jr_walker

Hi Cezary, I believe the suggestion is to use the "invisible" road object underneath your runway objects. Old Bear posted that in some cases he used two layers of invisible road under his runways.

A few more steps forward, not quite as far as I expected. > Took some time to make a simple, but long bridge (and trying to get AI to like it…they don’t like it yet) > Spent a few days putting together a gas stop > Spent a few days getting an airport in-place, presently very sparse (AI friendly though) > Spent a few days updating the sat_lco > Spent a few days trying to find a tool to expedite making roads; two methods helped make the road smooth length-wise, but none would etch the road (i.e. make it flat from side-to-side), so back to 25m at a time by hand > Many days placing road Next steps: continue with roads and complete low elevation vegetation masks. A couple of pics of the additions…absolutely WIP. http://s387.photobucket.com/user/jus2sayhey/library/Haadur Walker

All these puppies...rehtus777 could've been my much younger brother...Pong was my first too. Couldn't run flight simulators on my TRS-80 rig ... but spent a lot of time with "Temple of Apshi". Talk about awesome graphics! Signed. :D

Thanks for your awesome efforts!

Congrats on your progress. Enjoyed your site as well. Continued success!

Thanks All. @ChrisB Yes, I hope the map performs well; it’s largely desert so it lends itself to sparse coverage. Note that I’m not making arbitrary decisions about the coverage (I don’t have that kind of imagination). The terrain is modeled on the Mojave Desert. I'm sure I don’t know the proper names, but the basic vegetation is sparse dry grass, moderate amounts of creosote bushes, and significant amounts of something we call “rabbit brushâ€. Near water sources there are things like scrub oak, cotton wood trees and tule reeds. In the higher elevations there actually forests of trees called pinion pines. Rocks are prevalent in the area and are three basic types that I reference as lava, granite and sedimentary (no offense to the geologists). I use basic clutter for dry grass and rabbit brush; that is what you see most in the screenies. For everything else I am using a technique I think GIS folks call “remote sensingâ€, that is I look at the sat map and determine if the splotch I’m looking at is a rock or some type of vegetation, then I determine what model to use and how to size it. For creosotes and pinion pines I am creating a mask in Photoshop by selecting color ranges on the sat map, I process that though Shezan74’s world tools 1.8, I further process those results through some code I wrote, and finally process that using Mikero’s tools to get the objects into the terrain – I will only run that process at the end of the terrain development due to the large number of resulting objects. For everything else, I am placing the objects by hand (I match to the shape and size of the satellite splotch the best I can) which is very time consuming but nicely punctuates the satellite imagery. Turns out that while there are no BIS vegetation models specific to the area, by reducing the size and height of some existing models, I’ve gotten some very acceptable results (at some point I may post RL reference photos vs. in-game). Per the request of some, I haven’t spent much time detailing the terrain but am trying to get a significant portion of the main roads completed (maybe not all), and some auxiliary roads completed (unfortunately, I was not having good success with RoadPainter/2, so I am doing the roads by hand as well). Then I will get a flushed out airport in-place, at which point I’ll likely provide the version to anyone who wants to provide feedback. With ARMA III, apparently terrain size is no longer an issue, nonetheless I am knee deep into this project and intend to continue with it. I don’t know why I can’t seem to write a short post… Cheers, Walker

@islesfan186 At least one airbase; I'll probably solicit suggestions for what permanent structures/areas folks would like see. Quick update: have about 30km of about 300km of main roads put down... looks like there could be maybe 500km of non-main roads. Got a little bored with roads so I put in a few more rocks; I'll be very happy when this thing is completely rocked and roaded (:p). Updated WIP Pics: http://s387.photobucket.com/user/jus2sayhey/library/Haadur

Hello IPARA, Visitor likes the sat and mask to both be RGB-8 format. Also the size of the sat + the size of the mask must total less than 2GB.

Hello Frank, I am not sure I understand your question. Are you saying you are working with a 1024 height map and your island is 12288 meters x 12288 meters? Please tell me what is the size of your island in meters and also tell me the size of your sat_lco in pixels. Thanks, Walker

@james2462 From http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-performance-photoshop-cs4-cs5.html "Photoshop supports a maximum file size of 300,000 x 300,000 pixels, except for PDF files, which are limited to 30,000 x 30,000 pixels and 200 x 200 inches." So 90K by 90K should not be a problem ... but I hope you have monster machine! :) Are you going to apply the technique to F.A.T.A (awesome and inspirational island, BTW)? I'd really like to see someone else give this a shot. @Bushlurker, thanks for the Kudos and detailed discussion regarding the "4096 bug". I had never experienced the bug until I tried automating placement of vegetation (not long after I read the information your provided - it felt a bit of the Jynx :P ) ... still need to smooth that process, just a matter of time. Walker

Hello, Thanks for the comments. @Fabio_Chaves, yes, I do intend to release a WIP version and then update; it would seem a waste to have put so much time into the project and not release it because it was not “finished†to my expectations, (which by a rough calculation could take decades, lol). For the initial WIP release, my intent is to get the base vegetation (a mix of “clutter†and millions of bushes, etc.) in place and a few roads (thanks to suggestions from tpw and ChrisB). To that end, I’ve completed the terrain/clutter mask. Using World Tools - by shezan74, Mikero’s Tools and some tools I’ve written myself, I have a semi-automated process for the placement of the non-clutter vegetation. Unfortunately, during my early efforts with the process, I didn’t realize that I needed more object position precision than was produced by one of the tools; as a result many of my non-vegetation models need to be manually re-positioned (I do keep two archives of the pew file but those were overwritten before I noticed the displacement issue). I believe I have a solution that will prevent the issue in the future. Combining the displacement issue with the 4096 object bug (described here [thanks Bushlurker]: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?151405-40K-sat_lco-SOLVED&p=2361820&viewfull=1#post2361820) that I also encountered for the first time as a result, I decided to take a bit of a break from the project. The initial WIP release will have base ground textures based on simplified land-class, base vegetation based on simplified (and optimized) “remote-sensingâ€, a few rocks (note that rocks would generally be considered pivotal to the geography in this terrain), a few roads, a few structures and maybe an airport. The sat_map/terrain elevations will not be rectified (so there will be the occasional creek bed running along the side of a hill, for example). All-in-all, nothing I’m proud to release. On the other hand, I do have fun flying around the place and have had fun with skirmishes in the editor, so maybe others will too. I expect to resume work on the project in early July and suspect a WIP release could be ready by early September.

Hi El_MUERkO, The engine only supports one mid-range texture, so the texture is applied to everything: mountains, beaches, underwater, etc. You must decide if the improvement to the areas the mid-range is designed to improve off-sets the impact to the other areas (like beaches).

Thanks for the feedback all! ... and thanks for the tip gabravo2005, I can do that. @Leaulux, I'm thinking that maybe only 25% of the terrain needs to be highly detailed, the rest is really just desert. I'll keep plugging away... Walker

Oops thanks Harzach...fixed.

Not so much two versions of the project, but two versions of the SAT and MASK lco but then essentially did merge them.