gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Thanks to Dr. Karl-Heinz Roeder's excelent "Panorama Scenery in AFPD" tutorial, I have recently been able to successfully create and install a "rough draft" of my local airfield into AFPD, and fly in it. I'm EXTREMELY pleased with these initial results.

The scenery does, however, need some tweaking here and there...most of the "issues", however, will be easy (or at least simple) to overcome with just a little patience and effort. Except one.

My scenery, like any other, has pits, plane stands, fences, trees, etc...all of which SHOULD crash the airplane.

Now, my PREFERENCE would be to alter the airfield such that these objects were as "transparent" to the aircraft as they are on the sim...however, something tells me the laws of Physicis might not approve. So, instead, I'm left attempting to duplicate their rather unforgiving qualities in the sim.

Dr. Roeder mentions using MetasequoiaLE to create collision objects, but I must admit...the software has me completely baffled, and I can not even make a tentative first step.

Does anyone out there have either

A) A "better" method/piece of software for doing this?
B) A tutorial, or at least a few step-by-steps to get started.

I mean, I make my living with computers, and have at least a smattering of old college experience with AutoCad and such, so I really should be able to muddle my way around and eventually come up with SOME way to get this done...but Meta has me completely baffled.

Help!

TIA,

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Egadz,

I see that if I had read through the "great news for AFPD" thread, I'd have learned that collision tools for AFPD are a rather sensitive subject. Hopefully, this thread will not turn into another "lively" discussion ont he matter.

Judging from that thread, it would APPEAR that the answer to A) above is "No, nobody really has a better way or better software"...at least, not one commonly available. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong)

That being the case, anyone out there with some MetasequiaLE experience that can at least give me some first steps?

Again, my appologies to the mods and community if this stirs up a flame war...that was most definitely not the intent.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

rc-rodeo,

It dawns on me that YOU are the author of the scenery creation tutorial. Well done.


Would you, possibly, be able to help me with a couple of simple steps in Meta? I've made SOME progress since my last post, but still lack some knowledge.

Thanks in advance!

rc-rodeo

Hi there,

you are right, it's me.
And please, don't use this Dr...., that's for business, but here we're in our great hobby

Ok, some more background information:
Ipacs planned to publish a scenery tool in spring/summer.
Unfortunately the CAD program they based it on, is no longer supported by the manufacturer.

So they had to completely rework the process, which led to this unprecedented delay.
Actually there is a beta tool already, but this will not be published until some more steps are done.

So in the meantime you may do some workshops for either 3D studio or Meta.
Meta is great for designing AFPD aircrafts, although it works very different from standard CAD.
It was also for me a hard time to learn Meta while being used to Intergraph and Bentley MicroStation.
But Meta has some functional lacks for scenery creation, e.g. you cannot fix view point to the center of a globe...

So what's my suggestion for the moment?
If you want to create some aircrafts too in future, get into Meta with an aircraft workshop.
There are 2 english workshops at some japanese sites.

You may also just wait some time for the progress at the Ipacs side.
If you want me to check your scenery, send me a email with a download link.

Regards
Dr. Karl-Heinz Roeder ( or just Rodeo)
www.rodeo.onlinehome.de
[email protected]

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Rodeo,

Thanks for the timely reply.

Most of what you said about Ipacs publishing their own collision tool I had picked up from other threads...thanks for the history behind those decisions though.

As for meta...I guess I'm just stubborn. Because I know collision objects CAN be created with Meta, I'm bound and determined to make it work, if for no other reason than the satisfaction of beating the little *******. *heh*

I've looked through every tutorial I can find online for meta, and it's helping...I can move the globe around, rotate it, etc, to get a view I want, and I can at least now put MY panorama into the collision.mqo file you provide, and have found out how to delete the various collision objects you had created in there.

However, I'm still stuck on one key step...in your workshop you mention "now draw bearing lines from the center to the outline of the object....Now you can create collision objects in Meta"

Could you expand on that a bit please?

First, I've not yet found any mention of "bearing lines" in the Meta help, or in any tutorial...can you explain to me how to draw these "bearing lines" of which you speak?

Second, can you tell me how many points on an object I need to draw bearing lines TO. For example, I have a pit area in my panorama. Should I draw lines to each corner of it, or more or less?

Finally, in your "forest" layer in collision.mqo, it appears that, rather than drawing bearing lines from the center of the globe to the forest, you instead drew a "box" around the edges of the forrest...is this the case, and if so, how and why did you do that?

Sorry if I'm being a dunce here...I appreciate your workshop quite a bit, and hope you don't mind these extra questions.

Thanks again,

rc-rodeo

Ok,

I hoped to get around this with publication of the scenery tool.

But now let's get a little bit more into it:

The pilot stands in the center of the globe.
The panorama image is mapped onto the inner surface of the globe.
The globe is a virtual world of 10000 metres diameter.

The image shows a small forest area in an estimated distance of 40-50 metres.
We have to create a collision object (kind of box) for it.

But what's the height of the forest?
To find this out you may draw these bearing lines from the center (pilot's view) to the globe.
They cut the globe at the position, where the top trees of the forest is being displayed.

You can't find the bearing lines in the Meta help. They are just help lines for construction.
You can use the standard function to create a line.

So the result is a box, the forest mapping.
The distance from the center is the estimated distance from the pilot.
The height of the box is up to the bearing lines.

Well, I would have problems to explain this in german, hope you can follow my english at all.

Regards
Karl-Heinz (Rodeo)
www.rodeo.onlinehome.de

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

That made terrific sense, actually. Well done!

And thanks for the explanation...I think that explanation, along with some more tinkering by me, might just get me started.

Again, I appreciate your patience.

PickeringRC

Hi
Could you post a link to the tutorial of bulding sceneries

Thanks
Martin

Greg.B

Hi Martin,

[link=http://www.rodeo.rc-sim.de/workshops/panoramaAFPD-Workshop.zip]HERE[/link] is the link for the tutorial, I found it VERY helpful, thanks Rodeo!!

I have found this thread very imformative too!

BW!

Greg.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Bit of a threadjack, i suppose...but then again, hey...I started this thing.

If I may be so bold, I'll toss out a tip or two as I come across them to add to or further clarify things in Rodeo's workshop.

The first couple involve the photography of the site itself. Since Im shooting a 35mm SLR, rather than a digital, these tips were learned with such equipment...they SHOULD work for digitals as well, however.

1) Rodeo says, in the workshop, "adjust a standard zoom, no telescope, no wide view". While that's accurate, as far as it goes, it doesn't adress the issue of focal length. I have found that a focal length of approx 75mm works best for AFPD panoramas. This is just a BIT more zoomed than a "true to life" view...that is, objects in the photo appear a BIT closer than they do in real life from the same vantage point. Please note, it's only a BIT closer...

You'll likely have to experiment with the focal length yourself...just know the following:

If, when your scenery is created, the plane appears too small in relation to, say, the end of the runway, you shot with a focal length that was too SHORT. (say...50 mm instead of 75mm)

If the opposite is true, and the aircraft appears to large, then you short with too LONG of a focal length. (Say, 100 mm instead of 75mm)

2) Rodeo also says to set the "exposure time of your camera to manual". I believe this is PROBABLY just a function of rodeo writing in english, rather than his native german.

The POINT of this is to make sure that all shots are equally exposed. One thing you'll notice is that the color of, for example, the sky, will change quite a bit depending on the amount of foreground objects. If you're shooting an image that has, say, a pit area, some buildings, and several trees, these objects will provide sufficient reflected light and color saturation that the sky will appear washed out, or pale...often even white. However, if you shoot a higher angle shot, consisting of mostly sky, the camera will adjust, and you'll get a nice sky blue.

The problem, of course, is that when you stitch these shots together, one will have a pale whitish sky, the other a deep blue sky, and the result will be a rather garish line between the two.

Rodeo was, i think (and pleae, rodeo, correct me if I'm wrong about ANY of these) trying to say that you should make sure to have a constant exposure level for all pictures. On MOST cameras, simply setting the "exposure time" (or shutter speed) won't achieve this, as the camera will still compensate with its aperture setting. I SUSPECT what was meant was to suggest that you use your camera's "exposure lock" function, which will shoot the same exposure level, regardless of surroundings.

Hope some of these help, and I'm not out of line for attempting to "add" to Rodeo's fine work.

twinturbostang

It was pretty clear to me. But yes, you need to manually control both the shutter speed and aperature settings.

I took some pics of a field yesterday in an attempt to create my first pano. It turned out so-so. I used the manual settings on my camera, but I still ended up with some color changes from shot to shot. There is another setting on the camera that adjusts for indoor lighting or outdoor lighting. I had it on "auto" and I suspect that may have been messing with it. I'll have to try again with that set to outdoor lighting. Just something else to keep in mind. BTW, this is a digital camera.

gboulton: How many shots did you take? I took three complete 360's of 12 shots each, for 36 total. I found that I probably could have used another row because I had to copy/paste image data to the top and bottom to get 4096 pixels high.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

twinturbostang,

I went through about 60 shots or so. I did 3 layers, a middle, top, and bottom "row", each with about 20 shots. I just shot the middle row with the camera level, and then tilted it for the top and bottom rows....unless you have some exceptionally tall objects however, that you can't get the top of in the middle row, I've found the top row is pretty much pointless.

This still won't rach 4096 pixels high, but it WILL get enough on the bottom that using a clone brush to fill in the rest of the bottom will work just fine.

twinturbostang

That sounds like what I did, except I used 12 shots per row. The problem though is I had to copy to the top/bottom like you said. But this resulted in definite lines in the sky. The region I copied was lighter blue at the bottom and darker blue at the top, so this pattern repeated. Maybe I need to do some more work with PhotoShop though.

Here's a shot from in AFPD to show what I mean.

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Yeah...it takes a bit of work with the image editor after whatever panorama software you're using creates the pano.

I've found that once you're above the tops of any objects like trees, you can simply use the clone brush and patch in the sky, and this will eliminate this problem.

rc-rodeo

Hi,

you were absolutely right: I tried to describe the manually control of both shutter speed and aperature settings.
I have to correct the workshop soon.

If the aircraft looks somehow strange in the scenery, it may also be a problem of the horizon adjustment.
If it seems to be too small at the end of the runway the horizon of your image is too high.
If it seems too large the horizon is too low.
Or is it vice versa???

Twinturbostang,
if you copy parts of the sky and encouter definite lines then, mirror the copied area vertically before you attach it.

Good success to all your efforts

Karl-Heinz (Rodeo)
www.rodeo.onlinehome.de

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

Interesting thought about the horizon line impacting the depth perception when viewing the aircraft...I'm going to have to give that a try. Thanks, rodeo!

gboulton

My Feedback: (15)

WOW...

Just a small change to the horizon line makes a noticable difference...going to have to play around with it a bit to get it just right, but it DEFINITELY makes a difference.

BTW, for what it's worth, you were right, rodeo...

Plane too small at end of runway = horizon set too high. Plane too big at end of runway = horizon set too low.

Oh, one other thing, rodeo...you mention in the workshop that one should e-mail ipacs for the converter program for AFPD. Can you tell me how long I should expect to wait? I e-mailed a day ago, and have not received any sort of confirmation, or even acknowledgement they've received the email.

And, while we're on the subject, will they mail the software to me, or send it via e-mail or FTP?

Thanks again,

k0brd

For what it is worth, I have taken a few panorama scenes for AFPD and here is how I set the camera up. I use a Rebel XT and all settings on manual. I try to take the pictures with the sun at its highest point in the sky, but sometime it is not possible to do so.
WB sunlight
ISO 100
Lens 24mm with a hood "helps with the sun"
Aperture 11 for a good depth of field.
Focus manual
Shutter (meter to the brightest direction then the darkest direction and set it 1 stop below the center of the difference), more detail in the darker pictures. Don't change this for any of the photos as it will make the photo stitch be better in the final panorama. You can lighten it up in photoshow to something that you like.

I have a panorama head for the tripod and I take all pictures in portrait mode "camera on edge"
1 shot every 20 degrees which amounts to 18 pictures for the complete 360 degrees, then up 40 degrees and 18 more and then down 40 degrees from level and 18 more. You wind up with 54 photos and it still will not be enough for the 4096 pixels after you resize it to 8192 wide. Just clone some sky and ground.

Make sure the horizon is in the center of the panorama when you are done as that is important for the plane to look the right size.

Hope this info helps someone.
Bill

rc-rodeo

In the AFPD-scenery you will notice, that you hardly can see to topmost part of the image as well as the bottom area of it.
So just copy areas to fill in these parts.
And always think about the vertical mirror to avoid these horizontal lines.

Regarding the converter program from Meta to OBJ file format:
Please send an email to [email protected], include your name and address and you will get a free, personalized version.

Actually it may take a day or a week, depending whether the guys are busy at an exhibition or some other work.

Regards
Karl-Heinz (Rodeo)
www.rodeo.onlinehome.de

Bucko

My Feedback: (17)

Looks like you guys are making some good progress in generating your own panorama images for use in the RC sims.

There is a good thread on this topic at RC Groups which you might find informative... don't be put off by the reference to Reflex XTR in the thread title, the panorama photographic process is the same regardless of the target sim..
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=373322

Also, I have run across two additional forums specifically devoted to panorama photography in the more general sense. These forums offer very good information about the entire panorama photography process including photographic techniques for obtaining the images, equipment needs, stitching considerations and software, etc.

Of course you may also post questions re the photographic aspect of this process at these sites and receive informed answers from photographers with extensive experience in panorama photography.
Max Lyons Forums... http://www.tawbaware.com/forum2/index.php
Panoguide Forums... http://www.panoguide.com/forums/qna/

Hope you find this useful and please remember to provide links to downloads of your RC sceneries as you complete them!

Charlie