Earthview - an orbital terrain rendering engine [v2.0]

[chris_blues]

Edit: Ok, that was easy to fix but not easy to find In Model/Astro, the file earth_N3.xml misses these last lines:

Wow! That makes S1 disappear??? Crazy!

About the textures in general; it's all pretty well documented in the wiki. Essentially you have to look into your FGDATA dir. In $FGDATA/Models/Astro there are the 3D-models of earth/clouds and whatnot. Now you have 2 options:

1. change the ac files: ( you'll need a good text-editor for that. Notepad will just not cut it. )
   you open the .ac files one-by-one and search-and-replace the old texture names with the path, where your 16k version is sitting. ( remark: this is the badass version (and only really useful if you want the dds textures, which are more memory friendly, but not all graphics can do that), you're bound to get into trouble! better use the next option: )
2. replace the texture files themselves (in the subdir $/Textures) (that's why I insist on even generating 1k textures, just for backup)
   simply overwrite the existing textures with the ones you want. Just take special care to get the filenames right!

That should do it.

With overlay is supposed to be the most realistic ?

That's pretty much a matter of taste and opinion! Once you're in orbit check FG's main menu, I think 'view' is the item, then Earthview. Make sure you enable clouds and cloud shadows and probably all of the listed options! I want to encourage you to play with the Earthview config box until you're happy! Same goes for texture resolutions!

Have fun!

[eatdirt]

Wow! That makes S1 disappear??? Crazy!

Yep, in fact the missing lines ended up in clouds_N3.xml, certainly some automatic generation of these files went bad on N3. Just to tell you that I have pushed something crazy in convert.sh... Still need some intensive tests that I have started now, hope you like it

[GinGin]

Thanks for your answers.
@chris_blues

That's pretty much a matter of taste and opinion! Once you're in orbit check FG's main menu, I think 'view' is the item, then Earthview. Make sure you enable clouds and cloud shadows and probably all of the listed options! I want to encourage you to play with the Earthview config box until you're happy! Same goes for texture resolutions!

Have fun!

Indeed.
I always played with all the options turned on.
But like said EatDirt and you, It might be clever to play with it depending on altitude and taste.
I will for sure play much more with it in the future, especially for specific screens without cloud layer



@eatdirt:

Yes, expect minimum 7-8GB on the GPU, between 10 and 20GB on the RAM depending how many 16K textures you're using.
You can also access it with the Property Browser under /earthview and set it to true with the mouse (CTRL+click).

I will wait for my new 32 go ram then
What is your configuration ?
How long does it take you to load without the script ( normal way) and how much Ram go ( me 20 seconds and 10 go)
And same question but with your script and loading of all 16 k textures ?

[eatdirt]

How long does it take you to load without the script ( normal way) and how much Ram go ( me 20 seconds and 10 go)

Normal way, with only world textures 16K dds, the rest 8K, it takes 20 seconds as you say, 7 GB of RAM, and 2.5 GB of GPU memory.
The same with full texture loading takes like a minute or so to load, 13GB of RAM and 5GB of GPU memory.

Loading all 16K textures at once (still with world*.dds), I get like 3 minutes loading, 31GB of RAM and it saturates my graphics card memory 8GB.

What is your configuration ?

PS: At home I have a home-made thing with 48GB RAM with a 1080GTX that comes with 8GB of memory. At work, I have a old workstation (Precision Tower 7910) but which is still fantastic (Quadro K6000 with 12GB of GPU mem and RAM=132GB, did not try (yet) the full 16K at work).

[eatdirt]

I am currently making some experiments with texture generation for earthview based on the month. You can find January and February here:

fg/earthview

I'll try to populate that with other months, and as long as computing time, disk space, and bandwidth will remain available.

Cheers,
Chris.

[GinGin]

Normal way, with only world textures 16K dds, the rest 8K, it takes 20 seconds as you say, 7 GB of RAM, and 2.5 GB of GPU memory.
The same with full texture loading takes like a minute or so to load, 13GB of RAM and 5GB of GPU memory.

Loading all 16K textures at once (still with world*.dds), I get like 3 minutes loading, 31GB of RAM and it saturates my graphics card memory 8GB.

Thanks.
Ah, I didn't notice that in the 16k file, everything even clouds are in 16 k. Is that correct ?
That would explain why it is longer to load than my previous set of textures.

So all loading with the 16 k file you provided on your site take the 31 gb ? xD



Thanks for season textures.
Did you see some big changes between months ?

[eatdirt]

Ah, I didn't notice that in the 16k file, everything even clouds are in 16 k. Is that correct ?
So all loading with the 16 k file you provided on your site take the 31 gb ? xD

Yes, that is it.
But, clouds and normalmap are oversampled at 16K resolution, you don't gain much by using them at 16K. Their native resolution are 10K per tile. On the other hand, the world textures are 21K per tile and you gain in visual resolution by using the 16K sampling. That's why I mix 16K world textures and 8K normalmap, 8K clouds.

Did you see some big changes between months ?

Between January and February, not really, but between January and August, that is very clear. I plan to have a cron job symlinking the textures of the month automatically, then I'll tell you if I see the other small differences from the SpaceShuttle

[GinGin]

Thanks.
I will try then the full loading with 8k normal/clouds and 16 k textures
I will take the Maxi Best of 13 Gb of ram

I don't have too much time to play, but that is a very nice work

[GinGin]

But, clouds and normalmap are oversampled at 16K resolution, you don't gain much by using them at 16K. Their native resolution are 10K per tile.

So, you don't notice better clouds between 8 and 16 K ?
I will do like you then, 16 just for textures.

I am downloading the January thing
Test day of the loading stuff.

Very nice work on all the seasons.

By the way, for the seasons, are the clouds and normal map the same, or does it change also from month to month ?

[chris_blues]

By the way, for the seasons, are the clouds and normal map the same, or does it change also from month to month ?

Unfortunately, the clouds are only available in one edition. The altitude information shouldn't change seasonally! That would be desastrous!

[GinGin]

By the way, for the seasons, are the clouds and normal map the same, or does it change also from month to month ?

Unfortunately, the clouds are only available in one edition. The altitude information shouldn't change seasonally! That would be desastrous!

Ahah indeed, thanks
So just the season textures to download.

I tested the full loading thing, Textures 16 k and other things at 8k
1 mn, 14 Go of Ram fo FG and VRAM of 6 Go.

Really great to not have freeze for textures loading while peacefully orbiting the Earth



Edit: One small bug
With your default.xml file, I lost the model view , this one:

[eatdirt]

Hi Gingin,
thanks for the feedback, I'll have a look to the issue generated by the default.xml. You mean you cannot click on that view, or it disappeared? (Maybe it is autosave related).

Cheers,
Chris.

[wkitty42]

wasn't model view removed with the new view code that allows you to view from any other craft? i don't remember...

[GinGin]

Hi Gingin,
thanks for the feedback, I'll have a look to the issue generated by the default.xml. You mean you cannot click on that view, or it disappeared? (Maybe it is autosave related).

Cheers,
Chris.

It disappeared ( I am in 2018.3)

[wkitty42]

wasn't model view removed with the new view code that allows you to view from any other craft? i don't remember...

yeah... looking at my View Options menu, model view was removed when Tower AGL was added...