A few good questions

This is the Forum to discuss the use of SBuilderX (version 3.10 and above). For previous versions of SBuilder please use the "SBuilder for Flight Simulator FS2004" forum.
Post Reply
jyarddog
Posts: 67
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 3:19 am

A few good questions

Post by jyarddog » Tue Dec 11, 2012 6:00 pm

1. I have Win 7. SBX is install on my main drive.... not progrm files (x86). Lately it has been difficult to get a good map when doing photoreal.
Often I get one of two notes- a. cannot access image. b. try closing background in view and reopen and try again. I have to do this many times, switching to different zoom levels and/or LOD levels and finally might get something that works.

Can this be due to low resolution images and not my fault?

2. Been helping a couple of new guys with photoreal. One fellow is trying scenes in Polynesian region. Many islands. I've seen his bmp and blend mask.... seems ok. result sometimes is- a. one big square as if he did background compile with no map. b. photoreal is visible but his photoreal island is way off the default island by maybe 1,000 yards... give or take. OR c. half of his photoreal shows up but also shows many ugly squares.

3. I recently corrected one of these photoreals for him and finally succeded but had to do some coloring here and there. But I ended up with 3 rectangular tiles of white off the island and in the default area. I manually colored these and ended up with 3 BLACK tiles!

could all this be just poor sat imiages from Google or VE? Main concern is why do the images fail so often? i.e. having to close down background and reopn and try again, etc.

I am sure out of all of us.... one of us has the answers to all of the above. Thanx, Bob

User avatar
luisfeliztirado
Posts: 436
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 9:15 am
Location: Santo Domingo

Re: A few good questions

Post by luisfeliztirado » Fri Dec 14, 2012 3:00 pm

Hi Bob,

Perhaps nobody knows the answers so that is why there are no comments.

For the first item, the cause of the problem is not clear, perhaps you could try using Dick Ludowise's latest dll, available via the first post in the forum. It may have to do with an outdated server dll.

For the other problems, could you please show screenshots of the issues? I have a hard time imagining what is going wrong.

Best regards.
Luis

jyarddog
Posts: 67
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 3:19 am

Re: A few good questions

Post by jyarddog » Sat Dec 15, 2012 10:37 am

Luis- Not angry with others... just frustrated. I thouight there was a discussion on some of these in the past. Anyway- will try the dll. I just recentlyi found a google one that works. But I believe I am getting this no matter what server I use. If the dll is for SBX that might help. Will look into it and keep you posted. Bob

jyarddog
Posts: 67
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 3:19 am

Re: A few good questions

Post by jyarddog » Sat Dec 15, 2012 6:58 pm

Luis- et al- Notice the black patches. They were white until I tried to take them out with recoloring I think.. Lack of image download? Bob
Attachments
screenshot4.jpg

User avatar
luisfeliztirado
Posts: 436
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 9:15 am
Location: Santo Domingo

Re: A few good questions

Post by luisfeliztirado » Sun Dec 16, 2012 2:25 pm

Thanks for the image, Bob. What color did you choose? Was it pure black (0,0,0) or not? And do you have a Null Value in the inf file?

White squares usually means the image server (Google, I suppose) had no pictures of that specific area, so it is probably best to use a Blend Mask to make them transparent and let the default water display outside of the atoll.

By the way, what atoll is that? It would help in case somebody wants to try it.

Best regards.
Luis

jyarddog
Posts: 67
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 3:19 am

Re: A few good questions

Post by jyarddog » Sun Dec 16, 2012 11:02 pm

Luis- I used blue with a clone brush to cover the white areas, smudging here and there to lose any lines, watching opacity and hardness in my paint program. (PSPX4). Some how these areaas then turned black.

ltely I redid this area and it turned out ok. Maybe I used a different zoom level. Closest i could get was 10 or 11.

The area is tubuai, French Polynesia. I am also working on rurutu just northwest of it I believe. The water needs some work, but it's not too bad. Resolution I don't think is very high at all. I guess some areas you just have to do with what you get.

I've tried doing 'add map from disk' but I don't have the nack of getting the lat and long quite right yet.

I got into this project by teaching a new fried in Thailand how to do photoreal. He's learning quite well, but he now tells me he has a free download which was done years ago of this entire area. Through Skype I saw it- very nice but not very high res at all. I asked him if this was due to Skyipe or is it so. He said it is not very clear but it is ok.

I told him that is very nice but it kind of defeats the purpose of learning how to do it yoiurself! :) He agrred! :)
So some areas might have whtie patches at some zoom levels but not others? it sometimes takes many tries - running into the 'can't access image' or ' failed to get image- go back and hide and re do background view and try again' message... then it works. Bob

User avatar
luisfeliztirado
Posts: 436
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 9:15 am
Location: Santo Domingo

Re: A few good questions

Post by luisfeliztirado » Mon Dec 17, 2012 2:56 pm

The white squares are due to SBuilderX not having image tiles for that area. Either they were not downloaded or the image server doesn't have them, which is often the case with the sea as nobody is paying for aerial images of open water.

Regardless, you should be creating Blend Masks for open water surrounding the atolls and letting the default water display instead of the image.

I have just checked the Google server for that atoll, and outside of the reef, they have no images at all for the open water so it will display as white squares, or perhaps as Google's replacement water (which is not photo-real.)

There are also clearly problems with the land images that need rectification and color correction. Also cloud cover over the land. As with just about all aerial images, it is a real mess.

Good luck.

Best regards.
Luis

jyarddog
Posts: 67
Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 3:19 am

Re: A few good questions

Post by jyarddog » Thu Dec 20, 2012 7:18 am

Luis- Thank you. The information is enlightening and helpfull. I knew I should be doing water-masks but haven't tried it lately. I believe it is filename_W.tif I'll look at it further.

By the way- Is there any loss of quality if we reduce the inf file from 100 to 70 or an increase of quality from 85 to 90 or even 100? Bob

User avatar
luisfeliztirado
Posts: 436
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 9:15 am
Location: Santo Domingo

Re: A few good questions

Post by luisfeliztirado » Thu Dec 20, 2012 3:13 pm

Bob,

- A Water Mask will make the surface act like water and display water effects;
- A Blend Mask will transition from the custom (photo-real) image to the default textures.

You should be making both a Water Mask and a Blend Mask for the atoll. For the Water Mask, simply paint the land a pure white and the water a pure black and give the TIFF file a "_W" at the end of its name. For the Blend Mask, paint any part of the image that you want to display a pure white and any part where you want to display default textures a pure black and give the TIFF file a "_B" at the end of its name.

For more details, please see:
Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator X
http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?Ca ... LID=140539

As to quality, you may want to try different values and see for yourself. I have my inf files set to 85 because the compression makes for much smaller file sizes and I can't tell the difference. But, it depends on you.

Best regards.
Luis

Post Reply