All blue Photo Scenery

General discussion about Scenery Design. Questions about SBuilder for Flight Simulator FS2004.
Post Reply
Mick
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:42 pm
Location: Germany

All blue Photo Scenery

Post by Mick » Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:43 am

Dear All [:D]

trying hard to create my first scenery with HR-Pics for FS9 (requiring the "SB Method" with polygons), I urgently need further advice. Followed every hint I could find, but still end up with a completely blue scenery:

[img]uploaded/Mick/2007101741927_SB%20Result%20BlueScene.jpg[/img]

Luis had told me that I have to make a mesh first and then put my HiRes picture, which I did and then used the "Make Flatten" button on the meshes, which resulted in 2048 polygons (16 photo tiles). Looked good so far:

[img]uploaded/Mick/2007101742018_SB%20BeforeBGL.jpg[/img]

The compiled result is the same if I use a downsampled map (in order to have 4.8 m/pix instead of the 1.2 m/pix I want), so that doesn't seem to be an issue. <u>I also found that the generated textures are all blue</u>.

1. Does anyone have an idea what might be wrong here? Maybe I e.g. need to put a third map (in addition to the mesh-bmp and the summer-bitmap)? Do I have to place the maps in a particular order? BTW it doesn't make any difference if I have the "Replace/Coexist" preference checked or not...

2. It seems to be mandatory that, when I use "Make Flatten" button, only "LOD8" is checked - even if I defined my mesh to be LOD11? Could that be true or is it just a sideeffect of other wrong steps? Several tries with unchecking LOD8 and using LOD11 instead ended in a memory error that forced SBuilder to shut down...

3. Another one on the view in SBuilder: Even since I think I'm really accurate in calibrating the mesh map as well as the photo map, they are not shown on top of each other in SBuilder (mesh is extremely shifted when 'view' is set to 'maps -> Summer Bitmap' which I guess would be the normal way of viewing). Is that a built-in effect that I have to live with, or might I have any wrong settings?

Any advice is extremely welcome... thank you very much in advance!
Kind regards
Mick

User avatar
Luis Sa
Posts: 1736
Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 11:17 am
Location: Portugal
Contact:

Post by Luis Sa » Mon Oct 22, 2007 12:07 am

Hi Mike,

Let me say a bit more. You make normal (4,8m/p) resolution scenery in SBuilder using VTP polygons instead of using the MS SDK resample method. High-res scenery does not exist. But you can make small objects as detailed as you wish. For example you can create a ground poly to represent some marking in the ramp. And the marking can be as detailed as you wish (centimeters or milimeters by pixel).

So "high res scenery" is just that - a large polygon covered with a large texture. If the ground is flat then you have almost no problems. If the ground is not flat you need much more information. You need to know the altitudes of the points that use to form triangles (surfaces are drawn as triangles). And mesh BGLs can not be decompiled (very few people can do that). The only case that you can use the altitudes is when you have done the mesh yourself with SBuilder. Then you should have the map (some bsq converted to bitmap) that you used to make the mesh. So you can add to your texture photo map (it could be summer only, or many seasons variations) another bitmap - the mesh bitmap.

They can have different sizes (the mesh bitmap and the photo bitmaps). So there are 2 calibrations - one for the photo maps and another for the mesh map.

Everything should look in their place before you attempt to make a BGL.

The make flattens - your mesh could be very detailed. The high res triangles have points on a LOD8 grid. So when you press "make flattens", flattens (sloped triangles, better saying) will be created that force the mesh to be LOD8. So, in theory your painted textured triangles will coincide with the mesh triangles.

In conclusion - high res photo scenery is probably reliable on flat regions, only.

Kind regards,

Luis

Post Reply