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New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

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New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby vnts » Sun Feb 14, 2021 1:08 pm

Split off from the topic What/Where did you fly today? - Part 5. First quote extended for context.


erik wrote in Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:13 pm:New materials definition for three crop areas in Europe:
Image


The improved regional definitions and new integrated agriculture textures on the latest nightly build [1] look awesome :) :mrgreen:

These definitions seem to work fine from my testing. As they're low risk, maybe it's worth adding to the next point release? If they are any misc issues it can be fixed in a point release after that.

Near EDDC. Irrigated agriculture on the banks of the river. Nightly builds now have OSM2City world build too :mrgreen: :
Image

Rolling hills of idyllic agricultural lands stretching to the horizon in southern France (near LFDH which turned out a nice area to see the new agriculture improvements)
Image

Next to LFDH:
Image

With OSM2City & scenery objects:
Image

(Finding new crisp, clean, detailed GPL textures to FG makes a huge difference - when they're integrated by matched/cleaned and integrated into regional definitions like Erik did. Even up close the scene looks crisp, like a photo. This is just with current WS2 scenery, and ALS is running at a fraction of its potential even in the more developed regions.)

Tried the same spot, with google instantstreetview ortho-photos - showing pretty much the same thing although season is probably different and these definitions haven't been localised to this region:
Image

The WS2 procedural techniques make the in-sim view look much like the view when flying over that region - i.e. when regional definitions for an area are done and textures are made from cleaned/filtered/colour-adjusted/season-adjusted photo sources. The exact locations and rotations of details like farms can change compared to an ortho-photo, but it looks the same to someone who doesn't remember the exact arrangement. The advantage is that the procedural version looks clean and crisp because of the human cleaned/adjusted base texture.

With WS3, it should be possible to add more detail to the landclass raster with human classified landtypes from orthophotos if they are GPL compatible (by manually identifying the hues/colours of different landtypes in an orthophoto). It should also be possible to do things like create small blobs of vegetation in a barren landscape on the fly according to distributions defined in regional definitions, so you get pretty much the same effect.

Kind regards,
vs
Last edited by Johan G on Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Split off from the topic "What/Where did you fly today? - Part 5". First quote extended for context.
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Re: What/Where did you fly today? - Part 5

Postby erik » Sun Feb 14, 2021 1:27 pm

vnts wrote in Sun Feb 14, 2021 1:08 pm:The improved regional definitions and new integrated agriculture textures on the latest nightly build [1] look awesome

Thanks, there are a couple of things I'd like to point out:
  • Farms are now a small collection of buildings rather than a single silo or barn which highly improves the impression of a farm.
  • I've made the type of farms region specific. You get different types when comparing Europe, the United States or Africa now.
  • Tree masks are a really important feature since it 'ties' the tiles together. You even get the impression of roads leading towards towns due to their existence.
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Re: What/Where did you fly today? - Part 5

Postby vnts » Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:08 pm

There isn't a thread for your new Europe improvements on the scenery section(?), so not sure where to post:

One misc thing: some of the trees used a low res texture - deciduous.png for NaturalCrop in europe.xml. That is an older low-res version - deciduous-alt.png is the newer one.

Edit: looking into left over uses of older textures with an -alt version, text searching seems to show a use of mixed.png instead of mixed-alt.png in south-africa.xml (Grassland and DryCrop). Mixed-alt seems to be a direct replacement, so this seems to be a left over use (?). The rest seem ok: Not sure if the tropical-alt2 is a direct upgrade to tropical-alt or a recolouring, and I don't see any other uses of coniferous or deciduous.

Kind regards,
vs
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Re: What/Where did you fly today? - Part 5

Postby erik » Sun Feb 14, 2021 3:52 pm

Good catch, it looks to have better tree coloring too.

Erik
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Re: New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby erik » Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:54 am

Here are some samples of the agriculture regionization:

Agriculture Africa:
Image
Agriculture America:
Image
Agriculture Europe:
Image

Erik
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Re: New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby vnts » Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:22 am

Looks good : )

I tried downloading the changed .ac and .xml files and checking LFDH: image. The weathered/desaturated buildings without a constant colour/shade blend in pretty well without catching the eye.

Seemed there were still some usage of older tree textures (lower right corner) - these turned out to be mixed.dds! I searched for .png so didn't see these results.

A couple of uses of mixed.dds in europe.xml in: MixedCropPastureCover and DryCrop. There weren't any other dds results in materials/regions.

After looking at tropical texture sheets, tropical.png seems like a newer recolouring of tropical-alt2.png, making it look more realistic and less washed out - a direct upgrade. I don't think more washed out colours are desired for any type of tropical forest - there wouldn't be much dust or dryness?. Tropical.png is used in brazil_pampas.xml, florida.xml, madagascar.xml, south_east_asia.xml, south_africa.xml. These are mostly conventional tropical forests. Git would probably show the age of tropical.png, if it's older than tropical-alt2.png, then they are just left over references.

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Re: New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby danielHL » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:09 pm

This looks really beautiful! I had to look twice yesterday if I started at the right airport - so much new things to look at... I can't wait till WS3 is operational and surpasses WS2 in features and details/visuals...
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Re: New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby erik » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:36 pm

vnts wrote in Mon Feb 15, 2021 11:22 am:After looking at tropical texture sheets, tropical.png seems like a newer recolouring of tropical-alt2.png, making it look more realistic and less washed out - a direct upgrade. I don't think more washed out colours are desired for any type of tropical forest - there wouldn't be much dust or dryness?. Tropical.png is used in brazil_pampas.xml, florida.xml, madagascar.xml, south_east_asia.xml, south_africa.xml. These are mostly conventional tropical forests. Git would probably show the age of tropical.png, if it's older than tropical-alt2.png, then they are just left over references.


History of tropical.png:
https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fg ... opical.png

History of tropical-alt2.png
https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fg ... l-alt2.png

It looks like the later was derived on purpose.

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Re: New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby erik » Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:46 pm

I've now kept the tropical.png for the more dry areas like brazil_pampas.xml and madagascar.xml, but changed to tropical-alt2.png for florida.xml, and south_east_asia.xml

Erik
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Re: New material definitions for three crop areas in Europe

Postby Johan G » Thu Feb 18, 2021 5:03 pm

Some posts were split off to the new topic Improving the tropical tree textures.
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Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)
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