UK Scenery

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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 5:47 pm

Thanks. Now to find out if the UK Condor pilots want a big UK scenery.
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dgtfer
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by dgtfer » Fri Jan 29, 2021 7:09 pm

It's so much easier to plan a flight without bothering if it's in the reachable zone, that I'm sure it will be a success!
And probably people will want an even larger scenery, with all the British Isles!
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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Fri Jan 29, 2021 7:23 pm

!!!!!!!!!!!! :shock:
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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Sat Jan 30, 2021 5:01 pm

I have had a offer of help from Paul from the VSC to help with the creation of trees. Here is my response which I will also post on VCS Discord.

Hi Paul

Thanks for your interest and offer. The new UK scenery is basically a merge of the North, South and Scotland sceneries . Something that I have been trying to do for some time. Now thanks to some help from dgtfer (AA2) I have achieved it, The new map is as on the forum post and the South half is using all the current data I already have. The North half is more problematic as the current scenery I have north of the Humber does not align with the new UK grid. However getter basic data i.e. Water and trees is relatively easy to get from Open Street Map (OSM) data using QGIS and I have already done it. Airfields and objects can be reused from the original sceneries and be easily merged using current tools.

As the North grid is different I am going to have to remake all of the texture tiles for North of the Humber. However not so difficult because I still have all the textures I just need to merge together and then cut them to the new grid.. It will take a while and this by far is the largest job to do.

One of the problems with a large scenery such as this is that the Landscape Editor (LE) cannot be used to add detail as the textures cannot be visible (just not possible with a 32 bit LE). So detail has to be worked on a smaller half size grid and then added to the new grid. Most of this will require renumbering of all the tiles in the North, however I do have file renumber tool which I have used before so not too bad.

As for help on trees, currently the trees on the UK scenery are from the OSM data for the UK which is pretty good compared to other countries. You guys that use the scenery, are the current trees OK or would you like to see more of them in the places not covered by OSM? To do this the helpers would need the grid layout (i.e. georef of each tile, a copy of the texture that I am going to use and Photoshop or some sort of image analysis to create the tree 'b' and 's' files. Not sure how this would work out. Would need to make the textures available on a online drive with instructions on how to do it.

As before the best help would be for UK Condor pilots to model their own glider site as you have done with Sutton Bank, with accurate and detailed 3d models. The Xavier airfield maker guide is available for download from the Condor Web site. If anyone wants to have a go modelling an airfield (my 3d model skills are not the best) then download this guide and have a go.

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

and look for airfield creation guide by Xavier. Note - Xavier made the Nympsfield gliding site.

Adding a new modelled site can be easliy done by me once provided with the O, G and textures files.

I personally think that accurate and well modelled airfields will greatly enhance a UK scenery. So any budding or established 3d modellers out, your help is welcomed. The Wings 3D software is free to download and I find the easiest to use. Blender is used by the Condor team to model the gliders, very comprehensive but not easy to get into.

Andy S (E20)
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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Wed Feb 10, 2021 11:24 pm

Just an update on the progress of the new United Kingdom Condor scenery. It has been constructed from a merge of West UK2 and South East uk3 making a new South UK scenery. Then there is another merge of Scotland and North UK2 to make UKNorth. this Uk North has had to be reworked to align with the South UK grid of 23x18 tiles. The North section is 23x23 tiles which will add on creating the new United Kingdom scenery of 23x41 tiles. This has all progressed quite well although not without problems one of which was when the two come together I could not get it not to have the dreaded no elevator control. The solution was to rebuild the entire terrain again loosing all my airfield flattening work. The textures particular for the north have been reworked and are probably better now then before. My main issue at the moment is the size of the scenery, I am 3/4 through the textures and got 63gb of textures! So some serious slimming is required. I must credit Michel DTF (dgtfer) in Marseille in France who has been a great help with the large scenery problems. The thermal and flight planning maps are done. No work yet on airfields and objects other than copying and merging from the old scenery’s. Spent the whole day today trying to find out if there is a dds texture size reducer/converter. Seems that there no easy way just a hard graft of working on each tile. I hope that it will be worth it in the end.
Last edited by Andy1248 on Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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KipperUK
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by KipperUK » Thu Feb 11, 2021 12:51 pm

Hope nobody uses it that lives in Great Yarmouth :D

Seriously though, might have to model some oil rigs for the addition of turnpoints for crazy people...

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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Thu Feb 11, 2021 1:08 pm

With the shape of the UK, to include Great Yarmouth would have required another additional 41 Condor Tiles, 40 of which would be sea! :D
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Thu Feb 25, 2021 5:56 pm

Another update:

Looking at the Texture Folder sizes of the following UK sceneries:

South East UK 3 = 17.3gb

West UK 2 = 18.5gb

North Uk2 = 18.7gb

Scotland 4 = 18.6

Which means if you have all these loaded then they are taking up 73gb of disc space and that is just the textures all the other folders will add to this.

So where am I with the whole of the UK? Well the complete scenery has a Texture folder size of 70.4gb, not surprising since it is all the UK. However following dgtfer advice this can be reduced. Condor tiles of 8192 pixels create that massive texture folder, the UK scenery has a lot of sea which does not need high resolution. So by using only 64x64 pixel sea tiles I have reduced the texture folder size to 40gb. Almost manageable.

Other big sceneries, AA2 and FRN have used careful selection of dds texture sizes to keep the texture folder size to a minimum. So I getting to the right ballpark with this one. I am sure that I can trim that 40gb even more.

I am not far away from having a very early version ready for test and I am hoping that the VSC (Virtual Soaring Club) would be willing to test the scenery, hopefully even on line.
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BOD1
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by BOD1 » Thu Feb 25, 2021 6:56 pm

Or you can delete DDS when it's only sea and use Empty.dds.
Condor uses empty.dds when xxyy.dds is missing, so fill it with water and save disk space!
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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Thu Feb 25, 2021 7:58 pm

Thanks Thierry
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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:23 pm

The United Kingdom scenery is now at a test phase. By careful use of DDS DXT the installed scenery size is 34.9gb.

If you wish to try the scenery at this early stage there is a download link from my Google drive on the UK Virtual Soaring Club Discord server, accessed via:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/551588222 ... rer=search
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Allen
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Allen » Wed Mar 24, 2021 6:14 am

Andy,

Is there any way to download your UK scenery test files without having to have a Facebook account to go via the VSC Discord server?

Many thanks,

Allen

KipperUK
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by KipperUK » Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:59 pm

You can join the VSC discord server without needing to use Facebook. Let me know if you need an invite link.

TBH We started as an FB group but Discord seems to work much better for us so most of the activity goes there.

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Andy1248
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Andy1248 » Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:13 pm

UK Scenery now available for download at Condor Club.
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Big Mike
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Re: UK Scenery

Post by Big Mike » Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:23 pm

THanks so much all invovled in this!! great work.
Tile to the east of prestatyn seems to have elevation problem?
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