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MSFS20 A small tutorial on new method of making custom ground texture (CGL) - no georeferencing needed

K

kychungdotcom

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hongkong
Most of my addon airports I made are those new or upgraded one, which doesn't match the aged stock ground texture or even non-existent. There was a tutorial on grabbing ground texture on Google Earth, then stitch together and georeference in QGIS, but I found a better way which is more simple and accurate. All you need is QGIS and image manipulating software with advanced features like Photoshop or GIMP.
First of all, you need to install "Lat Lon Tools" plugin. Choose "Plugins"->"Mange and Install Plugins" in the main menu of QGIS.
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In the "Plugins" popup window, type "lat lon tools" directly in search bar, then you will find the plugin, then click "Install Plugin" at the right bottom corner of the window. In the screenshot below, it shows "Reinstall Plugin" because I've installed it already
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After installation of the plugin, right click the empty spaces of the toolbars, there will be a popup menu, choose "Zoom to Coordinate Panel", then there will be a new input area called "Enter Latitude / Longitude"
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Then we need to setup ground texture sources like Bing or Google Map, right click the item called "XYZ Tiles" in "Browser" area, then click "New connection..." on the popup menu, then a new popup window called "XYZ connection" will appear
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We have setup QGIS for grabbing satellite images. Now go to the airport which you want to make in Google Map using your web browser, then copy the approximate coordinate of the airport and paste it in the "Enter Latitude / Longitude" input box and press Enter. There will be a red cross marking the position of the entered coordinate in the global map, zoom until you see the layout of the airport clearly. Make sure you have chosen "Google Map" or "Bing" in the "Browser" Area. I personally would like to use Bing rather than Google Map if the image on Bing Map is just as updated as Google Map
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Then we start to grab the ground texture. Choose "View"->"Panels"->"Processing Toolbox Panel", a new area called "Processing Toolbox" will appear on the right hand side, then choose "Convert Map to Raster" under "Raster Tools"
1.6a.png
 
A new popup window will appear, first we choose the area to "cutout". Click the small button at the right of the "Minimum extend to render", then click "Draw on Canvas". Then you will be required to drag a rectangle on the map. For the value of "Map units per pixel", normally I take between 0.2 to 0.25, smaller value get larger image and more detailed
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When dragging the airport area, try your best to include the whole area but not larger than it too much in order to minimize the amount of resulting tiles to be generated
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Then the coordinates of the bounding box you've dragged will be shown in the "Minimum extent to render" input box automatically, now just click the "Run" button at the bottom
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A new layer called "Output Layer" will appear at the "Layers" area, uncheck the layer "Google Map" then there will only the image you've grabbed
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Now we save the grabbed image. Select "GDAL"->"Raster Conversion"->"Translate (convert format)", then a new window will popup. In the "advanced parameters" section, click the green "+" button, enter "tfw" under the "Name" column, and "yes" under the "Value" column. In the "Converted" section, click the small button on the right, click "save to file...", and choose the location you want to save the image. Afterwards, just click the "Run" button on the bottom
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A new .tif image and a .tfw file with the same filename will be generated. The new generated image will also be added as layer. Delete this layer together with the "output layer" we generated before. We'll add the processed one back on it later.
IMPORTANT: always put the .tfw file together with the .tif image in the same folder, and DO NOT CHANGE the canvas size when we edit the image in later steps. Do not delete or edit the .tfw file as it stores the Lat/Lon definitions associated with the image. Otherwise things will get wrong and the efforts in the previous steps will be ruined.
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Then "cutout" the airport area in image editing program. There are many ways to do so, for example polygon selection or applying vector masks. Just use the method you're familiar with. In addition, we often need to reduce the brightness of the image by about 30% and also shift the color balance to look more "green" in case of using Google Map Imagery. Then we save the image. In case of Photoshop, check "Save Transparency" and choose "Discard Layers and Save a Copy" when we save it.
2.3.png
 
Then go back to QGIS. Browse the image generated and double click, a new layer with the filename of the .tif image will be added, and it will appear in the map view. There is a "?" on the right of the layer, click and choose "WGS84/Pseudo-Mercator (EPSG:3857)" in the popup window, which is the actual coordinate system used by most online map services like Google Map or Bing Map.
2.6.png
 
You can verify if the edited image is located correctly by toggle the "Google Map" layer. If things are correct, then generate XYZ tiles and convert to CGL tiles used by MSFS, which have been well illustrated on other MSFS Dev tutorials either on here or YouTube so these steps are not covered in this tutorial. When you've complied the CGL project, fly-over there and see if the color of the generated tiles blend with the surroundings well. Adjust the colour of the .tif file and generate the tiles again if you find it doesn't blend well. Although this method could generate ground textures accurately without georeferencing, tiles generated from Google Map and Bing Map will exhibit inconsistency of a few meters. This is the end of this small tutorial.
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SUKING said:
非常有用，谢谢
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Thanks
 
Thanks for this nice guide.

EDIT:
Found it. Its in the tools set right side.

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I have an issue though. If i do it in Photoshop, with the same settings you meantion, it will alwas be a white picture.
If i do it with Gimp that part works and the cut picture shows as expected. But i never get the ? when importing the new layer. So i cant add that Mercator info.
Is there an other way to get to this window?
 
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