Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Just a bit self-advertising, targetting those who live in or near Germany and have certain knowledge of the German language Ralf Gerlich wrote: As far as my interpretation of the communication goes, OSGeo will support this effort as well due to the common interest in freely available geodata. We are already provided with computing power and storage space. Well, we're trying to ring the bell wherever possible :-) http://www.fossgis.de/wiki/index.php/Donnerstag%2C_15._M%C3%A4rz_2007#Block_XIV Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Ralf Gerlich wrote: We have a timeline for many of our endeavours, and it ends at end of May 2007, as we want to have it ready for LinuxTag in Berlin. Is there already a date known for LinuxTag 2007? Last year, I wasn't able to make it due to ongoing travel plans. The end of May seems like it might work out for me, unless it's before May 19, at which time I'm flying back from Florida. Cheers, Durk - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Hi Durk, Durk Talsma wrote: Is there already a date known for LinuxTag 2007? Last year, I wasn't able to make it due to ongoing travel plans. http://www.linuxtag.org/2007/en/home/aktuelles.html Expect us to have a _really_ nice booth this year - lots of displays and only few computers ;-) Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Martin Spott wrote: Hi Durk, Durk Talsma wrote: Is there already a date known for LinuxTag 2007? Last year, I wasn't able to make it due to ongoing travel plans. http://www.linuxtag.org/2007/en/home/aktuelles.html Expect us to have a _really_ nice booth this year - lots of displays and only few computers ;-) Martin. Ah, that looks perfect. I'd need to have a final look at the calender, but it looks like I can make that. In case of me driving to Berlin, I'd be happy to donate some more computing power. I could even bring the windows machine, as I managed to fix it immediately after the Lelystad show. But I admit that this might be a bit blasphemous. :-) Cheers, Durk - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Hello! Martin Spott wrote: Actually, after Ralf already added _significant_ improvement to the TerraGear tools, I plan to set up some automatic batch-processing for the FlightGear Scenery - although currently I'm not sure how long it will take to 'aquire' the necessary recources ;-) To clarify what Martin is referring to: I have created two additional TerraGear preprocessing tools, namely a GDAL-based chopper for DEM data and an OGR-based vector data decoder. However, I'd like to test them some more before submitting the patches, specifically as the GDAL-chopper still introduces some artifacts in the scenery which I'm currently tracking down. The GDAL-based DEM-chopper can read all GDAL-supported raster formats. This was necessary as we want to use preprocessed SRTM-data from http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/ which is available as GeoTIFF only. The possibility to use any other GDAL-supported formats is merely a nice by-product as I didn't want to write another GeoTIFF-reader and using an external GeoTIFF-only-library when GDAL is available was somehow pointless. The OGR-based decoder was inspired by Martin to ease processing for the case when we will be building scenery on the same machine/network where also the landcover/terrain database will reside. We can then directly process the vector data from the database to TerraGear chopped polygons and avoid the intermediate step via shapefiles. As a nice by-product the OGR-decoder opens up a huge set of input formats without additional work being required. At some point we might even want to drop the specific shape- and TGVPF-decoders to reduce maintenance effort. The patches are already in the SVN-trunk of fgfs-builder: http://svn.qmx-systems.com/fgfsbuilder/trunk I'll try to keep them current while I'm continuously fixing stuff. To my knowledge the intention is to let LinuxTag take place at this year's location, the Berlin Expo Center under the Funkturm for several years to follow. Well, in that case, we have the chance to have our Berlin scenery grow and getting improved step by step every year. ;-) Cheers, Ralf - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation; Was: temporary OSG loading speed fix ...
Hi Syd, sydsandy wrote: I imagine the scenery file format was designed for loading speed , but considering the difficulty everyone has with editing scenery ,would it be feasible to import the binary file (say into Blender), and work directly on the vertices ? This is probably my biggest beef with ALL flightsims... Tools for creating of customized Scenery are being worked on. The most apparent description of such work, aside from Fred's FGSD pages, is certainly this one: http://www.custom-scenery.org/ well, you probably could add this to the listing: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Repository#PostGIS_serving_vector_data As usual, progress is taking place steadily but slowly, as only _very_ few people participate in this effort as usual :-/ Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Hi Syd, I agree with you that the state of affairs regarding scenery is currently awkward, to say the least. As Martin has said, we are working on improving this. Martin's and my work are currently concentrated on making more and different datasources accessible for scenery creation. Martin is doing a pretty good job in aggregating a huge set of datasources in the common landcover database (see http://mapserver.flightgear.org/ for a quick look at the data already available) in cooperation with the OSGeo foundation. We also want to make use of freely available raster data, such as Landsat ETM+, for automatic classification of landcover and conversion to vector data which can then be used to replace the low-accuracy VMAP0 data at least partially both in terms of space and content (e.g. we won't be able to extract streets from 28.5m- resp. 14.25m-resolution Landsat bands). You can see some results of my first experiments in the landsat_* layers at the above-mentioned mapserver URL and a bit more detailed look at the process at http://custom-scenery.org/Satellite-Image.304.0.html As far as my interpretation of the communication goes, OSGeo will support this effort as well due to the common interest in freely available geodata. We are already provided with computing power and storage space. So this is really a huge project and we will try to lower the barrier of participation in this effort gradually and as our free time allows it. After all it will be necessary to provide training data to the classifier and as each Landsat image may have different lighting and contrast properties, this training must be done for each individual Landsat tile. For a little training in the form of a view exemplary polygons specifying e.g. some regions of forest, town, urban area, water, etc. for each landsat tile, automatic classification will provide us with pretty detailed and accurate landcover data for about 4 sqkm per tile! We have a timeline for many of our endeavours, and it ends at end of May 2007, as we want to have it ready for LinuxTag in Berlin. BTW: There was a long list of suggestions for static objects to be built for Berlin on the organisation list. Maybe we should post that to the Wiki for people outside the organisation committee to participate. If LinuxTag is jumping to a different location in Germany every year, this would get us to have most bigger German cities properly populated within a few years ;-) So as we have explained several times in previous mails, our approach is to view the input data in an abstract way as geographical information, not as merely a network of triangles as output by TerraGear. We have also laid out our reasons for this and the cooperation and interest of OSGeo should show that our reasons are not flawed. That said, our time is limited - as everybody else's. Which is also why the site that Martin described as the most apparent description of such work is also heavily lacking behind the current development. Also any contribution, e.g., by providing a current basic tutorial on compiling TerraGear and building scenery with it, is very welcome. A general explanation of the TerraGear scenery-building process, specifically focusing on the setup of the working directory, the different stages and also adressing the attribution of material types would be of good use. If there is noone wanting to do that or having enough time or knowledge, well, then you'll have to wait 'til someone else (like me) comes around to doing it. I know that there is a TerraGear-building tutorial on the Wiki somewhere, so if this doesn't work for some reason, help improving it. Finally, TerraGear can properly grok all kinds of Shapefiles for vector input and Martin will provide you with shapefile equivalents of VMAP0-vector data for your region of interest, if you ask nicely. Shapefiles can be edited with probably any GIS toolset that is out there. The most prolific on the OSS side are Quantum GIS (have a look at http://www.qgis.org/ or check your distribution's package directory) as well as GRASS, whereas the latter requires a steeper learning curve and is more an analyst's tool than suitable for editing vector data. So if you want to edit scenery, go for it. The tools are there. They may be a bit awkward to use currently, but as I said: We're working on it and we're happy for any support we get. And if you want to nudge triangles in the btg.gz, you shouldn't hope for support from our side. ;-) The relevant code for reading and writing btg-files is in the SimGear source in simgear/io/sg_binobj.hxx, simgear/io/sg_binobj.cxx and simgear/io/decode_binobj.cxx even contains a simple example on using these classes and methods. With a little time and commitment it should be no problem to figure out how to transform this into AC3D and back. But make sure to not only dump single triangles back to btg, but also establish triangle strips or fans again, for loading and display efficiency. ;-) Cheers, Ralf
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery generation
Thanks Martin and Ralph , I didn't realize such an ambitious project was underway (and actually being worked on). I was thinking more along the lines of putting rivers and roads back in place. Im looking forward to seeing the results , Ive been working on CYVR again , but wish the surrounding terrain fit a little better . Cheers, Syd - Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.phpp=sourceforgeCID=DEVDEV ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
