How to make photo scenery

[Adamdt]

Thanks so much for your reply @Vampire_T11, I took a look at the files and they are perfectly square dimensions 5000x5000 and the image is crisp. I guessing its something else, Ive tried everything I could (converting the size of the file to the power-of-two, converting them to ping and even .dds) but cant get it to work by the simple upload and export method, it always shows up blured.

@AndrooC thanks for you help and the link for OrthoMagiX I'll give that a try, and in response to editing the .pol file and decal I didn't mess with any of that, its just that from the tutorials online they made it look like it was just a matter of uploading the correct photo, but these past couple of days have told me that, that's cleary not the case. I was just wondering if you had a forum l can refer too or a link to a tutorial that I can go over, so as to learn how edit the .pol file and make decals needed to make the scenery look great as you suggested.

Im a pilot myself,  training  at Embry Riddle and I thought of putting my skills to work on my down time this summer. I thought of working on a couple of airport scenery files this summer, Its just that there are no detailed forums out there or I haven't been looking in the right places, that have this stuff described. It seems to me that its more like a trial and error kinda thing. I was thinking of uploading at least 4 airports by the end of this summer, but at the rate I've gotten it looks like I'm going no were.

So any help would be much appreciated, thanks a ton!

[AndrooC]

I @Adamdt I downloaded a few ortho files for the area to see what I get. I'm in a bit of a hurry because I need to catch a flight, so I haven't adjusted any color etc.
 Anyway, this is what I get on a first pass:

...so it looks like the orthos are OK, and have a good resolution. This took me about about 30 minutes; from finding and downloading the orthos, to taking the screenshots. (1300km later) Anyway, the point being that the gluing together, chopping up and placing of ortho in WED can be done quickly, mechanically and pretty reliably with a process. This leaves you with more time to do color corrections and blending the edges into the surrounding terrain.

Edited July 9, 2016 by AndrooC

[Adamdt]

Okay, I just want to say that this is really embarisssing! So I have been tweaking with my rendering setting lately to get X planes to play really well on my iMac and I just realized, I messed with some stuff I shouldn't have so just yesterday it clicked and I set everything to default, and there it was, the scenery was crisp as the ortho-pictures. Its such a relief I have been struggling so much to get this stuff to work and at the end of the day it was all my doing, lmao.

So for whoever is having the same problem set your rendering options to one of the preset settings that X planes has. And your oath-pictures should look as they should.

Thanks so much @AndrooC and @Vampire_T11 for all your help and OrthoMagix is an awesome software and a must have!

Thanks!

[Otto Pylott]

53 minutes ago, Adamdt said:

So for whoever is having the same problem set your rendering options to one of the preset settings that X planes has.

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by one of X-Plane's "preset settings"? I.e., XP has lots of independent rendering options, some of which I have changed, and others not. Thus, my question is: Precisely which settings are you talking about, and what are the "presets" you refer to?

Thanks.

[Adamdt]

A
850
DRAPED_POLYGON
LAYER_GROUP taxiways -1
TEXTURE_NOWRAP tile0-0.png
SCALE 25.0000 25.0000
DECAL_LIB [No Decal]

LOAD_CENTER 19.092091 72.851973 0 2048

@AndrooC Any Idea why the area = 0 when  OrthoMagiX creates the .pol files? This is a another reason why my files have been showing up blurry, for the KDAB files I set this value to 614, I copied this value from your KDFW overlay .pol file I downloaded, and it gave me real good results. The KDAB overlay looked perfect in X planes after i changed the value from 0 to 614. Since OrthoMagiX creates equal grids I was wondering if this value stays the same not matter the orthophoto uploaded or does this depend on the dimensions of the orthohoto? Cuz the other othophotos I have, have different dimensions then the one for KDAB.

Im sorry, if this is a silly question I don't know  if its something I'm doing wrong, or weather its a bug in the program.

Thanks again, for all your previous replies they have helped in narrowing down part of the problem.

[Adamdt]

1 hour ago, Otto Pylott said:

Could you please elaborate on what you mean by one of X-Plane's "preset settings"? I.e., XP has lots of independent rendering options, some of which I have changed, and others not. Thus, my question is: Precisely which settings are you talking about, and what are the "presets" you refer to?

Thanks.

@Otto Pylott I attached a screen shot of my settings! hope this helps, I also came across another problem regarding blurred orthophotos, I described it in my previous post!

The major setting change that made a big difference in the viewing quality of the overlay in X planes, I achieved by setting the texture resolution to "very high" which  can be found  under rendering options->Resolutions->texture resolutions.

[Otto Pylott]

22 hours ago, Adamdt said:

@Otto Pylott I attached a screen shot of my settings! hope this helps, I also came across another problem regarding blurred orthophotos, I described it in my previous post!

I see; so you suspect that choosing any of the presets (e.g., Set to extreme, Set to high, etc.) was the difference-maker in your case? I'll give this a try to see if it fixes my problem. But you'd think that if the values of these settings impose a constraint on whether or not an orthophotographic scenery loads properly, someone would have mentioned this by now. At any rate, thanks again for the tip.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Otto Pylott

[AndrooC]

@Adamdt I am not sure why it has a zero at the moment (I am away from my dev environment), but if it always 0, then it could well be a bug. I'll check it out next week.

[Adamdt]

22 hours ago, Otto Pylott said:

I see; so you suspect that choosing any of the presets (e.g., Set to extreme, Set to high, etc.) was the difference-maker in your case? I'll give this a try to see if it fixes my problem. But you'd think that if the values of these settings impose a constraint on whether or not an orthophotographic scenery loads properly, someone would have mentioned this by now. At any rate, thanks again for the tip.

@Otto Pylott Thats exactly what I thought, So on this same forum I think some one mentions that having low rending setting is also a key factor that effects the orthophoto. I found this post on page1 of the same forum. Hope this helps read below.

 

On March 28, 2012 at 5:01 AM, chris k said:

Yes, you've found the first problem of orthophotos: Finding a good source.... The sources we mentioned earlier are for Austrailia, New Zealand, and the USA. I assume you're looking for UK scenery, hence it is expected there would be "no map data at the sites mentioned". Glad you found a good source, and have shared it here for others to benefit.!

So, to the problem:

1. Are you set to 'extreme-res' in your rendering options in X-Plane? (that is the only way you get the full resolution of your .PNG, else X-Plane will down-sample the image)
2. Do you have texture compression enabled in your rendering settings?
3. Did you convert the images from PNG to DDS using XGrinder? (and then remove the .PNG files?)
4. What does the original 2k x 2k PNG look like in comparison?
5. Is it actually a loss of detail, or is it that you're down low to the ground and it looks smeared out because you're effectively zooming in very close to the image?

Glad you found the tutorial to be of help! Looks pretty good so far from what I see!

- CK.

P.S. There is no specific difference between how XP9 and XP10 handles these types of images. They will render the same.

 

[Adamdt]

@AndrooC Okay, Thanks so much.  

[Vampire_T11]

@Adamdt

Just thought that I'd let you know that your problem with the orthos has greatly improved my xplane experience too. I've always been flying about with my texture resolution set on high as that's how x-plane set up when I installed it about a year ago. It never even occurred to me to change it as I'd usually been seeing reasonable textures and had good frame rates. When I made objs in sketchup I was baffled as to why the textures looked slightly blurred in x-plane when they were sharp in the pngs used to make the textures. I've now changed my texture resolution rendering setting in x-plane to very high. Wow, what a difference. Ortho scenery looks even better and my textured objects aren't blurry anymore. How simple was that! My frame rate has dropped a little but nothing to worry about. If you hadn't had your problem I still wouldn't have changed the setting, so thanks!  

Cheers

[bald_DaveJ]

Hello,

Having Issues with imagery imported into WED X-Plane 10 editor - displaying only as white tiles or outlines. 

Have seen the issue I'm about to describe here in a few posts - the consensus of feedback was to make imagery a power of 2 and possibly change from GeoTiff to PNG format.

We did try to follow this approach with 8192 pixel (power of 2) tiles, and imagery tiles still imported as:

• Displaying white for -  'Import Orthophoto'
• Displaying as just an outline for - 'Pick Overlay Image'

The imagery we're using is 50cm (1/2 meter) resolution.

 

Solution so Far

We found that using the same 50cm (1/2 meter) imagery - sliced into 4096 tiles works fine. The imagery imported as 4096 tiles displays properly.

This is confusing because we have one 5m resolution tile that is importing & displaying fine in the editor. That tile represents the same extents of the 1/2 meter imagery, is over 11,000 pixels, is not a power of 2, and was imported as a GeoTiff. The file size of the 5m tile is within 20mb of one of the 1/2 meter tiles, so it doesn't seem to be a file size issue.

It seems like the limitation is a ceiling on the amount of pixel resolution per imagery tile imported. Not sure if this is the case though - has anyone run into this issue? And can anyone please explain details of a known solution or explanation of the limitation?

Thanks,

-DaveJ 

 

Edited August 5, 2016 by bald_DaveJ

[Vampire_T11]

I'm not sure if what I'll post will help but I've only imported Geotiffs into WED that were about 150 MB each, 4800 x 7200 pixels that were in WGS84 format. It worked fine until I had imported about 20 Geotiffs and then the white orthos began appearing using "Import Orthophoto". By exiting WED, restarting my computer and clearing all temp files I could squeeze in a few more to a max of 28 Geotiffs. WED just crashed after that. The white ortho problem also occurred once with some Geotiffs that I had created within ArcGIS. I checked the Geotiff properties against those that did import successfully. I noticed the compression details were slightly different and I think that caused the problem. Check the properties of the 0.5m resolution Geotiffs against those of the 5m tile. Maybe they are a bit different? Hope this might help.

 

[danieldbird]

I am experimenting with creating an airport with 2cm per pixel resolution in X-Plane, just like https://www.fullterrain.com/product/czst was able to achieve in FSX. Can anybody give me some direction regarding this? The resulting file sizes seem impossibly large. What image format would you use? Are there tiling tricks I am unaware of? Using a simple rectangular runway for example; if the real worl runway is 1411 meters x 45 meters, to get a 2cm per pixel resolution, the runway would need to be 70,550 x 2250 pixels, is that correct? An image of that size cannot be saved as a png or jpg in photoshop. Only tiff, raw, or psb (large document format). I just made a tiled HD asfalt texture the length of the runway as a test, and the file size was around 700MB. Would appreciate any pointers here, would love some super high definition airports and scenery for X-Plane. Is there anyone else out there doing this?

[fotomensch]

hey everyone

i am new in the (awesome) world of X-Plane and i wanted to make my own scenery just for personal use. I found this thread and followed the tutorial in the first post. After almost a week of trying and reading tutorials/posts/threads and watching youtube videos i am not any further. I am using the most recent (not beta) version of WED

i have succesfully created a GeoTiff file - it is 10240 x 5120 pixels - so its power of 2. Adding it to my newly created scenery also works - it snaps in where it should be. When i create the polygon it is there but there are no POL files created (maybe its not created anymore in newer versions coz the tut is 5 years old?!?)

i then try to export my scenery and that is where it fails. i get the folling error: "Ressource does not have the correct file type"

weather i use the tif or png or dds (made with xgrinder) i alwas get that error.
i hope very much someone here can tell me what i am doing wrong. if further information is needed what i do or what hardware i use feel free to ask

Jörg

 

EDIT: forget it - Stupid me - i was drawing the polygon by hand until i found select -> select polygon - now i have a .pol and export works!

EDIT AGAIN: no solution yet i was a bit fast. despite i did everything like the time it worked now it wont make me any .pol files again. i dont really understand what is going on here

Edited March 3, 2017 by fotomensch
no solution yet

[hesynergy]

Wonderful info!!!

 

it will be a source for study for more than several hours before I assimilate all of this… And yes I am using Ortho4XP because it's well it's obvious from the date I wrote this but this core information is critical to my understanding.

Thank you very much to all

Chas

Edited March 16, 2017 by hesynergy

[Print744]

What source are people mostly using in the US now that the USGS TNM tool (as suggested in the WED Manual) no longer provides HRO 1ft res, only black and white 1m ? Really bummed out about that move and having a hard time finding a suitable replacement.

EDIT: Never mind, I think I finally found it at https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov

Perhaps if someone who has access to editing the WED manual reads this they can update the hyperlink.

Edited October 26, 2017 by Print744
solution found

[Willhelm]

Hello for Czech Republic I can only buy ortho from company ČÚZK. They providing jpg tiles 2,5x2km (12500x10000px) with two jgw files. One JTSK second UTM.

UTM looks for enclosed resized (1024x819px) tile:

0.198396
0.0257932
0.0257924
-0.1984
723356.91
5511323.05

JTSK then:

0.200000
0.000000
0.000000
-0.200000
-484999.900000
-1114000.100000

I was able to find JTSK coordinates converter to WGS84 coordinates which gave me for tile´s left top corner coordinates: 49,694952778 / 18,098427778.

First step was placing LKMT RWY via runway ends coordinates published in Czech AIP 01/2018 - length and GEO heading I checked and they were correct compared measuring on Google Earth and maps. Secondary I placed this tile as overlay image, and top left vertex I moved to proper place. From tile length and height I derived coordinates of right top vertex (2500m in heading 90° = 49,712927778 / 18,133191667 and 2000m on heading 180° = 49,694952778 / 18,098427778). tile was placed quite correctly, but some kind of rotation is involved. (Second enclosed picture / screen from WED)

GEO heading of LKMT RWY04 is 46,25 but runway on placed tile have heading approx. 54,4.

I think, that this have to do something with Krovak´s cone projection. I know that using of these orthos will need more processing then geotiffs made in cylinder projection, but I can not find a way how to place them correctly into WED.

I was not able to find any info about JTSK Krovak´s rotation angles.

Would somebody be able to explain me from text above, what I´m doing wrong, or how to correctly place this file into the WED, please?

[triplemon]

The reference system (aka the E-W and N-S axis direction) used in UTM is also rotated compared to WGS84 coordinates, depending on the location within the particular UTM zone. So you need to transform all 4 corner coordinates of you image separately to get them placed properly in WED. The resulting image in WED would be rotated slightly.

Try transformation tools like GDAL or even SAS planet that can do all these calculations automatically for you.

Or uses Wed-O-maker to get a properly aligned reference image and then visually align the ortho image corners relative to that.

[Haxerproz]

@chris k Hey man! I just want to say that your post rlly helps in understanding the basics of building an ortho scenery since you did so well in cascading the steps. 

I followed every steps and the results were promising but I can't get the ortho to blend with the default water.

You can have a look at my post here where I explained what I did.

Thank you.

[Trustdesa]

Update for the modern time (as today):

You can import GeoTif, which you can create with Ortho4XP by the way videos are on YouTube and is like 2min long so go search for it, via the FILE > IMPORT ORTHOPHOTO, as the original post it goes into place provided the format is as specified

To have WED creating the .pol you can just export the scenery and WED will create the .pol and also automatically split and convert the DDS ready for use, you can then edit the DSS if you need to color correct or edit thee file. You can also edit the GeoTiff provided you have the tools to remove and read the geo information as once you touch it they are lost.

Also if you want to fine tune what you want to cover or show as mentioned once the DDS is converted you can edit it, use alpha channel and paint as necessary based on how you want to blend (use opacity level to fine tune), remember to save as DDS DTX5 in order to use the Alpha Layer, I suggest Nvidia Tool for that. 

Thank you for the initial guide it really helped and WED rocks!

 

Edited September 24, 2019 by Trustdesa

[triplemon]

On 9/24/2019 at 8:06 AM, Trustdesa said:

You can also edit the GeoTiff provided you have the tools to remove and read the geo information as once you touch it they are lost.

Also if you want to fine tune what you want to cover or show as mentioned once the DDS is converted you can edit it, use alpha channel and paint as necessary based on how you want to blend (use opacity level to fine tune), remember to save as DDS DTX5 in order to use the Alpha Layer, I suggest Nvidia Tool for that.

Its even easier than that:

Once you have imported the Geotiff into WED - you should edit that very TIFF file you imported. Using *any* editor of your choice, the editor dooes not need to preserve the geotiff tags nor be able to read/write DDS files at all. Once done, just re-export the scenery in WED, it will detect that you have changed the original tiff file and will re-split the file, update the DDS files as needed. WED is even better than the NVIDIA tools at that - as it can detect that some of the tiles in the middle of your orthophoto may be fully opaque - and it then can use a 2x higher compression ratio for those tiles. Only the tiles around the perimeter will have partially transparent pixels and need the larger DXT5 format files.

This is much easier than editing the individual DDS files one-by-one. And also higher quality - as the DDS files will degrade a bit every time you edit them.

[Paul.Smith]

Joining this late in the day, however I just cannot get my head around using orthophotos purely for the airfield I am trying to create using Orthophotos as the base image and I am creating the buildings using Blender 2.8. I have been able to find the 4 images I need to put as the base texture but I don't understand how to import them into WED and subsequently export them as part of the scenery pack. I have attached a copy of one of the images, the original is a  .DDS DXT5 image. When I do try to import the image I get an error message. Any assistance really appreciated

[triplemon]

This thread is about 2D, flat on the ground texturing.

For 3D design tools - see the 3D modelling subforum.