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Google Earth and SBuilderX

Hi kthy2003,
I can imagine that you are not satisfied at all, seen the attached image.
However my experimental-area with good results was completely flat!
Were the tiles you generated with "Getbackground" good?

Can you give me some coördinates of your area, then i will give it a try...

Regards
Bert
 
I am currently creating a detailed airport scenery of North Cyprus Ercan (LCEN) Airport. The Google Earth image is working perfectly on th flattened airport area. Not only the day texture but the night texture is also working. No problems here.

But, over at Lat 35.3247 Long 33.4080 and there abouts over the mountains and the hills I am having the problem. The picture was included in the previous message.

I also do not understood how to use the 'Getbackground' addon. I have tried using it but SBuilderX continues downloading the tiles and displays them. The addon do not seem to be doing anything although it is downloading something.

Thanks
kthy2003
 
The graphic problem have been corrected and the visuals are ok. There is a thin black joining seam between the tiles, not so obvious at a distance but it can be seen.

kthy2003
 
kthy2003 said:
I am currently creating a detailed airport scenery of North Cyprus Ercan (LCEN) Airport. The Google Earth image is working perfectly........etc

I also do not understood how to use the 'Getbackground' addon. I have tried using it but SBuilderX continues downloading the tiles and displays them. The addon do not seem to be doing anything although it is downloading something.

Thanks
kthy2003
Click to expand...

Hi kthy2003,
The "getbackground" tool from Luis_Sá is only made the get the small tiles of just a certain area; you only have to fill in the right coördinates.The first time with me it went wrong because i made mistakes during the filling in of this figures.
In your case you need a North Latitude and a South Latitude,
a West Longitude and an East Longitude.In the attachement i have put some figures i should have used...at your place as an example!.
The tiles are produced and can be used as before...
BTW the coördinates you gave me were miles away at sea:confused:
Good luck!
Bert
 
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Good to se info about rotating the map.

Right now I am using high quality 20cm data I bought for ENGM airport.

And found I had to rotate the whole map 1.79 degrees CW in Photoshop, if not the runways do not line up with each other at all.

Rotating 1.79 degrees plus using the geotiff info, everything is spot on. But one of the runways are offset a meter east, but "in line" with the FS runway.

So I have concluded the runway in question is a little misplaced even on this map. I will fix this by leaving the MS rwy where it is (do not want to edit approaches, fixes), just do a few corrections to my map.

For comparison I checked against Google Earth, and it is way offset...useless. Then I checked against thresholds coordinates from World Aerodata, and they are spot on the MS thresholds. So I don`t trust Google Earth one inch!

Cheers,
:stirthepo
 
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Just read this entire post, I have made probably hundreds of modification to FS2002, FS9 and FSX airports (and other scenery) in many parts of the world - but mostly the UK and USA west coast.

SBuilderX is very, very good - thanks Luis!

For large airports in populated areas the FS runways are usually quite well positioned relative to the photo backgrounds (BTW it seems to make little difference using GE or Virtual Earth or Yahoo Satellite the images look different but the positions are the same).

I would guess that the imagery for these populated areas is updated more recently?

When you get to remote areas then things get less accurate; sometimes the runways are completely different with wrong headings, however the lengths and widths are usually OK I guess FS uses the published airport specs for those dimensions.

However I always end up tweaking everything in AFX to position the runways and taxiways correctly on the photo, in fact I usually start by deleting all the taxiways and aprons, shift and modify the runways as necessary then the buildings/objects (using the the photo) and finally replace the taxiways and aprons.

The default taxiways are always far too wide and and even less accurate than the runways...

I always create the photo backgrounds from the SBuilder backgrounds by creating a map then trimming the photos along the line of convenient roads in Paintshop Pro making the unneeded part white (=transparent).

If you are instead grabbing images from Google Earth you must make sure the "Terrain" is turned off - the images will be distorted unless the area is completely flat.

What I have noticed is that over the years the resolution of the available images has improved; recently I have been able to go to zoom level 18 for the backgrounds at some airports (lots of tiles) at that resolution you can actually see the PAPI locations, add the PAPI objects and try to position the lights in AFX to match (it doesn't always work though! - AFX problem I think)

Attached is a screen sot of San Jose, CA (46 photo bgls)



Geoff
 

Attachments

  • sjc.jpg
    sjc.jpg
    77.8 KB · Views: 593
Has the google server changed again, I'm installing all the latest .DLL's and none appear to be working ?

Regards.
 
hefy_jefy said:
Just read this entire post, I have made probably hundreds of modification to FS2002, FS9 and FSX airports (and other scenery) in many parts of the world - but mostly the UK and USA west coast.

. . . . .However I always end up tweaking everything in AFX to position the runways and taxiways correctly on the photo, in fact I usually start by deleting all the taxiways and aprons, shift and modify the runways as necessary then the buildings/objects (using the the photo) and finally replace the taxiways and aprons. . . . . . .
Geoff
Click to expand...
Hi Geoff,

I was probably as curious as you when I read this entire thread why folks were going to the trouble of rotating maps and trying to adjust the maps to fit the FSX/FS9 rwy alignments, lol. I would never do that. Actually it never crossed my mind to try to adjust the image to fit the AFCAD.

I use the same technique you do. I delete all the taxiways and ramp poly's from the AFCAD in AFX, then move the rwy to fit the positioning of the rwy in the image (which is probably far more accurate than what FSX has set) and then rebuild the parking ramps and taxiways to fit the image.

After all, the images we download are shot from the exact locations we want to replicate in the sim. They're images of the actual airport, lol. I think that makes the images more precise in position than what MSFS supplied.
 
Hi Ed:

Indeed, the quality imagery on most tile servers nowadays is nearly always correctly placed. :p


But, as Scott Smart (aka "Scott967") pointed out in another thread on this issue, there is the occasional exception that requires an adjustment in one's geo-referencing (rectification) of downloaded imagery.

The USGS Black-And-White DOQQ Microsoft TerraServer imagery (I believe these servers are still used by GlobalMapper !) is often awry as J. Doug Cox points out in the documentation of his USAPhotoMaps program.


And of course, not all internet imagery servers are using imagery formatted in a FS-SDK compatible Geographic Lon/Lat WGS84 Projection and Datum.

So one must exercise care when selecting files from USGS servers, as they may only be available in a format that requires re-projection before the FS SDK will even accept the data; and if we have "misaligned" data that the SDK accepts, FSX will simply display what our data tells it to.


But for purposes of Google Earth, these tiles are always correctly formatted, and will be immediately usable (...except those rare areas which are misaligned in their source imagery before placed on the tile servers) !


Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Good info as always Gary. I have tried the USGS Server and have rarely found it suitable for hi-res imagery. Invariably the area I want is void of any usable tiles. I have relented and gone back to using the three servers from within SBuilderX. The image capture is instantaneous, in the correct format and from initial capture to positioned in the sim can be as short as 5 minutes or less. From there, I'm on to object and autogen placement and can complete a project in a few days.

I realize there is far more to it for the more intense and complicated scenery work that many folks in here are doing, but for my needs SBX contains everything I need, start to finish.
 
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