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Does a program exist to make easier the autogen for FSX?

M

Maurizio G

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12
Country
italy
Hi,
i use Annotator SDK to make autogen onto photoreal sceneries, and i like it. The problem is when you have to make it in large areas... it's a panic!
So i was wondering if there is some program to make automatically the autogen from a photoreal for FSX... I tried with AgenT but i know it works only with FS2004 and effectively it doesn't work for FSX.
Your help is appreciated!
 
Hello,

I also would like to know if such programme exists. What I have seen is GIS software that shows vector features (for example the footprints of houses) on top of a photo layer. That capacity would be the key point for such a tool to be developed.

Best Regards,

Luis

ps: am I rigth in associating your name with a document about the structure of fs5 files?
 
Thanks Luis for your reply :) Well, for what i know the only payware program to do all this, in 3D, is CityEngine. It creates a 3D city, for instance, starting from an aerial imagery. The accuracy of the creation is pretty perfect, inserting the building data, that i believe it can be obtained from somewhere.
You can take a look here, there is also a try version (full but without the export feature).

http://www.procedural.com/

The problem is the price... about 5000 $, if i remember well.
I haven't tried it, anyway i guess it's not so simple to use.
I am not a programmer, even if pretty expert with the autogen features for FSX. It should be very cool if someone develops a simple software for this, even interpreting the only green areas.
It's obvious that for an accurate autegen, also using a program to do automatically, a manual work is necessary. Anyway it could be a great help.

Maurizio

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Luis_Sá said:
Hello,

I also would like to know if such programme exists. What I have seen is GIS software that shows vector features (for example the footprints of houses) on top of a photo layer. That capacity would be the key point for such a tool to be developed.

Best Regards,

Luis

ps: am I rigth in associating your name with a document about the structure of fs5 files?
Click to expand...
 
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Interesting software; it would be great to see further work done with something like this!! :)

I believe the people working with Google Earth and MS Virtual Earth may have tools that allow detection of base geometry and construction of vertically extruded shapes from imagery (like AutoCad and some other GIS packages do?) to render 3D buildings etc.

I'm wondering if intermediate files for such a process might be generated using a "texture color to vector line" type function using Slartibartfast or another tool by Jim Keir?

Regarding the derivation of coordinates for placement of object annotation associated with "specfied colors" in imagery of the photoreal terrain texture, the work of David J Griffiths in his Autotrees (automatic autogen file creation) beta v0.1 is mentioned here with a discussion on Autogen Internal (File) Format (perhaps buildings as well as Trees could be similarly implemented?):

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9910

His program can also be found at http://www.simviation.com/fsdesign_scenery8.htm

Direct Link: http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/syb2.cgi?section=scenery&file=AutoTreesBeta01.zip


PS: Although the FSX Resample imagery texture "BGL" format no longer leaves imagery in an external file format like in prior version of FS, a little work viewing FSX imagery BGLs with TMF Viewer would likely reveal a way to get coordinates from maximum cursor extents values intended for read out in the status display.

Additionally, the imagery pixel extents could be determined after using a specially programmed screen grab function somewhat like I've seen in certain utilities that capture the aerial imagery displayed in a browser window on Google Maps etc. for use in "scenery building" for FS; this could allow one to create custom 3rd party annotations for photoreal textures that are only accessible from inside FSX imagery BGLs ;)


Hope this might help stimulate some innovation to further meet the ongoing needs in our FS community! :idea:

GaryGB
 
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hi FellowDesigners,
I am also very much interested in this Item about adding autogen to Photorealtextures, because this is the only thing missing after having used Luis his nice prog SBuilderX...
I have installed Aerosoft's VFR Germany West and they are having autogen all the way with a good performance....and i am wondering how they have fixed that for such a big area:)

Kind regards
Bert
 
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Hi all.

I think the LOD 13 ( QMID 15 ) tile format is still in tact for FSX autogen files ( .agn ). And I think FS9 autogen files still work in FSX...

If this is true, you could make imagery using the FS9 resample, autogen that with AGentT, and use those AGN files with the FSX resampled image BGL. The locations should be the same.

Further, if that works, then the autogen tiles might be importable to the FSX Annotator for further tweaking.

Dick
 
Dick,

You are correct on both points.

I use AGenT with FS9 phototextures but use the agn files with FSX phototextures.

If I use the FSX Annotator, it will pick up the FS9 format agn files and on "save" will convert them to FSX format.
 
Yes, the autogen created for FS2004, generally works in FSX too.... i guess anyway that houses and trees are a little simpler respect FSX could do.
I am developing a large area, the Tuscany in Italy, and i am trying to do a very good autogen, placing trees by trees, without using vegetation polygons, because they are not so exact in placement and often they covers the roads, or some tree goes into the water...
Anyway i think that a good programmer, and i have seen that there are a lot here :) could try to develop a little utility for this feature.
A lot of people creates photoreal sceneries but the thing that makes the difference is the autogen, according to me.
For those who likes, you can take a look here about the scenery i am developing.

http://blogfsx.forumfree.net/?t=39791668

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Nice slideshow Maurizio!
I got your point.
I really do hope there comes a tool available to fix the autogen trees etc in an easier way...good programmers enough i think, but they must have the spare time.....and life is to short to do it all:)

Bert
 
Hi,

Recently I have also been thinking about this. The OpenCV library might also be useful to do some image detection tasks. I haven't had the time yet to experiment with this.
 
Thanks for your suggestion Arno! It seems very interesting, a kind of software really very cool! Unfortunately i am not a programmer but for sure people who knows the programming could take a good point to start.
I think that developing photoreal sceneries, if we had an utilities to make autogen fastly, it could be a revolution.... I really hope that some good programmer of the community could spend time on this...

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It would be fantastic to have such tool! Also, could anyone point me at where I could download AgenT software, all links I've found are broken...
 
You can download AgenT here

http://www.f-bmpl.com/index.php?option=com_weblinks&catid=25&Itemid=22

Proceeding with my autogen experience i realized that it's almost impossible to make a very good autogen with an automatic tool.... Maybe it could help on the vegetation, but for the buildings.... it's more difficult. A scenery needs a good variety of buildings, the shape of the buildings sometimes are difficult to reproduce.... This to say that if anyone is going to develop a tool like that the work will be really hard. Nothing is impossible but hard for sure :)

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