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Realistic night texture

Messages
56
Hi,
I'm working on a project to simulate night environment. And it is based on thermal satellite imagery of that city. The map is like this.

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

As you can see some area are brighter and some area darker.
The default FSX texture doesn't take into account this information so you have a repetitive glowy area, like this:

baltnightdefault.jpg

it is not realistic .specially when you look at them from high altitude .the city 'night mapping should be look like this :
article-2298451-18E1CB90000005DC-511_634x420.jpg


Now some developers have come up with some solution to make up for this by adding some vector roads to eliminate the repetitive pattern, for example, by adding the vector data to the above picture we have a more realistic night.
baltnightmega.jpg


Now as I said before I worked on the structure of city lights, and I think I made some progress to solve the problem. Here are a few screen shots and video from my work on a city in the UK

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

Uploaded with ImageShack.com


[youtube]UCExcPH0_a4&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

So guys, what is your opinion on my textures?
 
Messages
56
Very beautiful.
But I still don't get how this is done.
There is no straight-forward explanation, actually you need to study the law of light distribution ,light pollution, watch many unfiltered images of the city in the night, knowing a little about Photoshop, and...
there is no way you can achieve the same result without going through topics I mentioned above otherwise you have to work by guessing and the best result you will get is a beautiful scenery not arealistic one.
If you look closely at my last picture, you'll see different colors and brightness and road's types.
Most of them follow the rule of light distribution. I liked to explain the concepts and procedures, but because I'm going to make a commercial project of night texture for whole UK, I can'can't do it now.sorry.
However, if you like I can get you the BGL file to test it, to see how it looks like it FSX.
 
Last edited:

jtanabodee

Resource contributor
Messages
3,921
Country
thailand
So it is a photoshop work, not automatically done by the GIS information or something.
It must be a time consuming work then.
 
Last edited:

Dutcheeseblend

Resource contributor
Messages
1,541
Country
netherlands
I'm sitting in a train right now, and I'm experiencing how close your approach to night lighting is to reality.

Keep it going, very nice!

BTW, is there also some time-based variation in lighting? Or remains it the same from sunset to sunrise?
 
Messages
56
I'm sitting in a train right now, and I'm experiencing how close your approach to night lighting is to reality.

Keep it going, very nice!

BTW, is there also some time-based variation in lighting? Or remains it the same from sunset to sunrise?
I think there are some time-based variations, but it is not specific to my scenery. The lights start to shine from sunset to sunrise.
 
Messages
56
Hi guys
I changed some setting of the roads and captured the new video:
[youtube]yjSr820llBk[/youtube]
how do you compare the first video with this one?
 
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