Albatross1

Hi,

I've been trying to setup some custom panos for the FS One sim and I've managed some progress on non-stock panos that I like but now I have run into a couple of catches. I'm hoping that somebody here has either encountered the same or that Michael may be cruising by and able to offer some advice for the following:

I searched and downloaded 'equirectangular panos' from Flickr.com, with big enough resolution to suit the tiling described in the inertiasoft FAQ. The images worked great and saved me the trouble of taking pics and stitching them together. Basically, I'm trying to set up a few panos to use with sailplanes to simulate interesting slopes in the mountains or near water but I guess they don't really conform to the Panoexample that Inertiasoft has kindly generated ... because that panoexample assumes a perfectly flat flying field and surroundings (works great for flying off of beaches though). I've also made a couple that I plan to use to learn helis later. For the moment, my issues basically boil down to two hurdles and one question:

1. The take off location I'm using is generally higher than the 'bottom' of the field or the landing zone. For example, in one, I have a hillside road that parallels the ocean (see attached if it worked). I can launch from the road fine (powered or sailplane),and fly nicely above the horizontal plane where the takeoff occurs but if I dip below the 'glass floor' (that represents an ideally flat flying field in the panoexample), the plane shatters asit would if hitting the ground. To overcome this, I thought I would smartly copy the .dom file and.col file from the Westville Miners pano but it turns out that a collision file isn't in the directory for that one. Any suggestions on what file I should copy or how I could correctly overcome this issue?

2. Also, how is the sizing of the aircraft controlled as they travel into the near- or far-distance of the pano? Even in the Westville Miner's pano, if you fly behind the launch position I have noticed that the size of the plane shrinks quickly to a pin point such that the plane is even smaller than a blade of grass in the pano. The same effect occurs in some of the samples that I have set up. Even though the plane looks like a good size at take off, it very quickly shrinks as you are flying away and I would say it shrinks more quickly (i.e. out of proportion with surroundings) than the surroundings. I've been wondering if one of the factors in one of the files is a shrink rate control?

3. Lastly, not a problem because I'm not there yet but, is a map available showing where thermals are located when using a pano with thermals?

I hope the Inertiasoft guys and Michael are still monitoring this site?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave

sctholson

Dave,
I don't know if I'm going to completely help you or confuse you but I have a few thoughts.
1. in the Westville Minor's Summit field, when I fly this, I can fly below the elevation I take off at. However if I turn off "use ground elevation" in the options>physics tab (see image below) I hit the imaginary ground at the same elevation as I take off. Could this be your issue?
If not I have another idea.
Scott

Albatross1

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the reply. I'll try it out and see what happens.

You're helping a lot of people these days.

Cheers,
Dave

Albatross1

Hi Scott,

I finally got around to trying this one out but it didn't work. I'm going to try to finda way to get a hold of the program writers to see if they can give me the scoop on what to do.

Dave

sctholson

Hi Dave,
I figured that would have been too easy. I'll post in about an hour with another solution that I'm confident will allow you to fly below the ground level, the only thing is I'm not sure of if the alignment will work. But no matter it'll get you started.
Scott

sctholson

Hi Dave,
On my machine, FSOne runs the Westville Minor's site fine. Which means to me the aircraft flys below the take off elevation. (Use ground elevation has to be turned on in the options)

I was playing around with tranferring the various support files (ele, fld, ter), but none of this worked, but... I had a last minute idea that proved effective.

This idea presumes that you created the image files exactly as suggested in the FAQ and if you did this, Great. If you didn't than this presents a complication.

What I did was take the image folders from one site and replaced it into the Westville Minor's site. When I did this I was able to fly below the take off elevation. So my suggestion is to copy the westville minor's site and test this out for yourself. Go to C drive >Programs>FSOne>Fields>Pano and copy Pano2001 (that's the westiville site) Paste the copy onto the desktop for safekeeping. Open up the new Pano2001 and delete the image folders and paste your new folders where those files were. Go fly and let me know what happens.

I've got my fingers crossed for you.

Albatross1

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the idea. I already kindof tried the same thing but in the opposite direction (copied all of the ter,fldand dom files from pano2001 to my new pano directory). it sort of worked but alignment was a bit finicky because I couldn't figure out which direction was downhill. Anyways, I'll try it your way and see if it is the same.

I'm still going to try to call/email inertiasoft.

I'll let you know what happens,
Thanks
Dave

sctholson

For what it's worth, I think we can modify the pilot position and plane take off position, but that's another post.

Albatross1

Hey Scott,

OK, I think I've tried changing everything in the field file without success but I found a couple of clues in threads related to other sims. I don't think FSOne handles panos radically differently than others and one comment made by person called 'flyx' on RCG indicated that slope panos could be handled by adjusting the takeoff height of the plane to being higher than the zero elevation. Then that leaves the 'bottom' of the pano to be the zero elevation.

The only problem is that I tried this with the plane position settings in the fld file but it didn't make a difference for me regardless of whether the 'use ground elevation' is on or off in the physics setting.

So I suppose I'm ready for your modifyingpilot and takeoff positions suggestion.

Here by the way is the post I left elsewhere about the pano creation stuff. Some good links there.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=991479

Thanks for any ideas,
Dave

Albatross1

By the way, to use some of the pre-existing panos from Flickr ... it works well to take an equirectangular pano that has resolution of say 4000 x 2000 or 6000 x 3000; then scaling to the size that you want; sharpening using unsharp mask (set at cubic interpolation in Gimp 2); maybe doctoring the contrast/lightness/saturation; and then cutting it into tiles.

There's some great images there and perfect for sloping or helis too.

cheers,
Dave

Steven S

You may need to build a 3D mesh of your scene using something like Blender or Truespace (both freeware). This won't be easy if you're using someone else's pano of an unfamiliar location. If they mention the location, maybe you could use Google earth to get an aerial shot of the site to help estimate the distances between things. Elevations will be total guesswork unless you can find some topo maps of the site (does Google earth have topo data?)

This part of the FS One FAQ tells how to add collision data from a 3D mesh...
http://www.inertiasoft.com/fsonefaq/...html#Q1053-FS1

Good luck and let me know how it goes. I got FS One earlier this year and once it warms up a little I plan to start making my own panos.


Steve S.