Just started, what next

[Mojave]

I just found this amazing application yesterday and I've been playing with it all day as well as reading these forums and tutorials. I am awed!

I just have a couple quick questions. I am mostly interested in photorealistic scenery and SBX makes this so trivally simple, I'm worried I'm missing something. I use SBX to pull in tiles from VirtualEarth, center and zoom and then simply compile the BGL files and they work perfectly. I haven't had to use the "map" function - I'm still unsure what that is for. I'm not adding any specific objects, correctly shorelines or airports yet, just mapping scenery to the terrain. Am I missing anything? Is it really this easy to use? I realize there is some work in actually creating photo textures for a large area since I am doing very high zoom.

Speaking of zoom and resolution. The areas I'm working on now have great scenery to zoom level 17 or 18. What does that equate to as far as m/pixel resolution that I see in other people's scenery files? For instance, I see 4.7m/pixel and 1.2m/pixel resolutions.

I may find this info as I read more of the forums and tutorials. If anyone has pointers to specific things I should read, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks again for a great application and forum!

[luisfeliztirado]

It is extremely simple to use, thanks to Luis. And to think that people are charging a lot of money for something that anybody can do quickly and easily, and often better!

If you have not yet done so, please read Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator X, available in the Avsim library at
http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?Ca ... LID=140539
for more information.

The level 17 images may correspond to 1.2 meters per pixel, which is the maximum resolution of the default ground textures. Of course, you can make scenery with greater resolution, but perhaps there is not much point in doing so outside of airports.

Good luck. Best regards.
Luis

[Mojave]

Thanks Luis. I have read that tutorial - it is very helpful. There are a few issues I'm not finding good answers for.

Almost every time I create a map, I end up with some white tiles in the compiled scenery file. I assume those are missing tiles, but they appear initially in the SBX background, so I don't know how that can be.

How can I merge several BGL files created by SBX so that I don't end up with hundreds of scenery files for a given scenery area?

The last problem is my biggest headache. Is there a simple way to line up a new map (in SBX) with an existing one, so that I don't end up with scenery that either overlaps or has gaps in between?

Hopefully I'll find these answers somewhere or by trial and error, but I'm also impatient.

[ananda]

>> Is there a simple way to line up a new map (in SBX) with an existing one?

Unfortunately not, one can only drag a corner of the display up or down or sideways. I'm sure Luis could arrange that the next tile up/down/left/right could be selected by a keystroke or click.

>> How can I merge several BGL files created by SBX.

You cannot merge the bgls but you could merge the .infs such that a single bgl would be created by resample.

This was created by combining 49 inf files:



George

[luisfeliztirado]

Let's see:

- White tiles are definitely missing. This can happen when the Internet connection is not completely reliable, or when using the Google server! Because, of course, it is not completely reliable. If you initially see the ground in the SBuilderX background, it is probably just an interpolation of the previous zoom level that is displayed while the current zoom level is downloaded.

- You can combine multiple source images to make one gigantic bgl, as George demonstrates, and as is mentioned in the tutorial. It is a process that you must do by hand, though. First, compile each of your individual Maps using SBuilderX. You can discard the individual bgls. Then, open each of the inf files from those compilations and use the Source section of each to make a MultiSource inf file. Use that MultiSource inf file to create a new bgl by dragging it onto Resample (make sure that all files are present, including the Map images). The result will be a very large bgl with the entire desired coverage.

- If you make a MultiSource file, then there is no need to line up a new Map with those already existing. Any overlap will be eliminated by Resample (and anyway, it is the same image, so would not create any sort of visual anomaly by overlapping.)

- You can determine the final resolution of your compiled images by opening them in TMFViewer (that is included in the FSX S.D.K.) Once there, check the View-Level of Detail menu where you will see the resolution in bold type, and in gray if that resolution is not included in the bgl. Note that a range of multiple resolutions will be included within the bgl.

Best regards.
Luis

[meshman]

The level 17 images may correspond to 1.2 meters per pixel, which is the maximum resolution of the default ground textures. Of course, you can make scenery with greater resolution, but perhaps there is not much point in doing so outside of airports.

Greets Luis,

Just did a small test area and within SBX level 16 is compiled to 1.19m, level 17 to .59m and level 18 to .30m.

Lance

[Mojave]

Thanks everyone for their responses. As I learn more, I find that indeed many of the answers are in the documentation, I just wasn't aware enough to understand it at the time.

I'm not quite sure of resolution vs QMID and LOD. I know QMID numbers are +2 over LOD numbers. I've been working on my test scenery in SBX at zoom level = 15 (which I assume equates to QMID) and then when I add a map, I use zoom level = 17. For the area I am working right now, that is the highest zoom level there are tiles for. In tables, I see that a QMID of 17 results in 1.19 m/pixel resolution. And in the One Pixel (degrees) column, the value is 1.06871E-05. However, in my INF file, the xDim value is 5.36441802978516E-06. So am I really getting 1.19 m/pixel or something higher?

Also, how does the maximum resolution of default ground textures in FSX relate to what resolution I might want to have for my scenery? If I have higher resolution, even outside of airports, will it still show up or I am unnecessarily using too high a resolution?

Thanks again for everyone's help.

[luisfeliztirado]

Thank you very much, Lance, for clearing that up.

QMID, and LOD, grids are simply a means of restricting the amount of terrain scenery elements contained within a bgl (although the sense of LOD in objects varies slightly from this.) So, you can display a QMID, or the old LOD, grid and see how the default files are broken up, and consequently how much is loaded by the game, since it will load the entire bgl. The default terrain files are mostly broken up into QMID level 7 blocks, although the files that we compile are not.

To see the resolution of your custom textures, though, use the Level of Detail menu item in TMFViewer. While a QMID level 17 might correspond to 1.2 meters per pixel, the zoom level of the different image servers (Yahoo, Live Earth, Google, etc.) will depend on how they implement the zoom in their application. As Lance has pointed out, it will most likely be somewhere around what he reports.

As to the most desirable resolution for your scenery, it really depends on you and the use to which you will put it. Consider that the custom ground textures contain different levels of resolution up to the maximum that you have compiled, but that the farther you get from the ground, the lower the resolution that is displayed. So, if you are mostly flying in the Flight Levels, there is no particular point to having high resolution ground textures since the game is displaying the lowest resolution images. And even at 1500 ft AGL, you will probably never see the 1.2 meter per pixel images, and only the 2.4 meter per pixel images are displayed by the game. So, that is why I mentioned that outside of airports, there is probably no point in making extremely high resolution ground textures, unless you are continuously flying at 500 ft. AGL!

The higher the resolution of your custom ground textures, the larger (much larger!) the bgl, and the longer it takes to load, which can get hectic when it covers a very large area and lead to performance problems (i.e. the dread Blurries!) But, again it is up to you as a designer to test and make the hard decisions.

Best regards.
Luis

[Mojave]

Thanks Luis.

Now I understand the reasoning of higher resolution mostly at airports and not in other areas. I'm going to stick with 1.2m/p resolution throughout my scenery. As Lance says, that equates to SBX zoom level 16 and for me the file size/coverage is a good trade off. Most of the other free hi-res scenery I use has the same values.

With SBX, I've found a good technique for creating "grids" of scenery files. They connect horizontally quite well, but vertically, the scenery has a small line gap (only noticeable when flying directly over it) that has forced me to create a scenery "patch" on top of the connection. I guess this is just a result of how SBX pulls tiles from the server and there's really not much I can do about it except use the patch?

I'm also finding occasional anomalies in the scenery - small grey rectangles, usually no more than one per scenery file - that aren't in the original tiles, but that just appear after processing through SBX/resample. I'm not quite sure how to handle those yet.

Anyway, thanks for all the help. I've learned so much in the last 2 days and can't wait to get all the kinks worked out. SBX is awesome!