MSFS Aerial Images (Airport Background)

[thetford569]

I've played with the "SimpleAerial" project and was able to successfully render it in the sim. It uses small .png files to display them on an open field. I looked at the .png files which are just logos with a transparent background.

So, what I am wondering is....how would you get a GeoTIFF from the USGS Earth Explorer into the sim? Does it need to be converted to a .png? Does PNG even have the coordinate data? Does it have to be re-projected like before? How does the mask work to blend it with the Microsoft Bing imagery. I know there is a mask function because it's mentioned in the SDK but as with most of the other stuff in there the documentation is lacking. Maybe we don't even have answers to these questions yet which is surely a possibility. My test airport is missing a taxiway in the Bing image so I was thinking of grabbing a new aerial to put in the sim and blend it and then create the airport over the top. Maybe I am going to need to have more patience until the SDK documentation is updated.

Brandon

 

[theisomizer]

There is a user in the MSFS forums who has written a tool to generate placements for images. I'll gently nudge them and ask if they can re-share here.

In general it's more difficult than the resample tool - you have to tile the images as input and they must already be aligned to the bing maps tile system quad tree (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/articles/bing-maps-tile-system).

 

[thetford569]

That would be great. I have a feeling there is alot of information in the 3rd party developer forums that have been active since the start of Alpha. I hope some of that info becomes available soon. The documentation is severely lacking. The samples are there but there isn't much information on how you go about doing it yourself. I've resorted to just playing with the editors for now in the sim. I just tried to add a polygon for exclusion and it shows an error and it won't let me click around any spots to create the polygon. I will keep experimenting...

 

[thetford569]

I got the polygon to work now. I was reading off one page of the SDK which talked about the exclusion polygons and how to actually place points is discussed on a different page.

 

[Eugen_1975]

Hi,

I made a small tool that allows you to create tiles with quadkey from ortho data. Maybe someone will be useful.

1. Specify the ortho data file (png, tiff, bmp). Note that in a folder with the specified file ortho data also has to be a file ".map" OziExplorer. Creating (getting) a ".map" file is very easy in Global Mapper or SASPlanet. See the screenshot below.

2. Select the desired LOD.

3. Select the desired interpolation method, since during the creation of the tiles, the size changes depending on the selected LOD.

4. "Cut edges - V" - creates only fully filled tiles. Removes the tiles which are outside the boundaries of the original ortho.

5. Optional created "GCP" for Global Mapper.

6. Start the process of creating tiles.

Also in the "Tile system tool" there is a calculator that allows you to convert quadkey to lat / lon and vice versa.



Updated version of the tool v0.12.0

Yandex

Finds everything

yadi.sk

Fixed bug with OziExplorer ".map" file from Global Mapper.
Fixed bug scaling
Also in this version of the tool you can process source images up to 2GB in size (26600 * 26600pix)

 

[GeorgianVA]

Hi,

I made a small tool that allows you to create tiles with quadkey from ortho data. Maybe someone will be useful.

Hi,

thanks so much. That definitely will be useful. I was searching already like crazy how to convert my images in this format. But now I am struggling with the .map file. I am using QGIS and it doesn't seem to have an option or a plug-in to export that .map file. But this SASPlanet seems to be free and I will give it a try!

 

[thetford569]

Thanks so much! I will be interested to try this out tomorrow and see how it works. I have two orthos that I downloaded from EarthExplorer that contains the new taxiway to the airport I am going to be working on. I am interested in getting that ortho into the sim and having it blend with the in-simulator bing maps. I know from the SDK documentation that it is supposed to blend but I will have to figure out how to make that blend. The sample .png files are just transparent in the areas around the MSFS logo so perhaps it is just as simple as making the ortho into a compatible .png that has transparency around the areas that you don't want to use. I somehow doubt it will be "simple", LOL but I will keep trying! Thanks for the tool as it looks really helpful!

Brandon

 

[GeorgianVA]

Thanks to Eugen's great tool I brought my first satellite image in the sim. I used LOD20 as in the documentation but nevertheless the image disappears when I come near. Do I have to go even higher with the LODs? The documentation says, LOD20 is the highest?! And they don't mention any setting that would prevent the default from shining through

 

[theisomizer]

So this is appears to be one of the quirks of the new system, the screen space error metric works a little differently. You have to generate tiles all the way up to the max LOD already present in bing maps or the local sim data to prevent this from happening. I don’t think it is a static 20. This can be a different value in different parts of the world.

Turn on the terrain tile debug tool in dev mode and then you can see what the highest resolution is there, and then if you don’t have imagery up to that lod you will have to supersample and tile it yourself.

 

[GeorgianVA]

So this is appears to be one of the quirks of the new system, the screen space error metric works a little differently. You have to generate tiles all the way up to the max LOD already present in bing maps or the local sim data to prevent this from happening. I don’t think it is a static 20. This can be a different value in different parts of the world.

Turn on the terrain tile debug tool in dev mode and then you can see what the highest resolution is there, and then if you don’t have imagery up to that lod you will have to supersample and tile it yourself.

That makes sense, but unfortunately at this place, there is no Bing data at all. Only Landclass and some default airport background where an airport should be. So I assume they go with the highest LOD then for LC

Edit: The Tile Debug (great feature) says LOD 20 at that tile and I am giving it 20 so I would expect my image to be visible. Unfortunately Eugens tool won't create me bigger files and I have to split up my image but I will try LOD22 as well. Can the developer forum of MS be accessed or can we apply somewhere? Or do I just have to hope for a fix / better documentation in the future?

 

[Oleh Shevchenko]

.del

 

[evilnando]

what do I have to put on Output directory? I manage to use the tool to get the tiles but it dosent seem to load in the editor

 

[theisomizer]

This looks like a bug with either the aerial cgl generator or the sim itself then. Unfortunately I don't know anything about opening the dev forums up (you can try emailing Microsoft and ask for access), but you can also submit a bug report through Zendesk which should go straight to Asobo. It seems this area is still being worked on.

 

[evilnando]

thanks , will do so

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Send bugs directly to the Zendesk, or they won't get attention.

 

[BlueMesh]

Hi guys, for me satellites Tiles work perfectly! Try LOD 20.

 

[GeorgianVA]

On other places it works indeed well with LOD20 but not when there is no underlying Bing data. There is something mentioned in the documentation and I have to dig deeper into it. I will work on another airport before anyway.

But so far I like the implementation of the aerial imagery. The vegetation automatically changes the colour according to your underlying picture. Also it detects where should grow grass and where is dirt/stones.

 

[Gheed]

Hi,

I made a small tool that allows you to create tiles with quadkey from ortho data. Maybe someone will be useful.

Hello, thanks for the program! I have been trying to work my local aerial images to be used by your tool, but now I think i am out of ideas as I cant think of what im doing wrong. Right now i have .tiff files in correct projection in WGS84 that i have made using gdalwarp and then using QGIS i have created .map file using the Raster -> Conversion -> Translate (Convert Format). With both .tiff file and .map file in same directory i try to open and process the .tiff in Tile System Tool, the tool will take a few seconds and then put out an error in the .log file.

here is the error:

System.OutOfMemoryException: Type System.OutOfMemoryException exception.
   in location System.String.ReplaceInternal(String oldValue, String newValue)
   in location System.String.Replace(String oldValue, String newValue)
   in location Tile_system_tools.MainWindow.ProcessFile()

Im not sure what is going wrong, hope you could help me figure it out. I'm not using globalmapper or sasplanet so I wonder if that could be part of the problem that i need to generate .map file with either of those programs.

 

[Eugen_1975]

Hello, thanks for the program! I have been trying to work my local aerial images to be used by your tool, but now I think i am out of ideas as I cant think of what im doing wrong. Right now i have .tiff files in correct projection in WGS84 that i have made using gdalwarp and then using QGIS i have created .map file using the Raster -> Conversion -> Translate (Convert Format). With both .tiff file and .map file in same directory i try to open and process the .tiff in Tile System Tool, the tool will take a few seconds and then put out an error in the .log file.

Give me your .tiff and .map and I'll see how I can help you. I saw this log on the MSFS forum, but without the surce data, I could not repeat and research it.

 

[Gheed]

So with the help of Eugen_1975 I was able to get my aerial images to sim, the problem was with windows regional settings as my decimal place pointer was , and it must be . for the tool to parse the .map file correctly.

I think im getting same lod problems as discussed above, but i will investigate it further