Oahu HD

[flying.islander]

Just wondering if anyone who is familiar with Oahu, knows if there is an island off the northern point of Kahuku? I was going to mark it as a waypoint, however, when I tried finding the name of the island I couldn't locate it on any maps, including aeronautical and oceanography (nautical) charts.

It shows up though on the "cleaned up" version of the SRTM files from NASA's FTP server, where someone has gone through and supposedly cut out 'false' returns. I'm wondering now if this 'island' (see screen shot below) is in fact a false radar return? Google Earth shows an underwater hill at this location, but well below the surface. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[MaintenanceMan]

Might be a reef at low tide?

Can you post the co-ords?

[flying.islander]

At VERY low tide... (the next ice age). The coordinates are 21.8617N 158.0784W

[David R]

There is no island out there.

When I fly from Kauai to Oahu I always steer north of the island, after flying for one hour I start looking south until I see the island, then I head for Dillingham to see how the soaring is going. I've never seen nor heard of an island out there.

David

[flying.islander]

Thanks Dave for the info. I should have asked before I spent all that time touching it up with surf, trees and an awesome beach. Thought it would make for a challenging waypoint--the one place far out to sea where there would potentially be a thermal.

[MaintenanceMan]

Leave it there and name the Island as your own! - or Name it Fantasy Island!

[David R]

Name it "Steve's Pooka"

[flying.islander]

Pooka eh? Hmmm... might be a good name--especially if there was a way to make it show up at random or only to certain pilots...

I just took it off last night... and it took 12 hours to convert all the .bmp files to .dds. *sigh*

I suppose it couldn't hurt to put it back on...

[flying.islander]

After over a year, I've just now finally finished a beta of my first and tiny Oahu HD scenery. It's using over 800 aerial photographs that were originally shot at 30cm resolution by the USGS in conjuction with the University of Hawaii. Due to limitations of the .dds compressed texture format, I had to reduce this resolution to 1.4meters. The entire scenery is 874MB in size.

David R has been a huge help with getting me started... so thanks to him and to the rest of you who have helped me here in the forums.

This scenery still needs some final polish (like graphics during the load screen), and perhaps an array of ground objects. I have placed a few ground objects like the Radar station on Mt. Kaala, the orbital debris tracking station, the VLF antenaes for submarine communication (though they're not the correct height nor correct type--as I still haven't figured out how to model my own objects), and a few gratitutous trees around Dillingham.

I would like to offer this scenery to a few people to try out, and give me suggestions. I fear though that this scenery will require a graphics card with LOTS of memory, due to the huge texture files.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions as how to best share this scenery while in beta, I'd appreciate it.

I'll also admit up front, I'm not a graphic artists... though I've learned a few things on this adventure. I spent some time cleaning up clouds and haze... but left cloud shadows alone. I hoped they'd blend in with the sim's cloud's shadows--though might end up being false bait. I did clean up shadows though if an adjacent picture was taken when the cloud existed and another didn't--forming a hard seam. I also tried my best at trying to make a somewhat decent transition with the shore line. In some places it worked ok... in others it was very difficult due to sun glare, or the fact that the original photographs were chopped off at the beach.

This is a tiny scenery, so probably not the best one for racing, but some might like to get an idea of what is there, should they travel to Dillingham airfield and rent a glider there to fly for themselves.

[BOD1]

I pm'ed you!

[Strider69]

Looks really good,I like it.

[Andy1248]

I love photo scenery.

Can it be placed on Condor Club scenery as a beta test version?

[flying.islander]

Thanks Strider.

Yes, Andy, Thierry has offered to host it as a Beta. I'll upload it tonight or Saturday morning.

[BOD1]

Oahu is available on Condor Club!

I got a bad CRC on Oahu HD BETA\Textures\t1310.dds and the default path for install is C:\Program Files\Fichiers communs\SYSTEM\MSMAPI\1036 directory Maybe it's only on my PC but please just check before clicking on "Install"

Thierry

[BOD1]

First flight over it, Impressive! That's a very *high* definition!!
My first thought: add 3D buildings/trees on landscape, because when we are low, it's hard to see distances as all building are flat.

Thierry