to make some things clearer (I hope):
- Firstly, I appreciate your effort, Tic, of presenting a tutorial which undoubtfully took you quite some time to create.
- Secondly, I just wanted to point out that your way of doing things is one way to do it, but that (especially in as far as the construction of groundpolys is concerned) there are other ways of doing things.
- Thirdly (in spite of your presuming I am proficient with Gmax which I am not), I tried to draw attention to the fact that for people that do not use Sbuilder or for that matter Gmax, there is still a way to reach their goal, namely making use, for instance, of the following programs/tools:
-FSEarthTiles for capturing the photoreal and everything necessary to provide you with the data for the .inf file for the :
- Resample tool of FSX or FSXs 2 to make it into a bgl;
- ADE to cover up the (often low res) photoreal and enhance it with its inbuilt Groundpoly editor.
But that is only my way of doing things because I am not proficient neither in SbuilderX nor Gmax.
But if you substitute FSEarthTiles and Resample.exe by SbuilderX, I think that also ADE will allow you to do the balance and that without having to use other programs, and in a far more simple way (IMHO) as you do not have any groundpoly positioning problems anymore because you make and position them in ADE.
 
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Shaun said:
I'm not getting the boolean merge option. What was the DO NOT DRAW PLAN, from the geometry tab in GMAX?

I recall having to do something before, can't figure it out now.
Click to expand...

Make sure you have wire frame selected, editable spline, and spline selected, select the intersection, click attach, then boolean union. That works for me.
 
robystar said:
Hi,

Well since this topic seems to continue, I would like to make some things clearer (I hope):
- Firstly, I appreciate your effort, Tic, of presenting a tutorial which undoubtfully took you quite some time to create.
- Secondly, I just wanted to point out that your way of doing things is one way to do it, but that (especially in as far as the construction of groundpolys is concerned) there are other ways of doing things.
- Thirdly (in spite of your presuming I am proficient with Gmax which I am not), I tried to draw attention to the fact that for people that do not use Sbuilder or for that matter Gmax, there is still a way to reach their goal, namely making use, for instance, of the following programs/tools:
-FSEarthTiles for capturing the photoreal and everything necessary to provide you with the data for the .inf file for the :
- Resample tool of FSX or FSXs 2 to make it into a bgl;
- ADE to cover up the (often low res) photoreal and enhance it with its inbuilt Groundpoly editor.
But that is only my way of doing things because I am not proficient neither in SbuilderX nor Gmax.
But if you substitute FSEarthTiles and Resample.exe by SbuilderX, I think that also ADE will allow you to do the balance and that without having to use other programs, and in a far more simple way (IMHO) as you do not have any groundpoly positioning problems anymore because you make and position them in ADE.
Click to expand...
Oh Roby..... I would love to see what you do indeed. Please write a tutorial for us, so I can learn your way. It sounds interesting to me.
I don't familiar with ground poly in ADE. My computer is often slow if I have a big satellite photo at high resolution. That's why I need to capture individual tile and work in Gmax instead.
 
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I have been thinking about this and I come up with a reason why I do not work in ADE.

I think it depends on your project as well. If you do a small airport, working on ground poly in ADE might be the best choice. However, if you are working in a big international airport, it is very difficult to get detail satellite photo and work in ADE. The computer is usually slow and difficult to work with big, high detail satellite photo. If you choose less detail, the computer will have no stutter. But the photo will be too blurry to get a good reference.

So, those are the reasons of my tutorial.
 
Hi there,
First of all thank you for your great tutorial. but still I have some problems with ground poly;
1) how do you add that aerial photo layer to your ground poly! (I tried but it didnt work out!)
2) My ground poly acts strange:

7f337ff0fb93558bd81208af488fd020c073c069.jpg


what do you think about this problem? How can I fixed it?
 
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