Photo scenery / resample issue

pierrot78 · Post by **pierrot78** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 2:23 pm

Hi all, I am facing a problem with the SDK resampler.

I've already made a photoscenery that blends perfectly into the environment of FSX.

The place is a small group of islands in south Bretagne, France.

I'd like to use the same scenery with P3D2.

But it looks awful: the smooth blending transition between land and deep water, preserving transparency of low waters, is totally lost in P3D2.

Of course my imagery has been resampled withe the v2 SDK resampler, but it doesn't work. I tried different mask colors or intensities, no joy.

There are 2 kinds of flaws:

1- a rough cutout aspect in place of the desired smooth gradient

2- some weird wavy-aspect surface "pasted" onto the visible water of photo scenery

A couple of screenshots will help.

Any clue ? Am I missing something, or is it a bug with the resampler? Thanks !

rfputtini · Post by **rfputtini** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 5:35 pm

Pierrot78, it is a known bug, I have the same problem here (FS EarthTiles, P3D resampler)... patience! Hopefully it will be fixed for version 2.1!

29PalmsSD · Post by **29PalmsSD** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 3:28 am

Hi Pierrot,

I described the same problem here: http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/?mingle ... pic&t=4064

also hoping for a fix in v2.1

Nice scenery btw.!

pierrot78 · Post by **pierrot78** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 4:14 am

So I'm not so stupid? That's the good news.

The bad one is that we have to wait...

That is strange however, since rather "old" commercial photoscenery do not have this issue.

E.g. the whole photorealistic Bretagne VFR scenery from France VFR, released in 2010, in which the shores display a nice gradual low waters rendition.

How is it that these oldies behave well, and not ours today?

I've tried all previous resamplers (from ESD, FSX RTM, SPA and SP2) plus the P3D2 of course : same results everytime.

Thanks for answering, anyway.

rfputtini · Post by **rfputtini** » Fri Dec 06, 2013 9:55 am

Pierrot, maybe FranceVFR used a different method to do their scenery, knowing that their imagery come from IGN (and not Google/Microsoft as most of us do)...

Strange thing, as yesterday I was doing a small test (Cayenne - French Guiana), I did not see that bug appearing, at least not from the altitude I was flying... maybe would it be water related? (for me it was the first time I do coast lines in P3D, but I had seen the bug before with others sceneries)

NB: the coast lines were made using Google Earth then imported inside FS Earth Tiles. Maybe it does have something to do with it?

pierrot78 · Post by **pierrot78** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 6:07 am

Raphael, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean: you said 2 days ago you've got the same problem, then now that a second try gives good results?

So your first attempts (FSET, P3D2 resampler)gave you this bad visual aspect then a second series over Cayenne gives you a nice blending?

How would you explain this difference, since you used the same tools?

Or did you change any setting in the inf file, or in your methodology?

My imagery source is Virtual Earth (trough FSET) and my mask is hand made with Photoshop. This process always gave me good results (as FSX addon scenery), with a fully editable transitional effect thx to PS.

I never used kmz (yet) since I worked on islands scenes for which my first attempts with kmz were a failure (blame me , I gave up and turned to Pshop).

pierrot78 · Post by **pierrot78** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 11:45 am

The only way I have to get my smooth blending again is to set water detail to Off. Everything is visible then, but at what a cost: you fly over a huge flat glass panel, not over the ocean...

But with Water ON, whatever detail level:

rfputtini · Post by **rfputtini** » Sat Dec 07, 2013 9:46 pm

Pierrot, I tried again, using the standard method to make the coastlines, with Google Earth and the latest resample.exe:

And I had water detail on... I don't understand. Maybe there's something in the method that FSET uses to make its blending masks that works fine whithin P3D.

timmo · Post by **timmo** » Sun Dec 08, 2013 2:51 pm

You would need to compare it in the same view- What does your scenery look like in the top down view Raphael? (Not just a view from above the plane, the actual top down view where you can zoom in and out on the globe)

pierrot78 · Post by **pierrot78** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 4:26 am

The kmz import method is valid for (relatively) large coastal sections or islands of such a size.

But for archipelagos, small islands, etc it is actually unusable because not precise and not tweakable enough.

You cannot outline precisely enough small rocks, reefs etc.

And you cannot include transparencies for shallow water areas that you would like to include from place to place between small islands, or above sand banks, etc.

For all these precision outlines and masks, an image editing sw is required.

All that was perfectly done before for ESD, the FS series, and P3D earlier versions.

We expect to have the same possibilities to design P3D2 sceneries.

It is something strange that P3D can deal with bathymetry and can't realistically display the firts meters under the surface. ;o)

rfputtini · Post by **rfputtini** » Mon Dec 09, 2013 1:41 pm

Ok, now I get your point much better Pierrot!

I am going trough the documentation of FSET, because it seems that it does have indeed a method to do what you want, about shallow waters. It's something that interests me also, because of the particular setup of the coast in French Guiana (and despite the horrible quality of the satellite images...).

I'll do a try with the Îles du Salut and let's see what is possible until they fix it!