Board index FlightGear Development Scenery

EDDC city models

Questions and discussion about enhancing and populating the FlightGear world.

Re: EDDC city models

Postby Thorsten » Sun Mar 31, 2013 7:16 am

Very nice!

Now includes LOD animation (set ranges under View->Adjust LOD ranges).


Did you check that these actually improve the matter? I've encountered quite a few cases in FG where LOD and range animations made stuff worse.

For instance, a bare *.ac model is usually much faster to load and render than a model with *.xml wrapper. Any animation based on a distance usually means you ask for a hell lot of distance computations every frame, and while they're not exactly expensive, more than 1000 of them at some point are. Eventually it may be cheapter to push everything to the GPU and simply render it, rather than pre-selecting on the CPU, because...

...our model shaders are usually set up in such a way as to do most work in the fragment shader, i.e. the cost to render a model is proportional to the number of screen pixels it covers, which is in its very design something akin to a LOD system - as you fly away and the model shrinks to a few pixels, the rendering load becomes marginal.

It would depend on the GPU, but a modern GPU is much better at dealing with lots of models than a CPU is with calculating ranges.
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Mon Apr 01, 2013 9:39 pm

Good point, Thorsten. I did test it, turns out LOD is a good thing here. I get 6fps without LOD animation, and 15 with.

As James suggested, nearby buildings are clustered into blocks of 500x500m. Each block is stored in one .ac + .xml. I end up with ~1000 blocks, so ~1000 distance calculations. I do see fps drop when I decrease block size to 200m (13fps). OTOH, I don't see a gain with 1000m.
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

Re: EDDC city models

Postby Thorsten » Tue Apr 02, 2013 7:23 am

Okay, just asking. Seems you have it all covered nicely. :D
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Tue Apr 02, 2013 10:38 am

ot-666 wrote in Sun Mar 31, 2013 3:28 am:Any chance you could do this for LOWI / Austria?

I'm on it. Might take some days though. I'll keep you posted.
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

Re: EDDC city models

Postby Soitanen » Fri Apr 05, 2013 5:53 pm

Radi, could you tell, please, about toolchain for merging multiple .ac placed in .stg into one .ac object?
Boeing 737-300. Reworked cockpit, FDM, autopilot and much more. WIP.
Boeing 737-800. WIP. Canvas PFD and ND.
Antonov An-24B. Made from scratch. Very good FDM. 3D model by Adrian. WIP.
Project Russia (some cities, based on OSM with custom objects).
Soitanen
 
Posts: 489
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2012 7:50 am
Location: Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Version: git
OS: Linux Mint 17

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Fri Apr 05, 2013 6:39 pm

It's home-grown: I'm actively developing a python code that takes OSM and elevation data and produces multiple .ac, .xml, .stg. You can find it at
https://gitorious.org/fg-radi/osm2city
There's almost no docs yet, so it's probably very hard to use for anyone else at the moment. So no release yet, but I'll announce once I've streamlined the (command line) user interace and created some docs.
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

Re: EDDC city models

Postby chris_blues » Wed Apr 24, 2013 4:45 pm

Hey radi!
Just been flying around your OSM-LOWI and EDDC! Suhbor!!! :mrgreen: Looks absolutely stunning! Even my CPU's agree! :) First time I saw them all maxed out!!!
Well this sure is nothing for low-end computers, but the details are awesome, Hauptbahnhof, Zwinger, Frauenkirche - they are all there! Fantastic! Only the generic churches look a bit - how shall I put it - misplaced... :wink:

All these people at EDDC ground will have to take care, not be overrun by taxing planes lol

Thanks, radi, for this great work!
Don't hesitate to let me know if I'm incorrect or just annoying! As long as you do it gently! :)
Debian stable 64bit - i7 8x2.8GHz - 20GB RAM - GeForce GTS 450
Citation II
User avatar
chris_blues
Retired
 
Posts: 1577
Joined: Mon May 03, 2010 2:30 pm
Location: claws of real life
Callsign: chris_blues
Version: GIT
OS: Debian stable 64

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:15 pm

Thanks Chris!

I do have some ideas to restructure things a bit. In the future, this would allow users with medium to low-end hardware to decrease building density until it runs fast enough (and fits their RAM). Until I'm there, you're totally right: you need somewhat powerful hardware at the moment. And I agree, the generic churches look odd. They're in the right spot, but maybe I should disable them in the .stg until someone comes up with a better model.
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

Re: EDDC city models

Postby zakalawe » Thu Apr 25, 2013 8:08 am

I'm quite amused that my guess of 400m was close to best for the block size - but also very glad that you've tested 200m. Depending on hardware, larger sizes (800m) might be faster - it will depend on the hardware I except. Hopefully since it's scripted, you can tweak this without much effort?
zakalawe
 
Posts: 1259
Joined: Sat Jul 19, 2008 5:48 pm
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Callsign: G-ZKLW
Version: next
OS: Mac

Re: EDDC city models

Postby chris_blues » Thu Apr 25, 2013 9:17 am

and it might prove a good idea, to scale some textures down. This hair-shop, for instance, doesn't have to be quite that highly resolution. When driving with some vehicle right in front of it, I still couldn't make out no pixelisation. When having in mind, that these textures are meant to be seen from min 100ft above, you could scale them down 1/2 or 1/4th easily, without loosing any effect... Maybe that'll reduce load too, considering the sheer amount of models...
On the other hand, if there were OSM roads and some less confusing underlying terrain texture, it might become a new branch to FG - driveGear :) It was quite funny and nice to drive through Innsbruck in a Jeep!

Cheers
chris
Don't hesitate to let me know if I'm incorrect or just annoying! As long as you do it gently! :)
Debian stable 64bit - i7 8x2.8GHz - 20GB RAM - GeForce GTS 450
Citation II
User avatar
chris_blues
Retired
 
Posts: 1577
Joined: Mon May 03, 2010 2:30 pm
Location: claws of real life
Callsign: chris_blues
Version: GIT
OS: Debian stable 64

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:23 pm

James,

it's fully scripted so testing is cheap. I don't see any improvement above 500m tile size:

tile
size fps
200 13
500 15
1000 15
2000 15

@Chris: Yes, I'm fully aware that the current texture resolution is plain overkill. I didn't care much initially, since I'm lucky enough to have plenty of video ram :D Also, disabling textures altogether didn't have any impact at all.

I've streamlined the process quite a bit since the initial release, now there's a script that converts all textures to a given size. Next release will come with a more reasonable texture resolution (and lightmaps :wink: ).
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

Re: EDDC city models

Postby macnab » Fri Apr 26, 2013 5:35 am

Excuse my ignorance about scenery files :?

1) I presume that it's not just me that there is a match-up problem between terrain and building location in Dresden.
2)
Just been flying around your OSM-LOWI.
Where are these files? I've got the airport buildings, but not the town.

Thanks.
macnab
 
Posts: 885
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 8:20 am
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Callsign: ZS-ILH
Version: Git
OS: Win7Pro 64bit SP1

Re: EDDC city models

Postby Thorsten » Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:48 am

When driving with some vehicle right in front of it, I still couldn't make out no pixelisation.


This is marvelous - you can actully drive through and it looks good :-) I like that.
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:29 am

On the next release, there'll be a release party in front of the hairdresser. Bring your 4WDs. 8)
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

Re: EDDC city models

Postby radi » Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:38 am

there is a match-up problem between terrain and building location in Dresden.


Building locations are correct, the default scenery is somewhat off. Quoting myself,
Works best with papillion81's custom scenery.

but I should have made that more clear.


Where are these files? I've got the airport buildings, but not the town.

Google "lowi osm flightgear" brings up viewtopic.php?f=5&t=19625#p180723
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
radi
 
Posts: 659
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 5:24 pm
Location: YMML, EDDC

PreviousNext

Return to Scenery

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests