Editing photoscenery??

I have never tried to edit photoscenery before and was surprised yesterday to find that my usual editing techniques (using DXTBmp and Photoshop) do not work...

 

What I wanted to do was remove some flat, 2D aircraft shapes from an airport, since I use the airport for take-off and departure and from the ground these look silly of course. I found the bitmaps with the dark aircraft shadows and simply edited those out with PS. But the plane shapes are still there in FS9. In fact even when I remove the bmp files completely, the dark shapes are still there. Also after quitting and restarting FS9 - even the PC.

 

Is there a 'trick' to this? Some threads I have read imply it's not possible to do this, but why would that be?

 

Thanks!

even when I remove the bmp files completely, the dark shapes are still there.

 

They're not the ones you found in the Photoscenery then, they must be landclass textures for the airport itself or the surrounding area.

You're likely going to need to edit the airplanes out of 5 different .bmps, summer, fall, winter, hard winter, and spring (also night for that matter) so chances are you edited fall for example and you're trying to see the result with your sim date set to summer?

They're not the ones you found in the Photoscenery then, they must be landclass textures for the airport itself or the surrounding area.

They are the right bitmaps - if I remove them all from the texture folder, the whole airport is now white.

 

The texture folder has, firstly, a series of files starting 003021021103211Su.bmp. There are only ***Su.bmp files. Then hundreds of files starting S1$2927--7569_0_0.bmp. I have converted the whole lot to gif files and quickly scanned through every one. The aircraft shadows are only in a few of those latter files, which I edited. To no effect. If I remove that file from the texture folder, the image is still in the sim (whether I restart FS9 or not). If I remove enough of them, a white space appears.. it's all very odd to me!

 

The scenery in question by the way is part of Gottfried Razek's nice USA photoscenery from the library here - KDMA in this case. Not usually into photoscenery, but with quite a large coverage area and the airport included, it looks pretty good (apart from those flattened aircraft!) and the boundaries are not too much of a 'shock' as you leave the photoscenery area (the reason I usually delete photoscenery when it comes with airports).

That must be one of those "textured polygon" type photoreals where he gets high res into FS9. I've never tried one or had any experience at all with them but the 003021021103211Su.bmp sounds like part of a typical FS9 photoreal so my guess is that's part of a larger coverage area and Tucson might be covered locally by the higher resolution textured polygon type photoreal laying overtop. Maybe that's what the S1$**.bmps are for? Did you convert those all to .gifs and check them for aircraft shadows too?

FWIW (probably preaching to the choir) ***Su.bmp are summer textures. Have you tried changing the date in FS so it loads a different season? If you disable that scenery do things revert to normal? (Are alpha channels used in scenery?)

 

One trick I've used to ascertain I was working on the correct file/area is to paint a small spot in a standout color - bright pink or lime green - (back up the original of course) then return to the game/project and look for that spot.

The file in question is not one of the ****Su.bmp files. but changing the season doesn't change anything.

 

I have filled in the entire bitmap with red colour and what happens is that, when my aircraft hovers over or is stationary on the area covered, the ground shows as quite unaltered, with the flat a/c shadows still there. However, as I slew away, at say 1000', suddenly the area there turns red. If I slew back, the red disappears and the normal ground texture is there.

 

As I say, I can only imagine that the texture is somehow held in the bgl file, as there is currently no bitmap image in the texture folder which shows the 'normal' ground, with the a/c shadows. Why is what is depicted dependent upon where the a/c is positioned? Some 'guru' must know about this! :)

 

I'll post some screenshots below..

These show my bmp files, before and after my edit, and in FS9, with an a/c close to the spot and then a little further away, after I coloured the edited (no a/c shadows) bmp red..

 

 

 

 

This suggests that your images contain multiple mip maps and you are only editing one of them?

It appears there are different LODs to this photoreal, for example here are S1$2928--7570_2_6.bmp and S1$2928--7570_2_7.bmp:

 

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/S1$2928--7570_2_6.jpg

 

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/S1$2928--7570_2_7.jpg

 

 

 

...then there's a lesser resolution version, S4$2928--7570_0_1.bmp that encompasses those two above and more:

 

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/S4$2928--7570_0_1.jpg

Ah yes, probably so - I think I identified them all (the other screenshots are familiar to me) but I have not edited every one yet, it's true. I'll do that at some stage soon and post back. Many thanks.

Well, I was being stupid! I somehow thought that the other bmps were of other parts of the airport, but no, there are indeed multiple bitmaps of the same area. Now I have edited out the 'squashed' aircraft in all of them, they have disappeared from FS9 and I can use the airport without cringing as I taxi through those areas! Thanks.

Yeah I agree the squashed aircraft were a little obnoxious. I can see why you wanted to get rid of them, lol. Glad you got it sorted! :)

A bit late, I know. I was thinking, shouldn't there be parked static aircraft there? Then the shadows have a function.

Maybe have a look in the readme if object libraries (with planes in them) are required.

You can also find missing objects by viewing an airport in ADE.

Hi. No they aren't just shadows, they are images of the aircraft plus their shadows (as you can probably see in the first screenshot) which are rendered in 'glorious' 2D with the photoscenery. But thanks! :)

This is why so much photoscenery looks great from 10k+ ft but not from 3k ft; at high altitudes the photo images have a nice 3D effect, but coming in "low and slow" it's obvious you're flying over a photograph.

 

Glad you got it sorted (I wasn't aware scenery used mipmapped images).

This is why so much photoscenery looks great from 10k+ ft but not from 3k ft; at high altitudes the photo images have a nice 3D effect, but coming in "low and slow" it's obvious you're flying over a photograph.

 

Glad you got it sorted (I wasn't aware scenery used mipmapped images).

 

Yes, it's only because I wanted to use this airport for landing that I bothered to edit the files. It actually works well now...

 

I think 'mipmap' was a mistake. It was supposed to be 'bitmap'! Any bitmaps can be mipped or unmipped of course (I tend to have to mip a lot of even payware texture folders to avoid awful shimmering. I don't know why developers distribute their software unmipped).