FSX editing mesh

[robystar]

Hi all,

I have been remaking some islands so that their geographical coordinates coincide with the real ones (well the ones from GE at least) and as a consequence the default mesh is displaced and does no longer reflect the real mesh of the islands. I therefore went to find some alternative mesh, which I found and downloaded and adapted as far as the shorelines are concerned, but still the mesh is not good enough to really show the beauty of the mountains (I include a real world picture and an FSX screenshot to show you what I mean).
My question is: how can I or rather what is the method or program to use that gives me the best results in making the mesh more like in reality. I could probably try and even do it with ADE but the result is worse than not doing it at all and so I suspect it will be when making 'flattens' with SbuilderX.
Please note that the idea is to release the scenery without the photoreal ground (I am not sure about the copyrights) but with instructions for the users to add it themselves because all major buildings, airports etc. coincide exactly with the photoreal. They can choose whether to use it with or without it.
Except for some more village houses, the inevitable easter eggs and the fact that I have to improve the mesh to really make it look like paradise, the scenery is ready.
Thanks beforehand for some ideas on the subject.

Roby

PS: in case some of you think that this cry for help is a kind of riddle so as to guess what airport or island the upcoming scenery is, beware then there are no prizes involved. But do not let that refrain you from guessing, only for the purpose of which I include a third screenshot..
PS2 In this respect, I have to thank Arno for so graciously increasing our allotted attachment space.

 

[arno]

In general I find it easiest to try to find better elevation gis data and then use that. But not for each part in the world that is very easy. Manually editing the mesh is not something I would do.

It's a Dutch island isn't it? One of our recently added municipalities, if I am not wrong.

 

[robystar]

Hi Arno,

Thanks but I tried all different kinds of resources already and I used the best available mesh, I think (the one from USGS Global Data Explorer).
And sorry, no, it is not one of the two recent Dutch municipalities.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

There are some mesh editing programs such as Wilbur, that might allow you to alter the elevations. I don't think flattens would do a good job.

Dick

 

[arno]

And sorry, no, it is not one of the two recent Dutch municipalities.

Ok, last picture looked a bit like the airport of Saba

 

[robystar]

Hi,

Thanks for bothering.
I did have a look at Wilbur already but do not see how I can open or import a Geotiff to edit it.
And regarding the airport, it is in fact on the western side of one of two islands seperated by a very narrow and shallow isthmus, a narrow bridge connecting the two islands nowadays. Sending another screenshot.

 

[robystar]

Hi again,

Would it help if I told you folks which island(s) I am talking about so as to get perhaps a link to a source for better mesh?
I did find one (3 meter) but the data are in the SDTS format and I have not found a way (yet) to convert these to Geotiff. Some others I tried (cgiar.org, gdex, etc. are worse than the mesh I have).
Now downloading and installing 0sgeo hoping to use that one together with Wilbur. But I am under the impression that Wilbur is a fantastic program for making imaginary islands but will be a bit complicated for adapting a real island.

 

[arno]

Hi,

Do you have more information about that SDST format, I have not heard of it before. But 3 meter data should be good enough in general. Maybe gdal can read and convert it.

 

[arno]

Yes, it seems GDAL supports the SDTS format. So then you can probably use gdal_translate to convert it to GeoTIFF.

 

[robystar]

Hi,

Gdal works from a command line prompt (which is not easy to figure out for me).
But among supported formats that are configured for exporting to, there is no USGS sdts format unfortunately.

 

[arno]

But you only want to import not? I thought you wanted to export to geotiff for resample?

 

[robystar]

Morning Arno,

Yes I would like to convert the .ddf files to geotif for resampling.

 

[arno]

Where can I get a sample of that format? I'd like to take a look.

 

[robystar]

I will send you one in a minute.

 

[robystar]

Hi,

In the meantime, I downloaded a bunch of programs to see which ones would allow me to convert to Geotiffs. I managed to get the SDTS to DEM but afterwards I could not convert it to Geotiffs. I am going seemingly back and forth but not ending up with a bgl.

Edit: Tks, Arno, will try it out on the balance of the SDTS files.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Well you are going around in circles.

Why not just zip the file and attach it, or upload it to a file sharing service so we can see it? Otherwise these posts are getting to be a waste of time.

dick

 

[robystar]

Hi Dick,

Sorry and to tell you the honest truth, I was so stupid of not thinking of it at first.
I tried to attach one of the files but it says it is an invalid file format (.gz, although zipped)
Will give it another try by unzipping and zipping up again. Not sure if it will contain the original data, however.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

How about this:

gdalwarp -t_srs "EPSG:4326" -r lanczos -ot INT16 -dstnodata -32768 1005CATD.DDF 1005CATD.tif

You may need to play with gdalwarp as more than one sourcefile can be used, as per the documentation.

"EPSG:4326" is WGS84 geographic. 1005CATD.DDF is the file that is used by gdal.

for the INf file:

[Source]
Type  = GeoTIFF
Layer = Elevation
SourceDir = "."
SourceFile = "1005CATD.tif"
Null = -32768

[Destination]
DestDir  = "."
DestBaseFileName = "1005CATD"
DestFileType = BGL
LOD = Auto

Dick

 

[robystar]

Thanks,

I am still trying to find some logic behind the fact that I have to use Gdalwarp.
In fact, Arno came up with the following code with which he apparently managed to get the files converted:

gdal_translate 1005CATD.DDF test.tif

gdalwarp -t_srs "+proj=latlong +datum=WGS84" test.tif test_wgs84.tif

But that would mean I would have to do them one by one, I think.

I tried 3DEM as well and it looked promising as it loaded and displayed the .gz in its entirety, but after the first try, the 3DEM program does not want to load the .gz any longer (???).

 

[rhumbaflappy]

The source files are UTM. gdalwarp reprojects the file to geographic, as needed by resample.

Dick