How to create photoreal scenery for FSX

terrain sdk. It is in your sdk in environment sdk then you see terrain sdk . open that up.

 

But why do you need it other than to point one of your programs to it? You can make a copy of it if you need just it now and then (which I have done). I have a copy of it in a folder on desktop if I need to mess with something outside of SBX or whatever. Bob

I thought I needed it because I was reading the tutorial on the first page that told me to copy it into my folder. So it is not needed?

Hi Folks,

 

Glad to see this thread is still alive. I am still hammering away at making my own scenery, after several years now. I am not going to go back and read this thread to see what has transpired since my last visit, but I wanted to share something I consider to be a real blessing when working with SBuilderX313 and making a very large hydro-poly along a shoreline. (Most of my work centers on the Great Lakes area of the US).

 

In the midst of all that left-clicking for the little points which sometimes add up into the thousands to define the elevation edge of a complex shoreline, one false slip of the right-click button will close the hydro-poly and you'll be stuck having to start all over again. I have tried concatenating and/or overlapping multiple hydro-polys when this happens and always had bad results in the end. So I found myself really wishing I had a way to disable the right mouse button temporarily. Google found me a few options, and the one I am using is a nifty little freeware utility called Mouse Disabler.

 

It is a small window that opens with several check-boxes to disable different mouse functions, such as right-click, scroll wheel, etc. But it also has a check-box for the left-click function. So turning that on plunges you into the interesting world of Windows OS with no mouse. Not recommended for the impatient. :)

 

Once checked, the desired function immediately turns off. I can left click away following a coastline and press the right click button repeatedly with no effect, until such time as I go back to the Mouse Disabler window and left-click the checkbox to turn that disabled function back on. Then I can right-click to close the poly.

 

I hope this discovery brings the same relief I have found from many encounters with this annoyance to others who are using SBuilderX313. Enjoy!

I thought I needed it because I was reading the tutorial on the first page that told me to copy it into my folder. So it is not needed?

 

Looks like some of you have been discussing alternate methods of doing this scenery creation process, but resample.exe is a compiler used in the original process to compile the x.bmp, x watermask.bmp and x blendmask.bmp into the BGL file you will load into FSX to use your created scenery.

 

Hope that helps. :)

Most of the time you won't need it per se. It is used in SbuilderX and some other applications. Installing

SBX the install finds it. I made a copy into a folder I made on desktop if I want to do a resample outside of SBX... which once in a while I do. I'd copy my bmp, my blend mask, the txt, another perrtinant files as well as the inf file. to that ouside folder. Then after I made my changes I would drag the inf file over on top of resample.exe and it would compile all these guys into a photoreal bgl. rename it as I wish and put it in my active scenery folder. and go see what damage i did! ;)

look up jyarddog or bob Lacy on Skype. We have a few guys who help each other out a lot. Kind of like a family. We don't want anyone to feel intimidated. We are all idiot designers having a ton of fun. bob

never heard of that. interesting. I have now and then accidently right clicked and blown the whole thing out of the water. hahahah! Anyway- Skype me some time- goes for all of ya. Bob

Im a photoshop guru so the imaging aspect isnt an issue for me...but all the BGL, INI, INF files is quite intimidating.

Bret- My procedure is done in SBX. This seems the easiest. After getting the satelite image - add map from background, I go to tools\work in SBX (I have a shortcut to it) and take my new bmp to my paint program which in my case is PSP X4. Here I do my blend mask. save as 'same file name' but add _B and save as a tiff file.

 

Back in SBX I then select 'all maps' and compile. If it's a big file sit back and smoke a rope til it's done. ;) go back to work folder in SBX and you see phot01.bgl. change this to any file name you want and put it in your active scenery. all done. BTW guys messed up on skype name- Robert Lacy or jyarddog either should find me.

My question for Brett is did you install the SDK? It doesn't install by default when you install FSX. You stated you're running Acceleration so there are actually 3 SDKs you'll need to install. Here's the workflow:

 

From disk #1 install the RTM SDK first. Browse to the SDK folder and double click setup.exe. I highly recommend not installing into the default Program Files (x86) folder because UAC will give you problems, simply backspace "Program Files (x86)\" out of the install path and it will end up installed in "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK" which is fine.

 

If you find you can't browse the disk (it's common that you can't) Press Windows key+R and "Run" the installer from there with:

 

[drive letter]:\SDK\setup.exe

 

 

After that installs put the Accel disk in the drive, you need to install 2 from this disk, first install the SP1a SDK:

 

[drive letter]:\SDK\SP1a\fsx_sdk_sp1a.exe

 

 

Next install the main Accel SDK:

 

[drive letter]:\SDK\sdk.msi

 

You will be warned each time that the installer will need to remove previous versions of the SDK which is fine, let it do it's thing. When you finish up installing the last SDK you should find resample.exe in the Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\Terrain SDK folder.

 

If you've already run SBuilder and didn't have the SDK installed it's likely SBX won't work because it couldn't copy these SDK tools into its Tools directory. You can trigger SBX to re-copy the files after the SDK installation by deleting SBuilder.ini and running the program again.

 

Jim

Brett- good instructions. My sdk is in (x86) and no problems but follow his just in case.

 

the MSI will give wraning about having to remove some o fwhat you instlled to install the msi on. say yes.

 

When all is done you're good to go. BUT-

 

in the game on the menu bar on top you should see 'tools'. click to open. there should be 3 choices. If not there is something else to do which Jim or I can help with.

 

it has to do with the dll.xml deeper in your computer. It is safest to do this together in Skype rather than here. In Skype we can share screens and direct you further.

 

BTw- in your SDK when yo opoen you should see the html helpfile showing up now as a yellow question mark... good indication you did the install correctly. Bob

I have installed all three SDKs. I kind of like your procedure JYD..Does it produce just as good results for photoscenery?

of course. fast, easy. Tried other ways, but the instructions were terrible. I've been teaching for 20 yrs. retired now. took months to figure out what everyone was saying. They would assume the one reading their instructions knew this term or that term. Gloss over steps.

After finally figuring things out (about 2 months) I wrote up instructions and posted in SBX forum. The fellow who wrote the SBX program responded and said "that is exactly right."

I taught more than 9 other felows how do photoreal and did it in about 20 minutes.... each guy. These were the basics in getting started. Each now can do fine photoreal plus night photo, color changes, seasonal changes, water masks.

I'm tellin' ya .... connect on Skype with us. Just a bunch of crazies who love doing design work.

In SBX trying Google sat or VE sat... choose whichever looks better for that day.

I'll walk you through it. You'll love it. I found a fine tutorial on YouTube, but it's a bit long and in two parts and a bit more involved here and there but good nevertheless.

But give my way a shot. I go step by step. Make sure you have a good paint program. Bob

hello all

i hop you can help me!!!!!!

im very confused and sad.

from yesterday to today i cant create photo scenery NIGHT.after creating that the FSX shows my night photoscenery like this:

 

http://s1.xum.ir/2014/12/05/2014-12-5_0-30-11-835.jpg

 

older after creating photoscenery NIGHT fsx show that street light with good glowing but now fsx show day photoreal scenery more than NIGHT photoscenery.when i create BGL without day photoreal every thing is good but when i add day to photoreal all things are going bad.so what should i do? can any one help me?????

thnx

Alirahimi- Looking at your picture i see a staight line between default and your work. Have you made a blend mask yet? If you do not know what a blend mask is, we need to get together and work on this.

Basically your night photo is good. What we need to do is take your bmp to your paint program (you probably did this to get your night picture) Then you need to make two layers, one very dark like you have and one yellowish color. Then with eraser tool( with a circle shaped brush) you click here and there to get rid of the dark, leaving the yellow. (Hardness is down to about 48 or so. Opacity the same (can experiment). This is the basics.

Question.... around your airport is there THAT much housing and buildings? If not... if there is less orfarm land etc you can change that by adding a LC file all around your photoreal. This will not effect your photoeal! :)

Bob Lacy on Skype- contact me. I am in Washington, State, USA. i will help you step by step. Bob

dear jyd

thanks for your answer.

first of all i dark my day photoreal with LEVEL after that i create new layer and design night texture after that i merge all layers and save as BMP. (please say to me did i do anytjin wrong at this step? if yes please tell me what should i do)

dear jyd please learn to me what should i do step by step.

thanks for your attention.

In Skype look for Robert Lacy or try my e-mail- jyarddog@potc.net

ali- I saw your

skype and accepted. I use PSP and SBX Are you using SbuilderX? Easiest way to go about all this. When naming your night texture, yes a bmp but SAME file name and the _N. notice the _, and also notice it is N.... not _LM.

 

On Skype we will work on this. I've shoen 9 guys how.... each in about 20 minutes.

Not bragging, just proper teaching. There are a few good tutorials out there also... a bit lengthy, but good. We will do this! Bob

When I try dragging my Nauru.INF to resample.exe, the resample does not compilde the INF to BGL... NEED HELP, how can i fix this?

First, what program are you using? Next- did you type or arrange the inf yourself by typing in the various parameters? One typing mistake is all it takes.

 

Using SBX is so much easier and faster. You should post the inf here for us to see.

On Skype I could show you in less than 10 minutes how to do this.... 20 minutes or so for you to do it afterwards... me watching. Bob

Trying to get you to Skype me so we can talk. What does your inf contain? Is it the bmp, tiff, and maybe the night version? If the night verison is in there it CANNOT be _LM, should be _N. Did you do anything with the file names other than the _B attachments? Bob

The links from the OP for SBuilderX and ADE no longer work - does anyone have the new links? or where can i download these from?

I think this is the full install for SBuilderX v3.14:

 

https://onedrive.live.com/download?resid=F3950C5BBD2BCFA1%21805

 

I heard the PTSim site is down, it's happened before so I'm sure it'll be back soon.

 

 

You can google ADE and find a link of visit fsdeveloper.com and look in the ADE forum.

Cool - why do some of my maps not download with google?

Because you need to update the google_server.dll located in the SBuilderX314\Tiles folder. Replace it with v165 (the latest is always available in the last post of this thread):

 

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/new-googleserver-dll.19913/page-2#post-699812

I have a 64Bit machine so copied the SBuilderX313_x86 folder DLL into my SBuilder folder. I still have an error with white spaces on google maps.