Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery for EAA Oshkosh
Hi Curt! Curtis Olson wrote: Part of the data is based on a new method of automatic landcover classification from Landsat satellite imagery. The method is not new in that it is well-known in other areas. The method is new in the sense, that it was not yet applied to FlightGear scenery generation. Hi Ralf, this sounds very exciting. Is it something you are running locally, or part of a larger external project somewhere? Can this process locate lakes and rivers with any level of accuracy? What image resolution is available. At some point it would be fun to experiment with drawing the textures directly over the terrain ... as an option for people that like blurry airports and taxiways that disappear into mush when you get close to them. :-) This is currently a local project. I am manually fetching the respective Landsat tiles (ETM+, 8 channels) and do manual training by marking some representative areas of different types. The goal is - as I said - to integrate this with OSGeo, who are also interested in the resulting data, and to use such data for the whole world to replace the polygonal features of VMAP0. There is a European project called CORINE, and they were obviously able to distinguish over 40 different classes of landuse from Landsat imagery by automatic classification. See http://terrestrial.eionet.europa.eu/CLC2000 for more information. The actual accuracy is still an open question, as we are currently focusing more on recognition value for navigation and performance. The latter part requires sometimes heavy simplification of the vectorised classification results in order to limit the number of triangles per tile. IIRC the maximum triangle count for the Oshkosh scenery is somewhere around 18.000 for some single tile (the others are around 10.000, but most are lower). Accuracy is obviously also dependent on the resolution of the imagery, which is 57m/pixel (one of the infrared bands, IIRC) via 28.5m/pixel (most bands, inclunding the visible light ones) to 14.5m/pixel (the panchromatic band). The panchromatic band can be used to enhance the visible light bands to double the resolution, but in the area of airports I don't think the result would be satisfying. This also means that some smaller regions such as tiny lakes or thin rivers may not be recognised or present in the final dataset, either because their shores blend too much with the surrounding terrain in the imagery or because they are removed on simplification (or both). Some of this may be an issue of more sophisticated training, but we are also investigating into how we could improve the simplification, e.g. by introducing weights so that a border between evergreen and deciduous forest could be simplified stronger than e.g. a border between lake and non-lake areas. We presented an experiment in the Berlin area with this approach on LinuxTag and I was told (as I wasn't able to go there myself) that we got very positive feedback. The Berlin scenery can be found here: http://www.custom-scenery.org/Berlin-Scenery.329.0.html What we could also improve on the scenery in a much more simple step would be to improve the textures. The current textures are much too contrast-poor. At least that's my impression when I compare what I see from above and what I see in FlightGear. Unfortunately, I'm not good at knowing in advance what will look good, I just see when it doesn't look good. The current texture set is a huge improvement over what we had before, which was a huge improvement over what we had before that, etc. etc. but yes, there is still plenty of room for additional improvements in the textures. Also, we really need to figure out a mechanism to blend the transition between textures so we don't have the hard edges we have now. I very much favour the use of generic textures over the draping of satellite or aerial imagery, as generic textures can still provide almost arbitrary detail without using much space on disk and in RAM. When flying and navigating the important part is that a road, a forest or a city border is in approximately the right position. It is not important whether a specific tree is at the actual position it is in in reality. Furthermore, satellite or aerial imagery is only available freely for some regions of the world (parts of the U.S., for example) or only in low resolution or both. Still, by using generic textures and automatic classification, we can make much better use e.g. of the freely available Landsat imagery, even though the original data is only of a low resolution. Cheers, Ralf - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Custom Scenery for EAA Oshkosh
Ralf Gerlich wrote: This is currently a local project. I am manually fetching the respective Landsat tiles (ETM+, 8 channels) and do manual training by marking some representative areas of different types. The goal is - as I said - to integrate this with OSGeo, who are also interested in the resulting data, and to use such data for the whole world to replace the polygonal features of VMAP0. The thread is mainly about land use classification, but what about roads and rivers ? vmap0 is really inacurate and it's a pain to fly vfr (following road). Not only a lot of features are missing but most of those visible are off by a great distance. And then it's also difficult to add landmarks to the scenary because there is no accurate reference point to help positioning objects. Will we use osm in the future ? And since osm is far from being exhaustif how to make a choice of wich one between osm and vmap to use to generate a tile ? HJ. - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Joystick conf help
Hmm, I'm toying with an idea to use one of these converters to make a throttle quadrant... Either of you using them under Linux? Ron If a gameport to usb-converter is meant with this, I am using the Rockfire converter with my pedals together with an usb-joystick/throttle. No problem with OpenSUSE (10.1 - 10.2), works great. Georg EDDW - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] README document
--- Curtis Olson wrote: Be aware that the master copies of all the README.xxx files come from the source tree, not the data tree. They are only replicated in the data tree for convenience. Here's my view. The README.xxx are there to collect tidbits of information not documented elsewhere or that didn't really fit elsewhere or that wasn't really formally written up in an official way. If someone were to update and move all the information from a README.xxx file over to the official manual, then I wouldn't have a problem with that particular README.xxx file going away. I personally would not be in favor of just dumping them all as they exist into a single large file. I like the division and the easy ability to edit/update them. But at some point, if something is deamed important enough to go into the official manual, then that's great, let's do it. Personally, I'd prefer not to put too much developer-level content into The FlightGear Manual (TFM). It's already pretty huge, and is really aimed at newbie users. Hence its original title - The Gettings Started Guide. I think most of README files are more aimed at power users, aircraft developers and coders. I know that the original authors of TFM envisaged a second manual aimed at aircraft developers and coders. It sounds like this would be a good first step towards this. However, there are one or two hurdles I can see:- - The README files are currently very easy for developers to edit and update. I doubt people will be as keen to keep them up to date if they are Latex files, especially if they need to learn a whole new set of escape characters! - We currently have a separate CVS Module for documentation, and developers are even less likely to update a .tex file in another CVS location, which may require a different reviewer/committer. Given that the README files have fairly straightforward layout, one way around this might be to have a script that grabs all the files for the src module, converts them to .tex and then generates a PDF file. Syd - you've already been through this process, do you reckon this could be scripted into something worthwhile, or was it a pretty manual process? -Stuart ___ Yahoo! Mail is the world's favourite email. Don't settle for less, sign up for your free account today http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=44106/*http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/mail/winter07.html - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] README document
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 I'm strongly against using PDF, loading a pdf viewer takes much longer time and it is harder to edit *.pdf than text files. At least I got no program to edit *.pdf Regards AnMaster SydSandy wrote: Hi all , I've been consolidating all the README.xxx files in the Docs folder into a single PDF file, because I prefer to be able to open ONE file and search for what I need , and I like the word search and thumbnail views... I haven't updated or changed any information , at the moment just transfering them into aa single document. This was for my personal use , but thought I'd ask if this is something that could be added to the Docs folder... there appears to be a fair amount of information already in Docs, so it probably isn't neccesary, but I generally don't read them because the organization and layout is sometimes hard to follow or understand . I dont want to read a through a lot of info to get to the section I want , so I decided this little project would force me go through it all... If anyone thinks this should be added , I'll do my best to keep it updated , but would like input from others on what needs updating , what is obsolete , etc... as long as doesn't interfere too much with my aircraft updating ;) . Cheers -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGnnBeWmK6ng/aMNkRCkkxAKCxtmgjd86Y4bh2i66iWIvT+prLHACgnMDa fjKIRcP0NG6/duRR4342eR8= =ybVM -END PGP SIGNATURE- - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] README document
Am Mittwoch 18 Juli 2007 21:56 schrieb AnMaster: I'm strongly against using PDF, loading a pdf viewer takes much longer time and it is harder to edit *.pdf than text files. At least I got no program to edit *.pdf Same here. Automatically creating PDF as an alternative nicer representation is OK. Using it as the raw data format is a no go... Thomas -- PhD Student, Dept. Animal Physiology, HU Berlin Tel +49 30 2093 6173, Fax +49 30 2093 6375 - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] [PATCH] SimGear segfault fix on OSG image load failure
Hans Ulrich Niedermann wrote: The segfault is triggered when OSG connot find a plugin which can load the image, such as because of a wrong or unset OSG_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. In that case, res.getImage() is NULL and dereferencing NULL gives the segfault. BTW... fgfs will still segfault - but at least one gets to see an error message which gives a hint as to what the problem is. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] README document
Thanks for the input guys , sounds like a definite NO to me :) whew ! Stuart , I used Open Office to combined all the files into one then exported it as PDF ... so it definately would be work to keep up to date but it really was just a project to minimize the amount of applications I have running at one time . but I was asked on IRC to do a Blender tutorial for modelling aircraft , maybe I'll direct my efforts there when I get tired of updating , though I'm terrible at teaching :) Cheers Syd - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Recent YASim problems...
Me again . Ive been trying to get Bravo more up to date recently , and decided to check on the CitationX and Citation-II , and neither one will load anymore ... So far it's baffling me , because the Citation-II FDM is almost identical to the Bravo , just lighter and with less powerful engines , and the command line yasim utility reports Drag factor beyond reasonable bounds after 5 or 6 iterations... It could be something simple thats staring me in the face so has anyone else had problems loading either aircraft recently ? Thanks -- SydSandy [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Recent YASim problems...
SydSandy schrieb: Me again . Ive been trying to get Bravo more up to date recently , and decided to check on the CitationX and Citation-II , and neither one will load anymore ... So far it's baffling me , because the Citation-II FDM is almost identical to the Bravo , just lighter and with less powerful engines , and the command line yasim utility reports Drag factor beyond reasonable bounds after 5 or 6 iterations... It could be something simple thats staring me in the face so has anyone else had problems loading either aircraft recently ? Thanks Citation X and II are working fine here (OSG CVS, compilation 4 days old, CVS data from today). Georg EDDW BTW, not your question: Citation II: retracted gear stucks through upper wing - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Recent YASim problems...
On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 02:28:35 +0200 Georg Vollnhals [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: SydSandy schrieb: Me again . Ive been trying to get Bravo more up to date recently , and decided to check on the CitationX and Citation-II , and neither one will load anymore ... So far it's baffling me , because the Citation-II FDM is almost identical to the Bravo , just lighter and with less powerful engines , and the command line yasim utility reports Drag factor beyond reasonable bounds after 5 or 6 iterations... It could be something simple thats staring me in the face so has anyone else had problems loading either aircraft recently ? Thanks Citation X and II are working fine here (OSG CVS, compilation 4 days old, CVS data from today). Georg EDDW BTW, not your question: Citation II: retracted gear stucks through upper wing Thanks Georg , I'll try removing them and re installing ... -- SydSandy [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
