Best way to merge two or more imagery sets with different resolution

[Thralni]

Hello,

Similar to what you see in e.g. OrbX addons, I want to include photoscenery at different resolution (1m and 15cm, nicely blended so that it won't go from lowres to suddenly very highres), such that at and close to the airport, the resolution will be high, but further away it will be lower. I'm not sure what the best way to do this is, however. One way would be to somehow paste the high resolution imagery into the lower resolution, but this would enormously inflate the file size of the low resolution imagery in order to accommodate the smaller bit of high resolution, so that doesn't sound too great. I was wondering if there's a way to have resample merge them? Perhaps by giving the lowres imagery as source 1, then highres as source2? Would this lead to resample 'overwriting' the matching areas of the lowres with the highres imagery?

I know that typically people make groundpolies to get nice-looking highres imagery on airport grounds. I will do this too, but I'm looking to have the highres scenery extend further away. There are some features of the terrain that would look very nice with higher res scenery. because of this the groundpolies seem less practical, and I'd rather do it in the way of regular photoscenery.

Any advice is appreciated!

Benjamin

 

[toprob]

You want two bgls, the higher resolution version just including the extra LODs. The sim will choose the best LOD even if they are spread over different files. Just make sure you use the same source, otherwise you'll get the image changing when LODs switch.
For larger areas (such as a city within a much larger region) you can simply leave the city out of the low-res version, and create another full-LOD high res city.

 

[Thralni]

So I had tried that two-bgl approach a while ago, but it didn't quite work out. The sim only showed the lowres version. Is it required that I specify the LOD in the INF file if I take this approach? e.g. for the lowres photoscenery I specify LOD 16, and for the highres 18? Right now I set it to automatic, thinking that resample would somehow figure it out, but maybe it doesn't...

 

[toprob]

You could use 'auto' for both, the only reason why I suggested that you restrict LODs is to keep the file size lower. For my current project, there's a large LOD 15 region, which uses 'LOD = Auto,15', on top of that there's a city image using 'LOD = 16,17', and an airport using 'LOD = Auto,18'.
I'm not sure why this approach wouldn't work for you.

 

[Thralni]

It's possible I simply don't know how to setup the LOD values correctly in the inf file I'll try what you suggest and see how that works out. Thanks for the advice!

 

[pinkjr]

This is how I do it.
1.Lower resolution poly on one bgl, with the required masks.
2.Higher resolution bgl with the specific areas you want, NO MASKING on this one, else it will bleed through.
3. Put each bgl on its own scenery file, and make sure the one with lower resolution is at a lower level.

 

[Thralni]

Also an good suggestion, thanks! I havent gotten around to try Rob's suggestion yet as I've been working on the blending of the different seasons, but I hope to try it sometime soon. Thanks!

 

[Thralni]

You could use 'auto' for both, the only reason why I suggested that you restrict LODs is to keep the file size lower. For my current project, there's a large LOD 15 region, which uses 'LOD = Auto,15', on top of that there's a city image using 'LOD = 16,17', and an airport using 'LOD = Auto,18'.
I'm not sure why this approach wouldn't work for you.

Took me a while to try this out... But I finally did! So, it does seme to work, but what I don't like is that as you fly along the high-res photoscenery 'pops' into view quite clearly. I assume this is the influence of the LOD18 function? Is there a way of making sure this does not happen? See the image. The red arrow points at the transition between the two layers; as you fly this transition shifts as P3D loads the higher res imagery.