• 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.

MSFS24 Custom Aerial Color Troubles

Messages
20
Country
us-ohio
Hello,
I am developing an army airfield from 1935 to fit with Redwing's line of airfields, and I scanned and colorized an aerial photo to use as a background. I managed to import a custom aerial photo into MSFS 2024, but for some reason, the overlay is much different from the input.
I georeferenced and divided them into tiles via QGIS, and converted them via Tiles2Bing. You can see the result here:
1773188386158.png

1773188355199.png


The issue is that once I load it into MSFS 2024, I get a much different result:
1773187824887.png

And not to mention, there are random patches of grass and dirt where it shouldn't be.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to correct this?
 

Attachments

  • 1773188006415.png
    1773188006415.png
    928.3 KB · Views: 40
Yes, the image needs quite a hefty gamma correction -- I think Asobo have mentioned this somewhere, but a quick search doesn't show anything.
 
I made a program (with the help of Gemini) to recolor tiles using some color matching. RecolorTiffs.zip

It uses folders for ColorSamples (containing saved color matching images), OriginalTiffs (containing your geotiffs), and an Output folder for the final results. The results may not be perfect, but they will get you close.

The outputs can be edited in Paint.net or GIMP , to add alpha masking (and edge blending) or touchups. Don't resize anything, then save or export. Or use them as is. Alpha Masking along road edges or fencelines helps to hide the transition.

The color matching samples are a bit more difficult. You can use many samples to try to get the area right. But where to get the samples so they come close to what the sim needs? From the sim.

Untitled.png


The aerial image on the right is the base aerial image used by the sim for that tile. I have my PC set so if I key-press WindowsKey+Shift+S I can get a rectangle copy of the image like on the right. I make the copy a bit oversized, to get the full tile image. In a paint program, I trim that image bounds, and it yields a 256x256 image for a color sample.

Trimmed.png


The way to get to that debug tile window is In Devmode, Options|Ground options|Debug tile Zooming in or out gives the tile resolution. Clicking CRTL+left mouse click locks and unlocks the tile selection. These are the tiles MSFS will alter to give the actual sim image. You want this unaltered tile... not just a big screenshot of the sim's ground image. I copy a few of these tiles for color samples. I like to save them as 32-bit images (PNGs). With the ColorSamples saved in that folder, and the OriginalTiffs loaded (You can have one or more there), I double click the RecolorTiff.exe and the Output folder contains recolored GeoTiffs. The hard part is processing the MSFS tiles into PNGs to serve as base samples for the color matching.

Not perfect, but fairly close.

Here's a picture of the result in QGis. Note that I use ESPG:3857 for aerial images. These are orthographic (Google) projection. It fits better than lat-long images. The colored geotiff lines up well. When saving a GeoTiff from QGis, Use uncompressed so it loads to paint programs better.

QGIS_Pic.png
 
Last edited:
Proof of concept: Geotiff file colored by some of the default tiles. and a message made in paint.net Copied here as a reduced size PNG

C59.png


Screenshot of C59 from 2024 with the aerial package:

Untitled.png


It blends well, even with no masking. Notice how the sim alters the colors with it's own scheme ("HELLO" is hardly visible). No masking was used.

Debug Tile:

new.png
 
Last edited:
Thank you for pointing out the debug panel, now I can look under the hood.
1773256095687.png


Debugging brought some interesting aspects to light, such as surface type and NRA. Maybe those have something to do with the recoloring, and I wonder if they can be edited or modified.

1773256530042.png

1773256952041.png

I'll investigate further.
 
Last edited:
You can make polygons of surface type materials (either making a material or finding a suitable surface material). Heightmaps and NRA etc... are not customizable.
 
WOW, MOS (Metrix On Steroids) ...BUT MLW (Much Less Work) :wizard:

Dick's (c/o "Gemini" ?) may have created something to automate a laborious manual process previously only possible via Metrix plugin. :teacher:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:+www.fsdeveloper.com+Metrix+color+plugin&sca_esv=288d0459570a6d4e&source=hp&ei=oLyzaeTmF4_T5NoPpsaxkQE&iflsig=AFdpzrgAAAAAabPKsC2Mv4yeGnyI3TJeqPTzuasNjZNd&ved=0ahUKEwjkttmHrZyTAxWPKVkFHSZjLBIQ4dUDCBY&uact=5&oq=site:+www.fsdeveloper.com+Metrix+color+plugin&gs_lp=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-8CgAgB&sclient=gws-wiz


I still recall Dick's reference to MS' early research on this approach to digital graphics processing in an old FS2Kx thread at AVSIM. ;)


Dick's post on an older workflow citing Metrix at FSDEV:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...orrect-raw-sattelite-images.18417/post-121129


...and Color Match plugin by pyrochild using Paint.net:

https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/7291-pyrochild-plugins-2020-11-21/



IIUC, Metrix plugin evolved out of the color equivalence research by MS and others:

http://web.archive.org/web/20190913105757/http://www.jnrubin.net/psi

http://web.archive.org/web/20211202060118/http://www.jnrubin.net/psi/

http://web.archive.org/web/20190911144755/http://jnrubin.net/psi/test.html


You can make polygons of surface type materials (either making a material or finding a suitable surface material). Heightmaps and NRA etc... are not customizable.

OMG @ SDK DOC, NRA = MIA.


BTW: FYI @ Google Gemini:

NRA = Nool Aerosystems MFS Toolkit

https://www.google.com/search?q=MSF...nCBwcyLTEuNi4zyAehAYAIAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

NOTE: Google AI already corrected its incorrect NRA "hallucination" ...within minutes; too bad I was on a phone browser (no screenie)


Gemini + UBO (UBlockOrigin) = NO AI

WTH = NRA ? :scratchch

GaryGB
 
Last edited:
Back
Top