SRTM for EVERY theater----> Example Spain

[Closter]

Well, as everybody can read here, the search for the way to use SRTM data in theaters projected by dem2terrain has come to an end. Thanks to Blueprint here it is the first example to the public.

Our theater is based in the strategic area around the Straits of Gibraltar, the mouth of the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean. The countries involved are Spain, Portugal, France, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Western Sahara, even UK if we consider the colony of Gibraltar and USA if we consider the bases that they keep in Spain and the VI fleet. It is a high voltage area with many possible "what if" scenarios. Good place for a Falcon theater. Apart from that, we'd like to fly Falcon over our country



As a Falcon theater, we started the Falcon SP3/SP42 way, this is still in big development, we need help to fix some errors of the CATE tiling and specially to make the campaign work. We are not as good and quick theater makers as some guys over here

But we can fly it in instant action and even we had been able to make it work in Falcon AF (still not in OF, RV or every BMS DDS flavor, please help)

So we had been able to take this pictures after installing the beautiful terrain that Blueprint has made for us.

Tenerife Island




South Morocco














Andalucia Sierra Nevada and coast








Pirineos: French Side









The important thing is the degree of detail, the way that some tiles are distributed over some different heights, not only 1 height per tile, but 16.

Pay attention too to some GE image:





Very similar (except tiling, I know)

All the pictures are taken over Falcon AF, and the normals are equalized with lxnormalfix for AF.

I want to give publicly a big THANK YOU to Blueprint for making this available to us. As soon as we published our first public beta this will be included.

[Snake Man]

I can help you with anything you need. But first you need to ask specific questions and tell me what exactly is wrong with your theater. Hmm perhaps you should open dedicated topic of Spain theater problems/bugs etc where I can help you, we can then keep this topic ONtopic.

The terrain elevations in the images look damned good, but it looks bit funny in places when farmland graphic is laid on very elevated terrain heh.

[Snake Man]

Forgot to ask; what kind of process is it to patch a old dem2terrain terrain into the SRTM?

[T_Rex]

And converting to dds should not be a problem.

Have your terrain the "active" terrain (you can check a registry value to make sure) then run terraintexcompress in the utilities folder. If it isn't there, we can arrange to get you a copy.

That looks AWESOME. Great job!

[ccc]

ya, turely great job!! 8)

[i_hawk]

Amazing stuff

[Closter]

Forgot to ask; what kind of process is it to patch a old dem2terrain terrain into the SRTM?

He he, SM, very easy!

The single thing I did was run the Bluey's application from cmd line, giving it two parameters: Falcon dir and theaters terrdata dir.

The app made its work for some time and I got the terrain files updated and could run the sim.

For your info I made this over a SP42 install and then I simply copied the terrain files over a AF install. Not a problem.

[KBMIL]

does this method give problems with floating buildings when done ?

[Closter]

This issue can be seen for each theater with this method or usual dem2terrain. This is the objective terrain leveling. Once you place an objective, you must level the terrain under it.

[Snake Man]

run the Bluey's application from cmd line, giving it two parameters: Falcon dir and theaters terrdata dir.

So the util included the Spain regions SRTM data then?

[Closter]

So the util included the Spain regions SRTM data then?

Yes. Specific for a theater (this time Spain), as Bluey said he'd make.

[ccc]

how about having the SRTM magic on Taiwan theater, please!

[Fafa]

Yes, what a good idea.

[Zaggy]

Ive said it before and I'll say it again, Bluey is the Man!

Also, IIRC, ppl had to play with the bubble settings for the terrain somehow, to get the LOD Shifts happening at a distance far enough away to appear fairly smooth... Dont ask me how to do it, cos it was a long time back!

Tho, one would guess this is why the original MPS F4 had identical LOD's from L2 up, as back in the day, NO ONE had the power to run such a set up!

[Closter]

Also, IIRC, ppl had to play with the bubble settings for the terrain somehow, to get the LOD Shifts happening at a distance far enough away to appear fairly smooth... Dont ask me how to do it, cos it was a long time back!

Not bubble, AFAIK, but Terrain detail slider. Thing that AF is lacking.

Nevertheless, it's looking better than before...

Second question, perhaps sex-of-angels kind. Were the original team people some visioneers letting existence of L1 and L0 for a future improvement or were they a little bit so-so, putting repetitive data that the program didn't need (and costed us processor cycles )into our hard drives?.

[Zaggy]

Second question, perhaps sex-of-angels kind. Were the original team people some visioneers letting existence of L1 and L0 for a future improvement or were they a little bit so-so, putting repetitive data that the program didn't need (and costed us processor cycles )into our hard drives?.

Sex-of-angels??

But yeah... My thoughts are, as outlined above... The original MPS team had intended to have terrain all the way down to 250m in their spec. BUT when F4 was released remember, you typical Gaming Machine was maybe a MMX Classic Pentium to Pentium II. The machines didnt have the necessary CPU cycles to run that sort of terrain detail.

So essentially L1 and L0 lay dormant til the first BaZT terrains...

Before this tho, ppl like Widowmaker, had played with the resolution of the L2, taking it down to a 500m L2, then finally a 250m L2. The only probelm with that was, a 64 seg theater with 500m L2 was only 500Km across... 250m L2 was 250Km across... Not exactly a BIG area.

But yeah, seems Bluey now has the technology to make ALL legacy/existing theaters 250m SRTM mesh based... Cool huh!


You the MAN Bluey!

[Closter]

"Discussing about the sex of the angels", or "what was first, the egg or the chicken?", are some premade phrases we say in spanish meaning "to talk about things that have little practical meaning and are not easy to be checked out other way but theoretically, or academically"

I don't know the answer to my own question, but, for sure, original L0 and L1 used my hard disk, and my processor and graphic card tried to use the vertexes in these two files, although there was no difference visually on screen. And this I know cause there was no loss of frames the moment I put your BaZT in my install. Except If I increased the terrain detail slider in my setup dialog graphic tab, obviously. But this happened also even if I didn't put your patch. So, my inference to it, is that question, a rethorical one.

[Joe Labrada]

Any screenshots of future Beta 0.5.0:


Rock of Gibraltar: SRTM data. Next to the rock:the airport of Gibraltar


The city: La línea de la concepción: 1024 px textures. Almost look like moving cars through the streets


SRTM in some African mountains


More SRTM data.



Sptinstall, BaZT-SRTM and Fixnormals applied in this order.

Code: Select all

ExecWait '$F4Root\Theaters\${TNAME}\Utilidades\SPTinstall.exe -auto "$F4Root\Theaters\${TNAME}\terrdata"'
ExecWait '$F4Root\Theaters\${TNAME}\Utilidades\BaZT-SRTM-Theater.exe "$F4Root" "$F4Root\Theaters\${TNAME}\terrdata"'
ExecWait "$F4Root\Theaters\${TNAME}\Utilidades\LxNormalFix.exe $2"

[ccc]

woow.. cool.

[Luke]

wow

[Phoenix711]

Very nice.

[Joe Labrada]

Work is well under way.
Test with Red Viper

More screenshots:

Perejil island (thanks, InterceptoR)

[Joe Labrada]

And more:

[Joe Labrada]

And more:





Let's see if you find the pool







Endeavor did a good job collecting data highlighted huh? ...Thanks Blueprint, for the Bazt-SRTM.

[Joe Labrada]

More:

Teide. Tenerife Island.

[ccc]

WOW!! eye-opening screenshtos.. GREAT JOB!

BTW - is the theater ready for the public?

[Joe Labrada]

At the moment we are running the installer-uninstaller ... We had created a unistaller (here the script), but I have found a way to work even better. When we have tested I will upload the script.

We are also making a change to the server. Now F4spain will stay at http://www.f4spain.com ; in brief (web and Website Theater) will be ready. It will not be more than a month.

[Closter]

in brief (web and Website Theater) will be ready. It will not be more than a month.

3-4 weeks, in fact

[Joe Labrada]

Days pass and are always 3 or 4 weeks. How is that possible, Closter?

[toonces]

How hard would it be to run the Nevada theater through this treatment?

Those desert tiles look AWESOME! (ie. muy bueno!)

[Joe Labrada]

BaZT-SRTM of Blueprint: instructions here
+
Tiles ODS 512 (Daniel "Zaggy" Bell,KingGeorge, Sherlock, Ami y Striker) with permission
+
Red Viper ,16.00 h (Post meridiam)

But, Imagine a fotorealistic desert (4096 px tile) without loss of yield

[ccc]

great - this theater could be the most beautiful and photorealistic one!