Satellite images

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6266
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Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 7:26 am

Hi,

I'm creating some landscapes using the description from www.soaringtools.org. That works very good, downloading the textures from google satellite images with allmapsoft google satellite maps downloader.

Finished NorthGermany and think the texture is ok, not perfect, but good enough.

Actual working with NWPoland, the texture is rediculous bad. Here one tile, it's a usual one, not the worst one.
poland.jpg
I have worked around it and will fix it with lightening it up. So it will be maybe acceptable.

While I'm working with that landscape i started the download of the textures for a landscape in Namibia. The landscape needs a good texture, have downloaded Karas Namibia to compare it. That's amazing, while I get from google such frustrating tiles:
namibia.jpg
I will never be able to get a good texture out of that. I think I will kill that project. Searched here on the forum for alternate sources, but understand nothing. Found f.x. something with Landsat, or ArcGIS, but don't understand what to do with that. Are there tools like the Condor_Tiles creating batch files to download textures from better sources?

Thanks for any hint
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dgtfer
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Re: Satellite images

Post by dgtfer » Mon May 30, 2022 9:08 am

There are a huge amount of sources, including free ones!
For example, in the US all public sources are free for all use. In a great number of countries, you have public Geoportals displaying freely their data in WMS format (For ex. France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Swizerland ...)
These free data should be used first. Then you can use comercial general sources like Bing, Esri, Google, Yandex... These are not free for all use but are available for local patching. Among these Google is probably the worst!
here is your Namibia part on Bing:
B16.jpg
Esri:
WI14.jpg
and Yandex:
Y14.jpg
But first of all you must learn how to use some good GIS software, that can download and reproject the WMS sources.
And of course, whatever the quality of your sources, the main job will still be manual retouching!
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6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 9:52 am

Thanks a lot for your very fast answer. I'm impressed that you found that place.

I see that such a project with the need for a perfect texture is far beyond my capabilities, both in terms of time and skill. So I cancel Namibia, have one last project in my pipeline and will see how it works with the tools I used so far.

And I will see what happens with NWPoland, when I have finished it. I have my doubts that it will be good enough ... Maybe it's good for a blind flight training ;-)
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dgtfer
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Re: Satellite images

Post by dgtfer » Mon May 30, 2022 10:04 am

In fact retouching of your initial texture is quite feasible:
namibia.jpg
here is what we get after a few minutes of work:
namibia-retouched.jpg
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6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 10:34 am

Thanks for your try. That looks good, but I'm not able to do that as good as you. Only to select the part to change takes a lot of time, and then to find the right tools and the right colors to modify needs more skill than I have. If I finished the first tile, there are only 599 left ... My design skill is very low. I think it's ok for a landscape with an acceptable basic texture and lots of trees, but Africa has nothing to hide a bad design, so it has to be nearly perfect.

Did the right thing now to prevent me (and all others) from unneccessary frustration: del *.*. I'm now "Out of Africa"

The next (and surely last) project will be in the US. If I'm lucky I will get a texture quality like the german one. I will see, the first download starts later today ...
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dgtfer
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Re: Satellite images

Post by dgtfer » Mon May 30, 2022 11:42 am

Your NWpoland scenery seems to have a great common part with the new EastGermany Extended scenery (the name is not final and should be changed) soon to be released.
EastGermanyExt.jpg
Here is a sample of Claude Simmonneaud's textures in this part:
t2151.jpg
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6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 12:18 pm

That looks very good. Here is my region, the red one is the place of my interest. Elblag (Elbingen) and Kaliningrad (Königsberg) where my parents were born before WWII. Unfortunately not on the New EastGermany

You can imagine the bad texture I got
nwpoland.jpg
I set a white layer over all with an opacity 60, so it gets very light, but you don't see the sharp edges with the color changes immediately. 50 % finished now, it will look like that. Nice is something different, maybe I will not share it via CC
nwpoland2.jpg
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wickid
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Re: Satellite images

Post by wickid » Mon May 30, 2022 12:40 pm

Remember that you need to license the imagery from google. That is not cheap. Distributing non licensed imagery can get real expensive.
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6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 1:26 pm

wickid wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 12:40 pm
Remember that you need to license the imagery from google. That is not cheap. Distributing non licensed imagery can get real expensive.
Thanks, that's a very good point. I followed the description from soaringtools
See APPENDIX THREE about imagery usage. Not real practical to put tags in the landscape that
will never be seen. We’d suggest adding some text somewhere on your Splash Screens to credit
Google. ...
Satellite images: Google Maps
...
And I saw lots of landscapes made with this tutorial, so I felt on the right side. Have to think about that ...
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wickid
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Re: Satellite images

Post by wickid » Mon May 30, 2022 1:41 pm

From the EULA:
(b) Attribution. Customer will display all attribution that (i) Google provides through the Services (including branding, logos, and copyright and trademark notices); or (ii) is specified in the Maps Service Specific Terms. Customer will not modify, obscure, or delete such attribution.
So you cannot delete the watermarks
No Scraping. Customer will not export, extract, or otherwise scrape Google Maps Content for use outside the Services. For example, Customer will not: (i) pre-fetch, index, store, reshare, or rehost Google Maps Content outside the services; (ii) bulk download Google Maps tiles, Street View images, geocodes, directions, distance matrix results, roads information, places information, elevation values, and time zone details; (iii) copy and save business names, addresses, or user reviews
You cannot bulk download or redistribute the imagery
No Creating Content From Google Maps Content. Customer will not create content based on Google Maps Content. For example, Customer will not: (i) trace or digitize roadways, building outlines, utility posts, or electrical lines from the Maps JavaScript API Satellite base map type; (ii) create 3D building models from 45° Imagery from Maps JavaScript API; (iii) build terrain models based on elevation values from the Elevation API; (iv) use latitude/longitude values from the Places API as an input for point-in-polygon analysis; (v) construct an index of tree locations within a city from Street View imagery; or (vi) convert text-based driving times into synthesized speech results.
I think this precludes landscapes using google maps images as well.


I know there are several maps using google maps or bing maps (which probably has similar terms of service). IMHO the makers and people who host (like BOD1) can get into serious trouble with these landscapes. I don't know if BOD1 transfers this liability to the landscape creator when he hosts, but I personally would stay far away from this. I think for a landscape the license fees would run in to the 10.000 euro range easily.

Best to use free sources like DGT suggests.
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6266
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 1:50 pm

Wow, thank you very much. I think I have to talk with BOD1 ...

And I have to think if or how I replace the existing textures
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Mon May 30, 2022 2:01 pm

I will take my landscape NorthGermany from the download, asked BOD1 to do it on CC. On my own server I will delete the download asap.

Then I will learn to use free sources and replace the textures in my landscapes. It will take a while ...

I appreciate your comment! Thanks again wickid
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Re: Satellite images

Post by 6266 » Tue May 31, 2022 9:01 am

I found a solution, using now Sentinel-2 map. Here the first tile, on the left side the one from google, on the right side the one from Sentinel
sentinel.jpg
And here the changes I had to make to get it:

I use the very helpful tutorial from soaringtools -> https://www.soaringtools.org/wp-content ... rial14.pdf

To create the tiles in the Working\Terragen\Textures folder they have to procedures, first the GMID-process to download the images, then the GDAL-process to convert the images and move them into the Textures folder.

The GDAL-process works without changes, only the GMID-process has to be modified

1. Download software

I replaced the Google Satellite Maps Downloader with the Universal Maps downloader, both are from allmapsoft (payed 718 NOK for it, how they calculate 69 Dollars to 718 NOK is hopefully the only math error around the tool :-D, ok, peanuts ... )

On side 13 of the tutorial they write that you have to create a symbolic link. Deleted the old one and created a new one for the UMD

mklink /D gmid umd

2. Change the batch file for the download

For each tile is a batch file for the download in the SourceTiles\9999\ folder (9999 is the number of the tile), created by the tool Condor_Tiles. The original content of the Batch_Download_0000.bat is

Code: Select all

"C:\allmapsoft\gmid\downloader.exe" 0000.gmid 1 16 14,65455397 15,01224478 51,60712657 51,38275642 "C:\Condor2\Landscapes\NorthGermany\Working\SourceTiles\0000"
It has to be changed on two places, parameter 2 has to be 0000, not 0000.gmid, parameter 3 is the Source. 105 is Sentinel-2 map. The content has to be changed in

Code: Select all

"C:\allmapsoft\gmid\downloader.exe" 0000 105 16 14,65455397 15,01224478 51,60712657 51,38275642 "C:\Condor2\Landscapes\NorthGermany\Working\SourceTiles\0000"
3. Change the batch file for the combining

For each tile is a batch file for the combining in the SourceTiles\9999\ folder (9999 is the number of the tile), created by the tool Condor_Tiles. The original content of the Batch_Combine_0000.bat is

Code: Select all

rem for tif use "bmp,tif" instead of "bmp"
"C:\allmapsoft\gmid\combiner.exe" "C:\Condor2\Landscapes\NorthGermany\Working\SourceTiles\0000\0000.gmid" %1 %2 %3
It has to be changed only in one place, .gmid has to be replaced by .umd. The content has to be changed in

Code: Select all

rem for tif use "bmp,tif" instead of "bmp"
"C:\allmapsoft\gmid\combiner.exe" "C:\Condor2\Landscapes\NorthGermany\Working\SourceTiles\0000\0000.umd" %1 %2 %3

If you only have a few tiles, you can make the changes by hand. For my landscapes with more than 1000 batch files I made a routine in my landscape tool, it's written in LotusScript, it's nearly equal to VisualBasic. I will share the short script

Code: Select all

Sub Click(Source As Button)
	If Msgbox ("GMID ändern?", 32 + 4, "GMID") =7 Then
		Exit Sub
	End If
	
	Const quelle = "105"
	
	Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
	Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument
	Set uidoc = workspace.CurrentDocument
	Dim doc As NotesDocument
	Set doc = uidoc.Document
	
	If doc.Maxtile (0) = "" Then
		Print "Max tile fehlt"
		Exit Sub
	End If
	Dim tiles List As Integer
	Dim i As Integer
	Dim j As Integer
	
	For i = 0 To Cint (Left (doc.MaxTile (0), 2))
		For j = 0 To Cint (Right (doc.MaxTile (0), 2))
			tiles (Format (i, "00") & Format (j, "00")) = 1
		Next j
	Next i
	
	Dim verzeichnis As String
	Dim datei As String
	Dim zeile As String
	Dim daten As Variant
	verzeichnis = "C:\Condor2\Landscapes\" & doc.Bezeichnung (0) & "\Working\SourceTiles\"
	
	Dim filenumin As Integer
	Dim filenumout As Integer
	Forall tile In tiles
		Print Listtag (tile)
		'Download
		filenumin = Freefile
		datei = verzeichnis & Listtag (tile) & "\" & "Batch_Download_" & Listtag (tile) & ".bat"
		Open datei For Input As filenumin
		Line Input #filenumin, zeile
		Close #filenumin
		daten = Split (zeile, " ")
		daten (1) = Listtag (tile)
		daten (2) = quelle
		zeile = Join (daten, " ")
		filenumout = Freefile
		Open datei For Output As filenumout
		Print #filenumout, zeile
		Close #filenumout
		
		'Combine
		datei = verzeichnis & Listtag (tile) & "\" & "Batch_Combine_" & Listtag (tile) & ".bat"
		zeile = |"C:\allmapsoft\gmid\combiner.exe" "| & verzeichnis & Listtag (tile) & |\| & Listtag (tile) & |.umd" %1 %2 %3|
		filenumout = Freefile
		Open datei For Output As filenumout
		Print #filenumout, zeile
		Close #filenumout
		
	End Forall
	Print "Fertig"
End Sub
The download is started now, currently working with tile 0009. If there will be a stop after a while, like with google, I will see. It takes a lot of time, one tile is combined of more than 10000 files in Sentinel, with Google it was 4-5000. But the pc makes the job, not me. So it's only to wait, and it's exact that, what I was looking for.

Thanks again for all hints
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wickid
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Re: Satellite images

Post by wickid » Tue May 31, 2022 12:27 pm

Excellent! Glad you found a free source.
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Kekelekou
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Re: Satellite images

Post by Kekelekou » Tue May 31, 2022 1:37 pm

Excellent indeed!

By the way, is what you get with UMP exactly the same as what you can see here ? I mean, after you click on "Explore" and zoom in. :lol:

https://s2maps.com/

The zoom level seems to be somewhat limited on the website, could you please clarify if you get a limitation too with UMP? Thank you!
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