Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

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G-RJWA
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:21 pm

Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by G-RJWA » Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:29 pm

Its probably a very common problem with amateurs like me, but this is the problem i'm having:

Image

I've tried all sorts of polygons in SbuilderX, none of which have ever appeared, in desperation I even tried painting the sea black on a few of the tiles... I've followed several tutorials and 'how-tos' but gotten nowhere except occasionally flattening the area of mesh I'm trying to work with.

If you were trying to explain to a total retard how to make the FSX 'sea' water reach the shore of my photo scenery, how would you do it??

P.S. - Many thanks for SbuilderX - though i have a lot to learn, even flying to my home island in the state it is in the pic is a brilliant experience. Any help with my problem would be massively appreciated. Especially by my 10 year old who is getting frustrated waiting for his turn on FSX....

meshman
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Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 11:54 pm

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by meshman » Thu Nov 05, 2009 6:08 am

Those are many files formed into the scenery. looking at the jagged nature of the layout?

Do you have photo editing software, ie. Photoshop or Photoshop Elements?
Lance

G-RJWA
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:21 pm

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by G-RJWA » Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:48 am

Hi, yes there are a lot of tiles. I'm using zoom level 16 in SbuilderX. The tiles are from VirtualEarth as Google Earth etc doesnt cover this island at all.

I have Photoshop CS3 and have a reasonable grasp of photo editing, and I think the tiles are .jpg (they are on the other computer and the wife's sleeping next to it so cant check lol)

So far the only thing that has worked for me is the photo scenery itself, which turned up in exactly the right place, an exclude polygon which created a desert around my island, and when I tried to put a water polygon on the reservoir on the island, the altitude of the polygon stood above the scenery, but it didnt show it as water, only a raised, flattened part of scenery. Nothing else so far has been successful polygon-wise.

Many thanks if you can help me!

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luisfeliztirado
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Location: Santo Domingo

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by luisfeliztirado » Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:24 am

In order to display the default water, use a Blend Mask:

1. find the source image - it should be in the SBuilderX Tools\Work directory;
2. load it in the image editing software;
3. paint the land mass pure white (RGB=255,255,255);
4. paint the ocean pure black (RGB=0,0,0);
5. save the image in the same directory as a TIFF file with the same name as the source file, but with a "_B" extension, for example L17X132735X132743Y90177Y90183_B.TIF;
6. in SBuilderX, compile the source image again, and this time the Blend Mask will have obscured the photo-real water and allowed the default water to display.

Please note that this will most likely result in the display of parts of the default coast as well, since it probably is not precisely aligned with the photo-real version, thus forcing you to do some vector work also. Or, you could create the Blend Mask with a certain amount of partially-transparent areas around the coast in order to obscure the default land.

Please read Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator X that you can find in the Avsim library:
http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?Ca ... LID=112595

As for the lake that you are trying to create, it will never display over photo-real images - custom textures always take precedence. An advanced user could attempt making a hole in the custom ground and then creating the vector lake, but that is too long to explain here.

Best regards.
Luis

G-RJWA
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Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:21 pm

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by G-RJWA » Thu Nov 05, 2009 12:56 pm

Many thanks for your explanation - I will attempt that tonight. I've been reading all sorts of stuff on SBX and did find out that the photo texture would take precedence over all else, and I dont mind losing the lake, it was just another thing that I'd tried.

I will let you know if I'm successful.

Thanks again - much appreciated.

G-RJWA
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:21 pm

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by G-RJWA » Fri Nov 06, 2009 2:33 pm

Hi - just working on these images - is it normal for such a small area to create a 286MB image? Its only a 2-mile square or so... Should I be using some kind of compression or is there any other way I could make these images smaller?? The main texture image is a .bmp (i stand corrected) of 9472x7936 and the blend mask is a .tif of the same size.

If anyone has a tip about making these images smaller, please let me know! I have a 1TB hard drive but its a lot to load when most of it is in view at any one time when flying.

Compiling at the moment - my .tif caused two errors so far:

TIFFReadDirectory: Warning, xxxx_B.TIF: wrong data type 1 for "XMLPacket"; tag ignored

also -- unknown field with tag 34665 (0x8769) encountered)

Will it matter?? :O

meshman
Posts: 219
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 11:54 pm

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by meshman » Fri Nov 06, 2009 6:22 pm

When you mention image size is that for the whole of the scenery, as shown in the first posting? If so, I would be breaking things into smaller pieces to work from.

Your blendmasks need to be in grayscale format, 8 bit.

And go into the SBuilder.ini file and find this line; CompressionQuality=100 Change it to something lower, like 90, maybe even 85. Resulting BGL files will be much smaller.
Lance

G-RJWA
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:21 pm

Re: Help with sim-sea vs photo-sea!

Post by G-RJWA » Sat Nov 07, 2009 1:45 pm

Hi - yea the large filesize is the .bmp file in the tools/work folder, and the .tif for the blendmask. I'll reduce it to 8-bit grayscale next time i'm on it. Compressionquality is already set to 80 i think. The BGL file itself isnt that big, approx 26-28MB at the moment.

I'm making progress, but finding some fsx landclass poking out at certain points of the coast. Should I flatten those parts to sea level with a polygon?

Have got rid of the black sea tiles by painting the original bmp blank areas white, so have sorted most of my problems.

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