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Improving Photoreal Resolution for FSX

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13
How would I increase the resolution of custom photo imagery to take advantage of FSX improved resolution capacity? Right now, my stuff looks pretty grainy...
 

rhumbaflappy

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Hi badge.

FSX's resample can produce resolution up to 7cm/pixel ( about 2.74 inches / pixel ).

What you need is a source of greater resolution to take advantege of this capability... but note greater resolutions mean larger bgls, and longer display times, the possibility of reunning out of memory, etc...

The default ground tile textures are 1.2 meters / pixel ( I think ), and that would probably be best for most scenery.

Dick
 

Paavo

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estonia
Current photoreal sceneries (incl. Megascenery) are limited to about 4.8m/pix. The terrain engine of FSX is much more flexible. I played around with it few weeks ago and I was amazed how many new features there are. You're gonna love the blend maps. : )
 
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13
Current photoreal sceneries (incl. Megascenery) are limited to about 4.8m/pix. The terrain engine of FSX is much more flexible. I played around with it few weeks ago and I was amazed how many new features there are. You're gonna love the blend maps. : )

Two questions: What do you mean by "blend maps"? and when you process photography into .bmp, how do you choose the sample resolution? The last process I used degraded the resolution automatically. Hope I am not being to mundane for this forum, but I appreciate your help...
 

rhumbaflappy

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Hi badge.

The new resample allows a grayscale transparency channel to blend the image into the default terrain.

Your resolution is controlled by your source image. Using a grainy source image, or oversampling a source image will give poor results... get a better source photo to cure this.

Dick
 

Paavo

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estonia
Two questions: What do you mean by "blend maps"?

You can specify additional bitmaps ("alpha map" or "blend map") that determine which parts of the images are transparent and how much transparent they are. This allows to easily get rid of so-called "rough edge" problem, because now you can make your images blend to default terrain without any time-consuming "hacks" and Photoshop tricks.

and when you process photography into .bmp, how do you choose the sample resolution?

In FS2002/FS2004, photo scenery creation tools would automatically scale your images to 4.8m/pix no matter in what resolution the input images were since it's the only resolution FS2002/2004 supports.

In FSX, you feed your highest resolution images to photo scenery creation tool (there's one that comes with FSX SDK: resample.exe) and the user can select through Display Settings which resolution he/she prefers the images to be rendered at.
 
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192
Country
germany
I've been doing a ton of experimentation with the new resampler over the last few weeks. It's really amazing seeing some of the results. I can actually see details such as clearly seeing swimming pools in backyards and cars in driveways. This is really an exciting development. Unfortunately alot of people are under the misconception that their current photosceneries will somehow look even better and clearer in FSX. This isn't the case.
 
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192
Country
germany
The SDK really isn't super hard to understand. I would suggest printing it out. If I can figure it out then anyone can.:rolleyes:
 
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74
Country
germany
The problem is: where to get the new SDK ??? Apparently some people have it, but I do not find a source.
 
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1,484
There are some issues with the new photo scenery. Placing one image on top of another leads to bad results so far.

I saw doing this as a great idea so that I could use high res around airports, and lower res elsewhere.

so far, the blend map on a high res image, produces results that mimic an alpha channel (showing water) when placed above a low res image.

Without a blend map, fsx still produces a "water" boundary around the high res image.

This is my results when compiling the images in seperate bgls.

My initial effort to use both res images in a multi-image inf file forced an assumption within resample that the low res image was intended to be the red channel, and I haven't got back to it at that point.

More work needs to be done in this area. We won't be able to display shape files above photoreal.

Bob
 
Messages
13
There are some issues with the new photo scenery. Placing one image on top of another leads to bad results so far.

I saw doing this as a great idea so that I could use high res around airports, and lower res elsewhere.

so far, the blend map on a high res image, produces results that mimic an alpha channel (showing water) when placed above a low res image.

Without a blend map, fsx still produces a "water" boundary around the high res image.

This is my results when compiling the images in seperate bgls.

My initial effort to use both res images in a multi-image inf file forced an assumption within resample that the low res image was intended to be the red channel, and I haven't got back to it at that point.

More work needs to be done in this area. We won't be able to display shape files above photoreal.

Bob


What does a "water" boundary look like? Is it a black boundary or a water-looking edge?

Sorry, additional question, I'm working with ecw photo files. Will these work with the SDK resampler?
 
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1,484
re file type, resample likes .tif files or .bmp files or Geotiff files. I haven't tried others. Geotif files work best cuz the georeferencing is fantastic...assuming you have the correct projection and datum.
 
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192
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germany
re file type, resample likes .tif files or .bmp files or Geotiff files. I haven't tried others. Geotif files work best cuz the georeferencing is fantastic...assuming you have the correct projection and datum.

So, you've gotten your own Geotifs to work. I could only get the one in the sdk examples to work. Am I missing something?
 

arno

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So, you've gotten your own Geotifs to work. I could only get the one in the sdk examples to work. Am I missing something?

How did you make your GeoTIFF? I converted an aerial photo I had from Dutch RD system to WGS84 and put it into a GeoTIFF after that. It worked perfectly with the new resample. Really great that you don't have to worry about the coordinates anymore in the INF file :).
 
Messages
192
Country
germany
You guys are killing me. The only format that I can get to resample is bitmap. I can't get tifs or geotifs to work. So you're making your Geotiffs, how do you do that? I am downloading the geotifs from the web. I think I may see one of the problems now. Does it have to be WGS84? If so how would I convert it? I think that the ones I'm downloading are NAD83. But that still doesn't explain the ones that aren't geotif. This is really getting frustrating.
 
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