MSFS20 Aerial Images (Airport Background)

[solid]

So with the help of Eugen_1975 I was able to get my aerial images to sim, the problem was with windows regional settings as my decimal place pointer was , and it must be . for the tool to parse the .map file correctly.

I think im getting same lod problems as discussed above, but i will investigate it further

[/QUO
Looks Great!!!!, I am still locked in the SDK and even though I get up to the sample airport, the program is stuck there and won't go any further. When will we get something like SBuilder which works like a marvel?

 

[thetford569]

ok, I finally had a chance to check this out after getting the SDK to stop crashing the sim. I made the tiles using SAS and they are ready to go. If I copy over the SampleAerial from the SDK into a new folder and put these .png files in the tiles directory and run that package then the aerial should show up correct? I am having some confusion on the "packages" and I am assuming that everything you do is a separate package? For example I've created a replacement airport over a default and added a runway for now. If I want to now load in my aerial image background then I have to open that package separately and build it right? Can both packages be open in the sim at the same time so I can see my aerial image and the runways/taxiways/aprons that I am building? I am pretty sure it can but this whole thing with the separate packages is just confusing me right now...

Brandon

 

[nz255]

Tha

So this is appears to be one of the quirks of the new system, the screen space error metric works a little differently. You have to generate tiles all the way up to the max LOD already present in bing maps or the local sim data to prevent this from happening. I don’t think it is a static 20. This can be a different value in different parts of the world.

Turn on the terrain tile debug tool in dev mode and then you can see what the highest resolution is there, and then if you don’t have imagery up to that lod you will have to supersample and tile it yourself.

I wonder if that’s how the resample tool worked, made ‘mips’ up to the highest resulotion just that it was complied into the bgl

 

[Choki]

can someone tell me what to do to get it in the sim?

 

[Claviateur]

XP has World Editor for scenery and the latest versions allowed the import of georeferenced TIF aerial imagery and automatically tile it at the exact spot. Seamless experience for aerial imagery.

Hopefully something like this will be possible for MSFS

 

[TylorE]

Hi Guys,

I've managed to pull in some satellite imagery using the demo project, however my end result is a weird green colour. I've tried using the original imagery as well as a colour-corrected version that matches the bing imagery, both have this result. Has anyone else encountered this and know how to fix it?

 

[albaskies]

1. Specify the ortho data file (png, tiff, bmp). Note that in a folder with the specified file ortho data also has to be a file ".map" OziExplorer. Creating (getting) a ".map" file is very easy in Global Mapper or SASPlanet. See the screenshot below.

Are there any other ways of creating a .map file? I've tried and failed with both Global Mapper and SASPlanet to create a .map from a GEOTiff aerial image.

 

[hditano]

So with the help of Eugen_1975 I was able to get my aerial images to sim, the problem was with windows regional settings as my decimal place pointer was , and it must be . for the tool to parse the .map file correctly.

I think im getting same lod problems as discussed above, but i will investigate it further

Thats really nice!. Have you done any special steps besides the ones related on this Thread?

 

[Gheed]

​

Thats really nice!. Have you done any special steps besides the ones related on this Thread?

The aerial images i have from this location (in finland) have special coordinate system for our region, so I had to warp the image first using gdalwarp (now im doing the process as part of the toolset in QGIS software) into epsg:3395 WGS84 World Mercator projection (as kindly pointed out by Eugen).

As I dont have any software actually that can produce right .map files, I had to use some creative ways to edit .map file eugen provided me (can be done in notepad) to give the dimensions of the image and coordinates of each corner.

1. To get these coordinates of the corners of the image, I used QGIS feature "export map to PDF", first putting "zoom to native resolution" (icon is magnifying class with 1:1 on it)
2. Then in export window for coordinates using button "calculate from layer" to get coordinates of the full image. Otherwise using default export settings but clicking on "create geospatial pdf" (not sure if it is required but done it anyways).​

3. Then once you have that PDF, i open it in notepad++ and at the beginning of the file you can see the coordinates of each corner of the image. With this information I edit copy of my old .map file accordingly to fit the image i want to tile with the tool.​

​

The .map file has both the pixel location and coordinate location of each corner of the image, so you need to know image resolution and image coordinates.​

 

[phillmorgan28]

I've managed to pull in some satellite imagery using the demo project, however my end result is a weird green colour. I've tried using the original imagery as well as a colour-corrected version that matches the bing imagery, both have this result. Has anyone else encountered this and know how to fix it?

Hi there! Thanks for the approval. I too have managed to get my new aerial into the sim using the tool provided at the start of this topic, many thanks! However, I'm also getting a strange blue/green tone applied to my images which isn't present when viewing the source tiles in Photoshop or Windows. I've tried both colour corrected and non-corrected, both have the same issues.

Has anyone experienced similar?

Many Thanks for any assistance.

 

[SPINEG]

Hi there,

Sadly the tool from Eugen_1975 don't work on my side, a friend of me can use it perfectly (with the sample gived and lod to 20), if I do the same it just create an empty folder and close right after that.

If someone have any tips

Thank's for all

 

[phillmorgan28]

Hi there,

Sadly the tool from Eugen_1975 don't work on my side, a friend of me can use it perfectly (with the sample gived and lod to 20), if I do the same it just create an empty folder and close right after that.

If someone have any tips

Thank's for all

I had a similar issue when I was trying to use it on a VERY large image at zoom 23. You should use zoom level 20 from your source, and select LOD 20 in the tool as well. This was the fix for me.

 

[SPINEG]

I had a similar issue when I was trying to use it on a VERY large image at zoom 23. You should use zoom level 20 from your source, and select LOD 20 in the tool as well. This was the fix for me.

Copy that, I'm gonna try this right now.

Thank you

 

[Gheed]

Hi there,

Sadly the tool from Eugen_1975 don't work on my side, a friend of me can use it perfectly (with the sample gived and lod to 20), if I do the same it just create an empty folder and close right after that.

If someone have any tips

Thank's for all

I had similar issue where the tool would just keep running but nothing happening, it was due to my mistake in putting the corner coordinates correctly in the .map file manually. I had bottom right and bottom left corners mixed up, after switching them right way around i could work my files again perfectly.

 

[SPINEG]

I had similar issue where the tool would just keep running but nothing happening, it was due to my mistake in putting the corner coordinates correctly in the .map file manually. I had bottom right and bottom left corners mixed up, after switching them right way around i could work my files again perfectly.

I think the problem is somewhere else on my side, I try what said phillmorgan28 with same result sadly.

The fact is even with the sample provided inside Tile system tool (who must work for everyone normaly I think) I get this problem.

Gonna try to watch those coordinates by the way.

 

[Eugen_1975]

К сожалению, инструмент от Eugen_1975 не работает на моей стороне, мой друг может использовать его отлично

"Region Format" - "advanced options" - "numbers" - "separator whole and fractional parts" - should be (point)"."

 

[Gheed]

Yeah, definitely check your region settings as Eugen stated, that was my problem at first as well but after running for few seconds i would get an error log file and it would end. Thought your problem was something else but definitely check that windows uses . for decimal marker

 

[SPINEG]

"Region Format" - "advanced options" - "numbers" - "separator whole and fractional parts" - should be (point)"."

Perfect!

You make my day

Thank you so much for your support

 

[Gheed]

Some progress for me, got the masking of the aerial image done and into sim, works nicely and you can hardly tell the difference where the added aerial image is when theres "MSFS aerial" around it to blend to. One thing i noticed is when working with .pngs with transparency, the tile tool will build black tiles and if you compile them, they will mess with the MSFS aerial on those edges. At close range on the transparent parts of the aerial image you get bare default scenery on the edges, but when you move further away the MSFS aerial will pop in there like it should. Optimally should clean up the folder from the fully black tiles before building package to hopefully get rid of this issue. Best thing would be if the tool would understand the transparent tiles and using "cut edges" it wouldnt tile those edges that are transparent in the .png image.

 

[TylorE]

Hi there! Thanks for the approval. I too have managed to get my new aerial into the sim using the tool provided at the start of this topic, many thanks! However, I'm also getting a strange blue/green tone applied to my images which isn't present when viewing the source tiles in Photoshop or Windows. I've tried both colour corrected and non-corrected, both have the same issues.

Has anyone experienced similar?

Many Thanks for any assistance.

Hi Guys,

I have solved the problem with the green tinge I was having with imported imagery. You will need to add the alpha channels to your tiles in order for it to display correctly.

I used imagemagick to do this as a batch script by running the following from the directory where your tiles are located:

FOR %a in (*.png) DO magick convert %a -alpha on %a

You can check if the alpha is missing by using the following code replace [filename.png] with one of your tiles to test:

magick identify -verbose [filename.png]

If the type is TrueColor and not TrueColorAlpha you will need to add the alpha channel.

You will need to install imagemagick in order for this to work.