Pacific North West, USA Scenery under development

David R · Post by **David R** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:49 pm

After spending considerable time testing methods of scenery development I am ready to begin my project. I will be modeling the north west corner of the united states starting at the Pacific Ocean and heading east to the high plains desert. This area has low lands, high mountain ranges, rain forest and desert. I have already completed one tile, testing my methods and getting a feel for the amount of time. It took me 30 hours to complete one tile to a level simular but still well short of the quality of the Hungary scenery. My project has over 100 tiles, even though I will get faster, I still estimate 30 hours per tile to reach the quality of the Hungery scenery.

Because of the time involved I have decided to release my scenery in versions.

Version 1 will consist of a flyable, acurate, terrain with generic greens and browns for the scenery, and generic airports. No roads, cities, trees, or lakes. This version should be completed by mid march.

Version 2 will see a significant increase in the quality of scenery. I will be blending in Sat photos making the scenery colors extremly realistic, you will then see roads, citys, lakes, etc and a few(and I mean very few) 3d objects. This version should be completed by end of 2008

Version 3 wil see an increase in 3d objects, trees, buildings, animals, and some airports will change to acurate modeling, turn points. This version should be completed my March 2009

Version 4 will see the addition of many more acurate 3d objecst, and many more airports being properly modeled. This version will be end of 2009 at best.

Version 5, well we will have to see what I learn. and how high others raise the bar.

It is not my plan to make this scenery rival the best for quality. I'm just hoping to hit a quality level that most find acceptable.

If anyone elses is working on this same area I would be happy to discuss combining the projects, as other developers will tell you, this is a lot of work.

Later today I will post some screen shots of what the various versions will look like.

David R · Post by **David R** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:04 am

I am including 3 screen shots. The first is what version 1 will look like. The second one is what version 2 will look like. The third shot was taken from the New Zeland scenery and it is what version 3 will aiming to look like.

David R · Post by **David R** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:15 am

Looks like I posted the screen shots in reverse order

jbreznai · Post by **jbreznai** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:46 am

Dear David!

Congratulation for new projekt, we think it going to be saccessful...
Br:
Hungarian team
Csaba; Tibor; Janos

David R wrote:After spending considerable time testing methods of scenery development I am ready to begin my project. I will be modeling the north west corner of the united states starting at the Pacific Ocean and heading east to the high plains desert. This area has low lands, high mountain ranges, rain forest and desert. I have already completed one tile, testing my methods and getting a feel for the amount of time. It took me 30 hours to complete one tile to a level simular but still well short of the quality of the Hungary scenery. My project has over 100 tiles, even though I will get faster, I still estimate 30 hours per tile to reach the quality of the Hungery scenery.

Because of the time involved I have decided to release my scenery in versions.

Version 1 will consist of a flyable, acurate, terrain with generic greens and browns for the scenery, and generic airports. No roads, cities, trees, or lakes. This version should be completed by mid march.

Version 2 will see a significant increase in the quality of scenery. I will be blending in Sat photos making the scenery colors extremly realistic, you will then see roads, citys, lakes, etc and a few(and I mean very few) 3d objects. This version should be completed by end of 2008

Version 3 wil see an increase in 3d objects, trees, buildings, animals, and some airports will change to acurate modeling, turn points. This version should be completed my March 2009

Version 4 will see the addition of many more acurate 3d objecst, and many more airports being properly modeled. This version will be end of 2009 at best.

Version 5, well we will have to see what I learn. and how high others raise the bar.

It is not my plan to make this scenery rival the best for quality. I'm just hoping to hit a quality level that most find acceptable.

If anyone elses is working on this same area I would be happy to discuss combining the projects, as other developers will tell you, this is a lot of work.

Later today I will post some screen shots of what the various versions will look like.

Jack Hart · Post by **Jack Hart** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm

David, I'm very excited about the possibility of more U.S. scenery, but I'm discouraged that it may take you so long to create it. I think that you could significantly decrease your development time and still reach the level of detail that you desire. Attached are a few screenshots, each from tiles that took no longer than 30 minutes total to render and overlay. If they achieve to kind of realism you're seeking, PM me with your email address, and I'll send you a list of tips and procedures that will help you speed up your progress.

Best of luck with your new scenery!

Cadfael · Post by **Cadfael** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:18 pm

it looks nice, but be carefull about (c) - some of photorealistic sources are protected, and nobody wants to have as a reward of his free work for all community problem with law.. So if you have free sources, it is a perfect - we others must work with terragen and artwork.

Jack Hart · Post by **Jack Hart** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:33 pm

Most World Wind( http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/NA ... d_Download) data is in the public domain and as a result can be freely distributed and used. Google imagery is derived from this NASA data.

In the U.S., if the original work is in the public domain (NASA imagery) the creator (U.S. government) doesn't have any exclusive rights to the work. Users are free to do anything they like, including modifying and selling the modification. The derived work may even be copyrightable if it qualifies as an "original work of authorship". Google Earth methods of manipulation of NASA imagery may be commercially protected, but the basic imagery is not, since it's all available from NASA sources elsewhere.

Here's the catch: Most data outside the U.S. is NOT free, which places a huge burden on photorealistic sceneries developed for the EU and elsewhere in the world. Here's a good read on that situation: http://mappinghacks.com/geodata-access.pdf

I'm not a lawyer, I just pretend to be one on Condor forums.

GregNuspel · Post by **GregNuspel** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:23 am

Looks like you have located one excellent source of data.

David R · Post by **David R** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 6:45 pm

First I want to thank Jack Hart for the good information he passed on to me. He has jumped started my quality and compressed my time schedual greatly. I'm still going to release in versions but each version will now come out much sooner and in higher quality than I originaly posted.

Cadfael, you are very right to warn people about copyright issues. I am getting all my satphotos directly from a US GOV site which means it is free to me as I have already paid for it by paying my taxes.

This week is getting very busy so I won't beable to post any new screen shots until next week but the quality is going to be on the same level as the screen shots posted by Jack.

Last night, I got all the rendering done and I have started adding airports. I won't have any time this week end to work on it so airports probably won't be finished until late next week.

I'll keep you posted

David R · Post by **David R** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:03 am

Here is screen shot of my present work.

David R · Post by **David R** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 9:10 am

Were are slowly progressing out of the desert. Still alot of work a head.

David R · Post by **David R** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:53 am

I had no distractions this weekend. This allowed me to get 60 of the 140 tiles done. I averaged 45 min a tile. I've gotten faster and learned a few more tricks. Trick number one is "buy the Teragen upgrade, render the program in 2048 and splice in a few and I mean a few sat photos. I'd be done by now if I had done that. On the other hand I'm now going back and doing some very detailed 8196 rendering around the major airfields. This will make it interesting as one comes in low and fast at the end of a task. My goal is to have this done by the end of March. The rendering portion. I'll release the first version then. After that I'll take a break for RL and then next fall I'll go to work on 3d objects and raising the detail across the board. I'm having a real hard time with sat photos, it seems that some are taken in winter and some in summer, others in the morning or night. Trying to color balance this in photoshop really slows the process down.

Trick number two, its really easy to make low grade scenerys and really hard to make highquality ones. While I'll propbly grow the size of this scenery and increase the quality over time, I doubt if I'll ever start another one. If I do another scenery it will have to be as a member to a team project. Sceneries are just to labor intesive for me to do on my own.

My hats off to Cadfael and Hart who have done more than one scenery.

Well here is a screen shot so you can see the progress.

David R · Post by **David R** » Tue May 06, 2008 7:32 pm

Beta testing is done on PacificNW and I am presently loading in trunpoints. I'm hoping to have them all in tonight, with a little luck I should be able to release PacificNW(1.0) next week.

Jack Hart · Post by **Jack Hart** » Tue May 06, 2008 11:53 pm

David R wrote:Beta testing is done on PacificNW and I am presently loading in trunpoints. I'm hoping to have them all in tonight, with a little luck I should be able to release PacificNW(1.0) next week.

Wow, screenshots look great. We'll give it a go on MNS just as soon as the release has had a few days to circulate.

Amouse · Post by **Amouse** » Wed May 07, 2008 12:06 am

David

Well Done

Ive just had a look at your posts and its taken 3 MONTHS LMAO

Thats Very Fast working , and looks really smart.

Hats off to Mr Jack Hart for the time frame speed , if only a tutorial was writen with his processes

hint hint