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Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

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Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Stevenj279 » Fri Aug 14, 2020 2:42 pm

I'm looking at the how the camera views in UAVs (ATI-Resolution, MQ-9, etc.) render the sensor ball view. I don't see an option to switch from color to black & white - Can the RGB values be changed in the aircraft's view options, and what might the settings be? Some have NVG, but I've not seen anything for EO/IR, which is very common. Thanks in advance!
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Johan G » Fri Aug 14, 2020 7:47 pm

There is IR available, see for example the topic ALS night vision (and others) and the FlightGear wiki article ALS infrared vision. Keep in mind that this to some degree is a trick. Apart from calculations of thermal radiation from different landclasses (for the advanced weather simulation when it is in use) and assumptions about the sky most of it seem to be inverted color.
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Thorsten » Mon Aug 17, 2020 5:42 am

most of it seem to be inverted color.


That'd be because most of the time it really is (blackbody radiation for equilibrium emission works that way), but if you're interested in military applications, you can assign a temperature to your targets and the effect will render that temperature instead of a blackbody guess.

Needless to say, most objects do not have a temperature assigned though... 8)
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Stevenj279 » Sun Aug 30, 2020 12:21 am

Thanks Gents - I've been looking into how to possibly modify a 3D FG model's IR intensity to make it stand out more from the background in the IR shader.

I found the "delta-t" setting but not sure exactly where/how to use it. I'm not looking for a true IR rendering, just a way to tweak it a bit. The info I found doesn't give enough explanation - for example, where would the <delta-t> value go...which file(s)?

Also, as an aside, wonder if the values for the IR view could be made swappable, such as what's "hot" is reversed, same for "cold". This would then be IR "White Hot", and when reversed, "Black Hot", as is done for many IR sensors.
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:43 am

We do have a residing math genius on the forum who happens to have a background (PhD) not only in physics, but also in effects/shader development - so he can probably tell you if it's feasible to configure a "shape", sections of "materials" (metal, wood, glass, fibre glass), sources of light/heat (sun, propulsion) and apply an effect to the whole shebang, Thorsten are you there ? :lol:
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Johan G » Sun Aug 30, 2020 10:54 am

Hooray wrote in Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:43 am:Thorsten are you there ? :lol:

The post above the one you replied to. :wink:
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Thorsten » Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:13 pm

I found the "delta-t" setting but not sure exactly where/how to use it. I'm not looking for a true IR rendering, just a way to tweak it a bit. The info I found doesn't give enough explanation - for example, where would the <delta-t> value go...which file(s)?


Well, effects assume a basic familiarity with the effect syntax, so it refers to that - inside your model xml wrapper you can declare a derived effect (*.eff files usually) to apply to a surface, and the parameter goes into there (there's gazillions of aircraft using this principle, so examples are found aplenty).

Also, as an aside, wonder if the values for the IR view could be made swappable, such as what's "hot" is reversed, same for "cold". This would then be IR "White Hot", and when reversed, "Black Hot", as is done for many IR sensors.


In principle anything 'can' be made swappable, but unless you learn GLSL coding and do it or find someone else to implement it for you it won't happen, the current code doesn't support this (and I think it's an overkill...) . :D
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Hooray » Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:29 pm

just curious, shouldn't swapping colors (between black/white) merely be the equivalent of applying a multiplication to invert the color (or using GL_BLEND), and if so, couldn't that be made configurable using a boolean property ??
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Stevenj279 » Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:34 am

I can understand that the need for a reversed version of IR as described would generally not be of much interest to the community. Just seems that there are circumstances/conditions where Black Hot is sometimes more effective. As mentioned, SAR operations (and potential training for it using FG) came immediately to mind...
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Thorsten » Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:04 am

What a developer hopes for: 'Cool, we have an IR mode already implemented out of the box!'
What a developer gets: 'I haven't got it working yet, but I really think this should have in addition this and that feature...'

So, apart from the quite motivating conversation, it's not terribly difficult to implement, but it just isn't implemented, and I have a newborn baby at home and very little time, so implementing a color swap doesn't even get onto my to-do list - if you want it, you'll have to get it to the status of a merge request, I'll handle that.
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Re: Changing UAV Camera View to Black & White

Postby Stevenj279 » Thu Sep 03, 2020 3:35 am

Thorsten - No worries... I understand what you mean.
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