• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

A helpful WMS addon for Google Earth

rhumbaflappy

rhumbaflappy

Administrator
Staff member
Resource contributor
Messages
6,522
Country
us-wisconsin
Hi all.

The interesting RingPiece translator for KML files helps transfer lines and polys from Google Earth to SBuilderX. FSXKML also uses Google Earth.

A problem with the imagery available, especially in the Pacific, is the presence of clouds that obscure the image shoreline.

There is a WMS service that can be used in Google Earth that shows 30m SRTM Reflectance using an arbitrary palette. Although it is not extremely accurate, it can help in cloud-covered situations to establish a shoreline reference.

I made a KMZ addon for Google Earth that will display a 50% tranparency of those images overlayed onto the default Google Earth imagery.

Arbitrary.zip

cloudcovered.png


arbitraryreflectance.png


The transparency can be altered in the file or by a slider in the addon properties.

Dick
 
Last edited:
Google Maps implementation

Hi all.

Here's a Google map implementation of the SRTM magnetic reflectance, similar to Luis Sa's GMaps:

MAGmaps

Here is a Zip file that contains the 2 html files, so it can be run from the desktop ( OK if your browser supports javascript ):

MAGmaps.zip

The Zip files can be studied if somebody would like to implement a WMS raster download of imagery. The tiles are created by calls to the WMS source.

Sample WMS tile creation

Dick
 
SBuilderX SRTM Reflectance Magnitude TileServer

Hi all.

Here's a TileServer DLL for SBuilderX:

SrtmMagServer.zip

Drop the DLL into the Tiles folder of your SBX installation, and start downloading the tiles as needed.

The downloading is S-L-O---W. So be patient. I'd only download for cloud-obscured areas. You can make a map of the imagery as well.

This is a good example of creating tiles from WMS imagery sets in SBX. The source is included, in C# and VB.Net.

Dick
 
Last edited:
Hi Dick,

Just as a test I used the server at Yellowknife but it gives a black image :confused:

Google Satellite:



SrtmMag:

 
The data for all SRTM products is limited to N60* -> S55*

Yellowknife is too far north.

Islands usually suffer the worst regarding cloud-cover in the aerial data available. The srtm-mag data is useful only as a short-cut to find a shoreline approximation.

The NASA/JPL WMS server is not very robust. It's usually slow, and it is sometimes not available. If you can't get data from it for your area, you'll need SBuilderX to overwrite the existing data on the next try, or delete the \SBuilderX313\Tiles\SrtmMag folder ( to allow it to rebuild with valid data ), because you'll have blank images in the folder where data should exist.

If you have an island or coast that is cloud-covered in the aerial images, I'd use the SrtmMag tiles, but make a saved background of the needed area in case the NASA/JPL server hiccups while you're working.

Dick
 
Thanks Dick.

I also tried it at Guernsey which has cloud cover, but the resolution wasn't too good.
 
The resolution is only good to about LOD15. The current Google tiles are also good to LOD15, and nowhere is the shoreline covered by clouds. The Yahoo tiles are covered at LOD13.

I do see the runway is partially covered with Google, but STRM_mag will not show that as it only shows a void for water or sand... which is why it helps with obscured waterbodies.

Dick
 
Dick,

thanks for that interesting tool, I do the Solomon Islands right now and many coastlines are badly obstructed by clouds. I'll try to redo some of them and see if the results are better!

Best,
Mark
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top