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Next-generation scenery generating?

Questions and discussion about enhancing and populating the FlightGear world.

Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby Thorsten » Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am

Eh. FlightGear scenery isn't good enough. It gets the rock strata right, but the river's neither accurate nor wide enough (most of the base of the Grand Canyon is just the river), and it doesn't blend well with the surrounding textures, and there's no shadows in that image (though could be a time of day/perspective thing.)


Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...

and there's no shadows in that image (though could be a time of day/perspective thing.


Yeah, the image seems a bit doctored to make FG look bad - at the right time of the day and with a sprinkle of dust shader added it looks *very* compelling.
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby statto » Sun Oct 13, 2019 12:02 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...


Can't say that I have... which I would also consider a problem :)
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby frtps » Sun Oct 13, 2019 12:29 pm

statto wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:02 am:Eh. FlightGear scenery isn't good enough. It gets the rock strata right, but the river's neither accurate nor wide enough (most of the base of the Grand Canyon is just the river), and it doesn't blend well with the surrounding textures, and there's no shadows in that image (though could be a time of day/perspective thing.)

Accurate data should be available from OSM, but we really need some sort of land cover blending/transition if we're going to get things right. Unfortunately, that's beyond my abilities as a programmer at the moment.


...and a gridded DEM is not going to give you vertical cliffs. The OSM data for the Grand Canyon contains riverbanks (so you can get the river width and variation perfect) as well as cliff positions allowing creation of proper vertical drops. Our stock scenery could look a lot better just using the tools we already have:

Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...


The problem being that the current stock world scenery doesn't use the wealth of OSM and national land use data that has become available since the last scenery run. I think there was talk that maybe by the end of this year a new run of scenery generation would be fired up, I don't know where that has gotten to and to what extent new landcover shapefiles and OSM data will be used and/or generated. Note that we have recipes in the Australian scenery project to auto-generate scenery from the raw OSM/ALUM/NVIS data files (ALUM - Australian land use data; NVIS - national vegetation information system). The resulting shapefiles could be fed into any new FG scenery generation run. Perhaps each region could have a "champion" to organise the shapefiles? No champion = no change from the current scenery.
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby V12 » Sun Oct 13, 2019 2:54 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...

Again, where we can download this scenery ?

Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Yeah, the image seems a bit doctored to make FG look bad - at the right time of the day and with a sprinkle of dust shader added it looks *very* compelling.

And what is this ???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0Ue4uk1e7Q
Mega doctored to look mega bad ???

Or what about this video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbheMERg7Kc
Check 17:21 - is this video doctored to look bad too ?

Another example :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_l213xcbDA
Is it nice scenery ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ckmu19rI5o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs2e2V_KwPY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Afw70m9MA

I can't find better looking GC :(
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby miguel » Sun Oct 13, 2019 4:34 pm

Hopefully.
let's have it again.
OSGEarth.
my vote
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby Hooray » Sun Oct 13, 2019 5:42 pm

bugman wrote in Fri Oct 04, 2019 8:12 am:So, Jeff put the brakes on the merger of this code - he said it was not ready. And we have all been waiting for him since April 2015! No one, apart from the developer himself, is blocking this.



While I am not sure if that's an accurate, let alone "fair", depiction of the event surrounding the original review, I also haven't heard from Jeff in a while - that being said, I do remember that he was updating his development branches regularly.

Given how things are standing now, I wouldn't expect Jeff's osgEarth work to relate to any recent scenery efforts, but given Icecode GL's work on the compositor, and given how the Canvas system has evolved over the years, it would be pretty straightforward to integrate Jeff's work using Fernando's Compositor approach, so that osgEarth could simply become another "startup mode", given that we support multiple FDMs and even renderers, supporting multiple scenery engines might not be that far-fetched after all:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Compositor

Also, I am aware of another effort where people wanted to use an osgEarth-based moving-map display in FlightGear: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Canvas_Sandb ... sMovingMap

In summary, it's not that unlikely that the latter could be added to FlightGear rather easily (an osgEarth based moving map canvas element), for the benefit of all users wanting such functionality, while it could provide a good starting point for people wanting to tinker with the alternate "osgEarth" startup mode for the scenery, too.

I believe Stuart mentioned on several occasions that he'd been wanting such moving map functionality for his FG1000 - and given that he was involved in the original osgEarth review, he would probably be the right person to reach out to. Absorbing Jeff's changes into the FG repositories while keeping them disabled until things are integrated, should not be such a controversial thing to do after all, especially not for optional functionality, such as a moving map display that could be kept disabled by default, while providing an opportunity to allow other coders to check out this work and see if/how this could be integrated with Fernando's Compositor work to come up with an osgEarth mode using the compositor approach.
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby Thorsten » Sun Oct 13, 2019 6:32 pm

And what is this ???


A collection of YT videos I guess?

I made s specific comment about a specific picture and how its visual appearance could be improved quite a bit. I fail to see the logical connection to a discussion of any other video/post - it doesn't have any bearing for the specific picture discussed.

(Posting FG videos is pointless to make a point to me anyway - I don't view them, they take too long to come to any sort of point - videos need editing, a story and such like to be compelling - if you want to discuss with me, do a screenshot)

I can't find better looking GC


That's kinda your problem, because I can.

my vote


It should be abundantly clear now that it doesn't require your vote but your investment in terms of time/work.
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby V12 » Sun Oct 13, 2019 6:42 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...

Again, where we can download this scenery ?
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby Thorsten » Sun Oct 13, 2019 6:48 pm

Again, where we can download this scenery ?


I fail to see what bearing that has on the texturing strategy question you've been bringing up here. It was an answer specific to statto's complaint about lack of resolution. Perhaps you can care to elaborate?
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby V12 » Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:09 pm

I see only Your fail to demonstrate something what basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby Thorsten » Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:21 pm

So there's really no connection.

Good.

So can we get back to the texturing issue then?

(I refuse to be drawn to a side issue and another side issue by you, sorry...)
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby wkitty42 » Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:30 pm

i think he's trying to ask (in a convoluted manner?) where to download the grand canyon scenery you mentioned was used at a simulator expo that astounded the FSX and X-Plane people... granted, it may not be germane to the discussion but it was mentioned and some folks are interested in downloading it and seeing it on their systems...
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby V12 » Sun Oct 13, 2019 8:29 pm

wkitty42 :
Why convoluted manner ? It was simple question. First note about high resolution GC scenery :
Thorsten wrote in Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:53 am:We also have a GC hires custom scenery which was made for FSWeekend with much better elevation resolution (that really annoyed the FSX folks at FSWeekend, because such a thing simply didn't exist for their sim :D )

I asked him for download link, but hasn't answered. Then next note about that scenery :
Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...

with unnecessary attack :
Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Yeah, the image seems a bit doctored to make FG look bad

Then I asked him for link again and again without clear answer.
IMHO, my questions was not convoluted. I would like to see how scenery resolution is possible in FG.
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby Thorsten » Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:36 am

The discussion at hand (with V12) was about texturing - photo vs. procedural sparked by his image comparison designed once again to make FG look bad (yeah, I hold to that notion, even without custom scenery one can do much more visually appealing screenshots of the location). That's a question independent of the mesh detail level - you'll get the same mesh detail whether you photo-texture or not.

The other discussion branch (with statto) was about scenery resolution (not texturing) - to which I replied that it's been demonstrated (for instance by the Grand Canyon scenery) that in the FG approach resolution can be increased quite a bit beyond what FSX or X-Plane deliver.

I'm intentionally not answering any 'where can I download this' questions for a number of reasons, one of them being that it has no relevance at all for the discussion. Conflating mesh resolution questions with texturing strategy questions or wrong color schemes with ready availability of scenery leads nowhere - there's no reason to conclude from the fact that the river mesh in an existing scenery is not very detailed that photo-scenery will do better - granted, it can paint a river, but if the mesh at the location is not flat, this painted river will look really silly going partially up the cliff walls.

So I would suggest that people who seriously want to discuss organize the logic of their arguments first.
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Re: Next-generation scenery generating?

Postby statto » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:45 pm

frtps wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 12:29 pm:
statto wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:02 am:Eh. FlightGear scenery isn't good enough. It gets the rock strata right, but the river's neither accurate nor wide enough (most of the base of the Grand Canyon is just the river), and it doesn't blend well with the surrounding textures, and there's no shadows in that image (though could be a time of day/perspective thing.)

Accurate data should be available from OSM, but we really need some sort of land cover blending/transition if we're going to get things right. Unfortunately, that's beyond my abilities as a programmer at the moment.


...and a gridded DEM is not going to give you vertical cliffs. The OSM data for the Grand Canyon contains riverbanks (so you can get the river width and variation perfect) as well as cliff positions allowing creation of proper vertical drops. Our stock scenery could look a lot better just using the tools we already have:

Thorsten wrote in Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:48 am:Apparently you haven't seen Martin's hires Grand Canyon custom scenery which was shown at FSWeekend - that basically left the FSX and X-Plane people speechless...


The problem being that the current stock world scenery doesn't use the wealth of OSM and national land use data that has become available since the last scenery run. I think there was talk that maybe by the end of this year a new run of scenery generation would be fired up, I don't know where that has gotten to and to what extent new landcover shapefiles and OSM data will be used and/or generated. Note that we have recipes in the Australian scenery project to auto-generate scenery from the raw OSM/ALUM/NVIS data files (ALUM - Australian land use data; NVIS - national vegetation information system). The resulting shapefiles could be fed into any new FG scenery generation run. Perhaps each region could have a "champion" to organise the shapefiles? No champion = no change from the current scenery.


Looks like the NVIS data is available here... Is this compatible with the GPL license? https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en

NZ's land cover raster is CC3.0 as well, I can get that vectorised very easily (apart from the fact I'm low on disk space.)

Also, I've generated vectors for the entirety of the United States based on NLCS data, but the data's locked away somewhere. The NVIS data is also highly accurate and could make for some very nice/specific scenery if done properly, but with our current texture mappings I assume you'd have to do a lot of recategorisation. I'll try to take some photos of at least eucalyptus on the next overcast day here.
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