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Elevation Maps

ATC-pie is a radar air traffic control simulation program for the FlightGear multi-player network.

Elevation Maps

Postby msmithjr » Thu Jul 20, 2017 8:37 pm

I've tried solo sessions at OMDB and KSFO and aircraft are buried underground at both. Then I discovered the elevation map feature and copied the example in Notice which I assumed was for KSFO and saved it as KSFO.elev

This resulted in no visible changes to aircraft on the ground.

So, I'd like to know, why do we have to configure an elevation map when if I simply launch FG as a pilot every aircraft is nearly at correct height? Especially confusing when the AI traffic is taxiing along nicely on the ground but in an ATC-pie solo session the same aircraft are submerged.
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Re: Elevation Maps

Postby Necolatis » Fri Jul 21, 2017 12:24 am

It depends on what terrain the pilots flying the aircraft are using. Or if its AI aircraft then they are probably configured to taxi on terrain 2.0.

Terrain 1.0, terrain 2.0 or TerraGit often differs in terrain height so it can appear that aircraft are below/above ground.
I think most use terrain 2.0, which is what you get with terrasync/terramaster on a recent Flightgear.
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Re: Elevation Maps

Postby mickybadia » Sat Jul 22, 2017 9:13 am

Necolatis wrote in Fri Jul 21, 2017 12:24 am:if its AI aircraft then they are probably configured to taxi on terrain 2.0.
Terrain 1.0, terrain 2.0 or TerraGit often differs in terrain height so it can appear that aircraft are below/above ground.

Actually, ATC-pie takes terrain elevation from its own source. It does not use FG data natively because it is designed to work even without a local FG installation.

However, and as explained in resources/elev/Notice, a script is provided to create an elev map in one command. It is based on the fgelev tool that comes with FG, so you then depend on its source, i.e. probably the same as the FG AI ACFT.

msmithjr wrote in Thu Jul 20, 2017 8:37 pm:I discovered the elevation map feature and copied the example in Notice which I assumed was for KSFO and saved it as KSFO.elev

Wrong assumption. That 6-value example is a dummy example. No point recycling.
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Re: Elevation Maps

Postby Hooray » Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:04 pm

mickybadia wrote in Sat Jul 22, 2017 9:13 am:Actually, ATC-pie takes terrain elevation from its own source. It does not use FG data natively because it is designed to work even without a local FG installation.
However, and as explained in resources/elev/Notice, a script is provided to create an elev map in one command. It is based on the fgelev tool that comes with FG, so you then depend on its source, i.e. probably the same as the FG AI ACFT.


Note that the atlas/map tools can also be used to generate elevation/heightmaps from the scenery/terrain tiles used by FlightGear - as a matter of fact, Torsten once brought up the idea to use the same tools to create "live" maps for his Phi/mongoose project:


Atlas still in use ?
Torsten wrote:I'd really like to use the Atlas generated maps as a layer in the browser map. Is anybody out there looking for an adventure and is able to modify the Atlas map generator to generate maps on-the-fly? Input would be three parameters: z/x/y where z is the zoom level and x/y are numeric parameters describing latitude and longitude (based on image size). Output should be a generated tile of 256x256 and format png in a memory buffer.

This could be compiled as a Apache httpd module (like osm's "renderd") or linked against a standalone webserver to akt as a tileserver for any openlayers compatible map.
[...]
What I have in mind for the map is to render the map tiles (small 256x256px fragments of a map) from flightgear scenery data on the fly when the user requests them from within the map application. Thats how openstreetmaps works and I like the idea of reusing proven concepts. There is no need at all - in fact, it's not even desireable - to do that in the main loop. Running a standalone application (or call it process if you like) creating and serving the tiles will add no load to the FlightGear process, no matter how complex the map is.


Torsten


Like Torsten mentioned, it would also be possible to re-use the corresponding code and come up with a web-service that creates/caches the corresponding maps by fetching the latest scenery automatically via TerraSync.
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