I recently began updating my CYYJ to include the new taxiway and expanded main terminal apron and to use photoreal images in place of the existing rather-bare vehicle parking lots (GP parking lines on asphalt with a few scattered vehicle models). Since I had two sources of suitable orthophotos, I thought the latter process would be easy. I was wrong!
My first approach was to use custom GPs to place extended bitmap format images appropriately masked with an alpha channel. While that meant I was constrained to binary-multiple-sized images with a limit of 1024 for FS9, custom GP's did seem to "do the trick" - until I "discovered" GPs suppress autogen and could only be used in flattened areas. (Please don't remind me I developed ADE-GP; I'm already suitably embarrassed.) While I could "live" with the autogen suppression in parking lots, my initial success with GPs had prompted me also to use photoreal imagery in other areas to "real-up" my airport, areas that were not flat and that couldn't be flattened. I then turned to sBuilderX's Map function. While I was eventually successful in creating a map for one of the parking lots, the process was very tedious and the slightest mis-step necessitated going back to "Square 1". Since I planned to create more than a dozen images, that wasn't a process I wanted to endure. Then I turned to the Internet. There were innumerable items covering the creation of photoreal terrain using tile servers, but precious few dealing with single images. However, one "pointed" me to the Terrain SDK and, in particular, resample.exe. The multitude of parameters for resample.exe and the apparent complexity of the SDK example was an initial "turn-off". But then I realized I needed only a small portion of resample.exe's capability and that mechanical generation of the .INF file should be simple. A day later I had a working tool.
Given the results I am achieving (I'm not done yet) , it occurred to me that others could probably make use of this capability, i.e., virtually single-click creation of custom terrain (once the images - of any size - and masks where necessary have been created and the NW and SE corner geographic positions identified). So I spent a little time over the past couple of days "removing the warts" and creating a basic user manual.
Earlier today I posted "Image2PhotoReal" to my website http://stuff4fs.com. It's available from the Developer Utilities menu. (If you've visited the site recently, you may have to clear your cache to see it in the menu.) If you do download and install it, be aware you'll have to copy resample.exe from any Terrain SDK into your Image2PhotoReal folder. (Microsoft's and LM's EULAs prevent me from including it in the Image2PhotoReal archive.)
Comments/suggestions appreciated.
My first approach was to use custom GPs to place extended bitmap format images appropriately masked with an alpha channel. While that meant I was constrained to binary-multiple-sized images with a limit of 1024 for FS9, custom GP's did seem to "do the trick" - until I "discovered" GPs suppress autogen and could only be used in flattened areas. (Please don't remind me I developed ADE-GP; I'm already suitably embarrassed.) While I could "live" with the autogen suppression in parking lots, my initial success with GPs had prompted me also to use photoreal imagery in other areas to "real-up" my airport, areas that were not flat and that couldn't be flattened. I then turned to sBuilderX's Map function. While I was eventually successful in creating a map for one of the parking lots, the process was very tedious and the slightest mis-step necessitated going back to "Square 1". Since I planned to create more than a dozen images, that wasn't a process I wanted to endure. Then I turned to the Internet. There were innumerable items covering the creation of photoreal terrain using tile servers, but precious few dealing with single images. However, one "pointed" me to the Terrain SDK and, in particular, resample.exe. The multitude of parameters for resample.exe and the apparent complexity of the SDK example was an initial "turn-off". But then I realized I needed only a small portion of resample.exe's capability and that mechanical generation of the .INF file should be simple. A day later I had a working tool.
Given the results I am achieving (I'm not done yet) , it occurred to me that others could probably make use of this capability, i.e., virtually single-click creation of custom terrain (once the images - of any size - and masks where necessary have been created and the NW and SE corner geographic positions identified). So I spent a little time over the past couple of days "removing the warts" and creating a basic user manual.
Earlier today I posted "Image2PhotoReal" to my website http://stuff4fs.com. It's available from the Developer Utilities menu. (If you've visited the site recently, you may have to clear your cache to see it in the menu.) If you do download and install it, be aware you'll have to copy resample.exe from any Terrain SDK into your Image2PhotoReal folder. (Microsoft's and LM's EULAs prevent me from including it in the Image2PhotoReal archive.)
Comments/suggestions appreciated.