Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

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JBr
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by JBr » Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:38 am

Since there is no universal source of such "free" imagery for every area in the world, it has been our policy from the beginning not to concern photo textures. So if anybody wants to create a tutorial for such textures, go ahead, but unless the policy changes in the future, it simply won't come as an official document from the Condor team.
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jmurtari
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by jmurtari » Sat Feb 02, 2019 3:18 pm

I noticed the Google Terms posted. One key concept is "Fair Use" and maybe this only applies in the United States. You can read all kinds of stuff pro/con -> https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia ... ative.html

Is taking a .jpeg or .bmp and changing it to a three D texture with sometimes a significant loss of quality "transformative?" You can follow the link above and read some decisions, but honestly, we'll probably not know for sure unless there is a legal challenge.

Regarding free sources, found this article -> https://gisgeography.com/free-satellite ... data-list/
but right now I don't know enough for what might be useful......

Micheal
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Micheal » Mon Mar 04, 2019 11:46 pm

I recently started lessons at a club here in the state of Georgia. I had never flown anything before (except RC) and Condor 2 VR has been a big help. It would be great to have a photo realistic scenery for the airport we fly at. I don't know anything about creating scenery and it would just be for my own personal use. Any help in creating one would be appreciated.

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Andy1248
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Andy1248 » Tue Mar 05, 2019 12:10 am

I made Georgia USA2 for Condor 2 back in July last year:

Downloadable from Condor Club:

http://www.condor-club.eu/viewscenery/242/?id=287

Do not know if it includes your airfield.

The scenery was made early in Condor 2 and I was not including many of the excellent features of C2 in the scenery. And has been pointed out it does not include trees, water effects, 3D objects or a realistic thermal map. But if you just want to fly in the area, it may suffice.

The scenery was basically a quick convert from the Condor 1 version.

It is very unlikely that I will enhance the scenery up to acceptable Condor 2 standard.

Maybe a chance for someone in the US to step up and try the scenery creation fun, very addictive and can be tediously long to complete a scenery to the standard now expected.

Image is from the scenery flying above Allendale.
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Last edited by Andy1248 on Tue Mar 05, 2019 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
Condor CN = E20

Micheal
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Micheal » Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:55 am

Andy1248 wrote:
Tue Mar 05, 2019 12:10 am
I made Georgia USA2 for Condor 2 back in July last year:

Downloadable from Condor Club:

http://www.condor-club.eu/viewscenery/242/?id=287

Do not know if it includes your airfield.

The scenery was made early in Condor 2 and I was not including many of the excellent features of C2 in the scenery. And has been pointed out it does not include trees, water effects, 3D objects or a realistic thermal map. But if you just want to fly in the area, it may suffice.

The scenery is basically was a quick convert from the Condor 1 version.

It is very unlikely that I will enhance the scenery up to acceptable Condor 2 standard.

Maybe a chance for someone in the US to step up and try the scenery creation fun, very addictive and can be tediously long to complete a scenery to the standard now expected.

Image is from the scenery flying above Allendale.
I downloaded that recently. We fly at Roosevelt Memorial Airport. I would be glad to make a photo realistic scene with all the C2 features if someone could tell me how to get started.

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Andy1248
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Andy1248 » Tue Mar 05, 2019 11:55 am

You need JBr’s excellent scenery building guide:

http://www.condorsoaring.com/downloads-2/

This will tell you all you need to know to build a scenery. Start as recommended with a small area to learn the basics. As for photo type scenery there is no recommended guide, the Condor texture tiles just contain a photo image that is correctly positioned to the terrain. Many ways of doing this as you may find out.

Very rewarding to see your own scenery in Condor.
Condor CN = E20

scientifantastic
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by scientifantastic » Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:08 pm

This is how i made mine for my own personal use at home
1) followed the landscape tutorial guide link to in previous post
2) used the QuickMapServices plugin in Qgis to add a google maps basemap to my project in Qgis
3) Since you can not use the print function to get tile images with the google basemap i had to find an alternate route. So what i did was zoom in to about 5000:1 (i think) in Qgis to get a good deal of detail in the map, and then use the Save Image As function from the menu. This saves a georeferenced image for you of what you were viewing on the screen.
4) you will have to pan around the entire scenery saving hundreds or thousands of images to cover your landscape. just make a grid and save images until you have images to cover everything
5) once you have all images you can import them all using "add new raster layer" and it will batch import all the images placing them in the exact right spot.
6) once you have all your images imported you can then follow the rest of the instructions in the landscape guide to "print" out tile images that you will then use for the final steps in the landscape guide.

It took me a long time to make mine, and i only made a small scenery for my local area. That said, it works and looks great! So its worth the time. This was just my method of doing it. I know nothing about any of this stuff but was able to follow the guide, do some googling, and figure out how to get it done.

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Jan Oorthuijsen
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Jan Oorthuijsen » Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:10 pm

Some well-intended tips:

Take the time to build your scenery.
Use the full potential of the scenery toolkit.
Use the beautiful Scenery Check2 tool regularly to check your scenery.
Flatten the airports and check whether the airport height in the airport properties is equal to the height after flatten.
Make a good thermal map.
If you place c3d objects yourself, check the shadow of the object, this works only on a flat surface, if not then the shadow is partially or completely hanging in the air. If this is the case, use the addition (_ns), otherwise you will get very annoying effects when the sun is low in front of you.
You can use all my 3D objects from my Matamata scenery and I have a lot more in my assets lybrary, and those become soon available via the Condor landscape assets.

I hope you enjoy building your scenery

Jan WW
PH-722
WW
It’s Difficult to Soar Like An Eagle
When You’re surrounded By Turkeys

Micheal
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Micheal » Wed Mar 06, 2019 5:54 am

Thanks for all the help. I'll start going over the info on how to do it tonight.

Micheal
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Micheal » Thu Mar 07, 2019 4:23 am

I got my basic grey textured scenery working. I'm now a little stuck about how to add the photo texture.

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Jan Oorthuijsen
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Jan Oorthuijsen » Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:06 am

It is all in this forum and in the manual.
PH-722
WW
It’s Difficult to Soar Like An Eagle
When You’re surrounded By Turkeys

Micheal
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by Micheal » Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:53 pm

Jan Oorthuijsen wrote:
Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:06 am
It is all in this forum and in the manual.
Sorry. The only thing things that I'm finding right now seem to be outdated. I'll keep looking.

pstrzel
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by pstrzel » Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:34 pm

I wanted to mention that parts of the tutorial I wrote for realistic scenery creation for Condor 1 are still valid for Condor 2:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16426

You want to use the official Condor 2 tutorial to create your initial high field (ghost-like) landscape before moving on to creating photorealistic tiles.

Start at section "III. Orthographic HD image data"

Make note that where it says:

gdalwarp –r cubicspline –wm 1024 –ts [width] [height] –te [left_map_x -45] [lower_map_y -
45] [right_map_x +45] [upper_map_y +45] (scenery_mosaic>.tif <scenery_cropped>.tif

The 45 needs to be replaced with 15, because of the higher terrain tile resolution in Condor 2. That number stands for 1/2 of terrain tile width, which is 30 in Condor 2, not 90 like it was in Condor 1.

Also, LizardTech GeoViewer 5.5 which is used to manipulate mrsid files is no longer available. It has been replaced with GeoViewer 9, which has a tiling ability. Unfortunately, it does not do a good quality job on preserving the zoomed in image data (leaves artifacts), so I still use my old GeoViewer 5.5 and take snapshots (Save current view). If you are using straight GeoTiff, you can jump straight into using gdal tools as specified.

Seeing how other people are creating photorealistic sceneries, I'm sure my method is not the only one out there. Cheers.
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GregHart1965
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Re: Photo realistic scenery tutorial for C2?

Post by GregHart1965 » Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:29 pm

Earth Explorer - a US goverment site has tons free imagery you can access. Also any 'World Maps" or "World Imagery" is also free to use. Contact your local government Survey offices - they often have a wealth of up to date information, imagery and data available.

Try to use Google for reference only - even then their imagery is often not up to date - Ive seen some really hideously outdated stuff on there - like 15+ years out of date and poor image quality - so they should definitely not be your go to source. Local survey offices are usually the best.

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