PMC Tactical forums

The topic is just a little too bit optimist, but anyways, this was a dream a few months ago for me and now I fly over it.


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Im proud to present something I wanted to make since I first begun with Falcon theater development, a photoreallistic theater (or a piece of it), its doneable, only a few things to develop, get a CTD when being in the middle of everything, for the rest it runs ok, I dont think its ough to lack of memory because in that moment im only using 244 mb of ram.

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And before anyone of you ask, I wont release this theater, its just an experiment, there is two main reasons for doing this, first of all, all sat data comes out from Janes USAF (having a resolution of 7.81m per pixel) and they have copyrights on it.

Second reason is really simple, the texture.zip has a size of 653 mb, a little bit too much for only 16384 square km (the photoreallistic area covers 128x128km) which is 8x8 segments.
Making a whole theater (I mean a 64x64 segment theater) photoreallistic is just crazzy, but small areas is possible.

If anyone has good sources of photoreallistic pictures at a good resolution of an hot area of the world just contact me, I made a few auto utils for croping and autotiling at the same moment, the main work for this was done in about one morning, what took me long was getting data out of USAF which was hell out of protected in every way.

Now all the images are at: http://air.frikis.org/com_gp/com_gp01.html

Com_GP

..Making a whole theater (I mean a 64x64 segment theater) photoreallistic is just crazzy, but small areas is possible..

Well theres no need for your theatre to be big anyway. Its mainly useful as a training theatre around the Nellis AFB ranges and maybe Luke AFB ranges. You should at least prioritise on one of these areas, make it look really good and don't waiste time trying to make a big theatre, when most of us just want the training ground.
You can always expand it later. Just my thoughts.

The terrain pics look good but the terrain is too dark and lacks colour. In photoshop you can brighten and change colour ranges to fix this. Also try "auto levels to see if that helps" sometimes it works by removing the filter but other times it makes the pic worse, use with caution.

GREAT JOB!!

drooling...maybe we can figure out some way to "share" your nice theater(or terrain)?

Man you do great job- BTW, if you still keep C-101 3ds file, please send back to me. thanx you.

Very Nice Comgp.

how big did the fartiles.raw become?

/widmak

That's beautyfull!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was trying deveoloping my own nevada theater, but the time is my worst enemy!!!
What about a Nellis theater, with only the Nellis range (with the area 51 end so).

A little theater, but full of things to learn. I've not a lot of time but my dream is to develop this kind of theater!

quote:Originally posted by Panther:

Well theres no need for your theatre to be big anyway. Its mainly useful as a training theatre around the Nellis AFB ranges and maybe Luke AFB ranges


True, but for a theater as Irak it should be at least 64x64, if I ever would make it (dont even think about it
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Size is not the problem, if I only leave the h tiles the texture.zip is only 200mb and I think that with a complex installer I could make the theater in about 150 mb with jpgs and cropers (then nightlighting wouldnt be supported), the reason im not getting this out is because we all know where the sat data comes from

quote:Originally posted by Widowmaker:
Very Nice Comgp.

how big did the fartiles.raw become?

Believe it or not its only 6mb, I think one of the CTD is ought to this...

quote:Originally posted by Wolf:
I was trying deveoloping my own nevada theater, but the time is my worst enemy!!!

I understand you, I've been the last 2.5 years doing it

Com_GP

Heya-

Just to throw in a little legalese.... Jane's doesn't have a copyright on what Nevada looks like.

Lovely stuff, now if we can only get the viper looking photo realistic.

-PumpyHead

ya, Lawyer just give you an OK

Let's just delete this thread...
Then Com_GP posts a new one, writing how he had access to some highres satellite pictures of the Sierra Nevada at his local university BLABLADIBLA etc. - et voilà, clean new textures
Jane's? What is Jane's? Pixel? A Israeli development house called Pixel...

I think he meant his girlfriend, Jane, who worked in a meteorology office where they kept public access satellite pictures.

quote:Originally posted by PumpyHead:
Lovely stuff, now if we can only get the viper looking photo realistic.

Whatcha waiting for?

Bout time you started contributing something back to the community!

Hehehe, I see you want it

About colours..., I keep saying its ought to my graphic card, I have gamma like 1.60 for running with DX.

About Jane's, huhuumm!!!..., i mean, my girlfriend..., I'll see that later, now I have bigger problems, first of all, say that the CTD is a serious problem, if I run the theater with more than 4096 tiles SPTinstall wont past from this number, same to TerrainView, yet gotta discover (with Julian's help, of course) what is this ought to.
Not sure if this is ought to Falcon engine, SPTinstall or any other thing.

A posible solution to this is using tiles that cover 2x2km, thats posible and not really hard, widow, you will have to help me on this , you have much more experience than me playing with theater.map and all of that.

A really weird thing is that I load the theater in TerrainView and I check some offset# of the weird areas, then go to the texture.bin and check the name, the tile i have on the texture.zip doesnt match the one show in TerrainView.

For the rest it runs ok with 4096 tiles, the FPS are not the best ever, so better save for a big computer, i get about 50-70 in instant action with nothing besides my airplane in a PIII 800, 128mb ram, voodoo3 2000 16mb, I dont have the best one right here...

Still developing,

BTW, as I was bored looking for the CTD reason ive taken a bunch of screens and... well, you know, a image is worth a thousand words so... here you have a text of 8000 words if anyone wants to check:

http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/7.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/11.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/12.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/13.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/14.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/16.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/17.jpg
http://comgp.en.wanadoo.es/25.jpg


ComGP

Well, I don't have any pictures for these two words....

HOLY CRAP!

X1 also working now for really fartiles, now I can choose detail level so it goes faster.

ComGP

seem cool could you do the same with the other USAF theaters?

PS he's right you know Janes dont own the Copyright to what the Nevada desert looks like. If you use their photos as a template only then there shouldnt be any trouble.

quote:Originally posted by shaunman:
seem cool could you do the same with the other USAF theaters?

Sure, only would have to get out all data, this could take me a couple of weekends.
Anyways, I think nevada is the best done of all of them, but vietnam and irak are also good options, but remember, this is yet an experiment

quote:Janes dont own the Copyright to what the Nevada desert looks like. If you use their photos as a template only then there shouldnt be any trouble:

Ok, just in case I've removed USAF's Nellis AFB, it was to big (or Falcon's airports to small) because it was like three times bigger than a normal 20_02 airbase.

New Nellis AFB look, a little bit unreallistic


ComGP

Why not just resize it? Its based on actual sat imagery. just edit the actual tile to match the runway enough to blend..

quote:Originally posted by CAG:
Why not just resize it? Its based on actual sat imagery. just edit the actual tile to match the runway enough to blend..

Its true that its based on real sat images but it was edited by Janes artist because i have real pictures of nevada and USAF doesnt look like the real thing

ComGP

even if you can just do a 5*5 mile of each alot of it could be used to tile other parts of europe like the snow capt mountains north of italy in the Janes europe theater.

I say remove your name from ALL parts of the Theater, WinRAR it, and share it on Kazaa!!!

That looks 100 times better than the Photo-real Baghdad i was doing, EVER did!!!

Com_gp,

You've done a great job in tiling there.

I am trying to do something similar with in 64x64 size theater, with some areas enhanced with satpics. However, cropping, and naming satellite pictures are painfully slow.

You mention about the auto util you developed for cropping and tiling. Would you think of sharing it with the community?

If you do, my e-mail is hduman@yahoo.com

Thanks at least for giving the taste of what Falcon is capable of handling...

DUMAN is out...

quote:Originally posted by DUMAN:

I am trying to do something similar with in 64x64 size theater, with some areas enhanced with satpics

Remember you cant use more than 4096 tiles in the whole theater

Com_GP

Com_gp,

First of all, i would like to commend you on your work on the Nevada theater so far!

I can tell you that there is great desire for it in the stray dog camps, we place allot of emphasis on training and having a realistic theater where that is done would be great!

I was wondering, will you be able to place static range targets etc? That would be superb!

Please keep up the good work,

-
Halldor B. "Jester" Jonsson
Training Officer
87th Stray Dogs VFW

quote:Originally posted by Jester - 87th Stray Dogs:
I was wondering, will you be able to place static range targets etc? That would be superb!

From what I know the targets are there, but I dont know how to place them, yet.

For sure that we will make all the object placement as reallistic as posible, Snake122 has done an incredible work in that subject, I still havent flight the theater with the objects but I took a look in TacEdit and its hell out of cool.

About the photoreallistic stuff, well, I want to make it like that, trying to solve a big problem with the maximum number of tiles that Tinstall can afford and whenever solved (if possible) i will finish up everything.

BTW, if that problem is not posible to be solved i will make a 128x128km theater with 2km resolution for DEM data.

Thanks for your encouragment,

Com_GP

The targets are in the 3d model database
however there are no objectives that curremtly have them.
Chris Carter was so nice to make me a quick fix to have a peek at them ingame




widmak

I've sorted the other objectives for SP4.

Later


Chris

Great, good to hear that.

/widmak

Hi again,

I´ve been flying Nevada this last two days with the photoreallistic theater and I just can say one thing..., I´m gonna put all my efforts in getting this out with a good enough resolution (2kmpertile) and enough cover area for the theater, 128x128km (16384km^2) which is good I think.

The reason I´m saying this is because I cant think there is more reallistic impresion than flying Falcon with photoreallistic terrain, I know many of you hate (or dont like) photoreallistic theaters because the sense of speed and all of that but if you think about it seriously low flights are not very common in training missions, and still, i think low flights sense with 7.81meters per pixel is good enough.

About copyrights of USAF and all of that..., well, I just will ignore them, after all is USAF still being sold?, in a couple of years its maybe in abandonware

Just to let you know,

Com_GP

GREAT. GREAT.

quote:Originally posted by Widowmaker:
The targets are in the 3d model database
however there are no objectives that curremtly have them.
Chris Carter was so nice to make me a quick fix to have a peek at them ingame

widmak

Back in the day, I added several target objects to the database specifically for the Nevada theater (along with the F-16 w/Mig29 radar setting for Red Flag).

I remember there were target objectives, but I can't remember exact details... If I remember correctly I added 5 or 6 target objectives but can't recall what I named them. I remember you can use F4Browse to see what objectives use the objects, and should be able to find them that way. At the time I really wanted to see the Nevada theater take off (still do) and this theater be used exclusively for all of the training missions & a dogfight theater option too.

That terrain looks really really good BTW! Perhaps there are some freeware image databases so as not to get in troulbe using Jane's stuff. I'd consider that still under their copywright protection, so if you still decide to use it, they could pull the plug on it anytime they wished. Better to find a freeware image database. Wonder what Fly! and X-Plane uses???


Haven't played F4 in probably a year now, and its good to see things still moving forward on this. I'm glad to see the new units getting created & populated, this was one of my desires from the beginning.

(switching back to Lurker mode)
- Jerry (aka Pookie)

hmm i must say i am a real fan of the 512x512 concept, if photoreal textures can deliver the depth of that, then i am all for it.

I cannot wait for the day a full 512x512 terrain see´s the light of day.

As for Red Flag and low altidude, i can tell you that based on what i know, ALLOT of low level flying is done. Also please bear in mind that Nevada isnt only home to Red Flag, but Green Flag and various other training exercises.

I *beg* you to consider 512, it makes all the difference in the world.

the range in SFP1
http://oldsite.simhq.com/cgi-bin/ultima ... 5;t=005542

I have some range diagrams. I'll scan what I've got. I would love to have a range on the Nellis theater! (although this range is Luke's)

Hi,

I continue working on this and the results are really nice at the moment.

First of all let you see a couple of shots of me having a small flight.

) is 4096 tiles, so not many more can be added at this moment.

For you to see the area that the photoreallistic theater covers at this time is just like this (Its mixtured with the map).



The red and blue boxes are the Nellis Ranges for bombing, i should cover those at all, but two main problems.


Not enough tiles left for that areas
Not too good data for that areas in USAF

The first one can be solved (I think) remaking SPTinstall, the second one is harder, if anyone of you has good sat data of that area please, email me.

And..., well, for you to see the area covered without maps...



Hope you like this,

Com_GP

cool. great job as usual.

[quote]quote:Originally posted by Com_gp:
this maybe interest you widomaker the rest of your post was nice too though.


/widmak

Well guys..., no way of adding more than 4096 tiles, Falcon Engine wont afford it, it cant allocate memory for more than that, so..., this is the final result, or at least the area that will be flyable, if I ever release it...



Com_GP

quote:Originally posted by Com_gp:
this is the final result, or at least the area that will be flyable, if I ever release it...

so.. your final decisoin?

Mhhhhhh, not sure yet, compressing and uploading it somewhere is just easy, and the theater is really cool to fly at the moment, but for something serious..., well, there is not enough RANGE areas for a serious Nevada theater.

Com_GP