My next terrain project

[+Gepard]

I have finished now the converting the JPG to TGA files for Guernsey island. It is not perfect, but good enough, i think.

The only thing, what me angered are the slight differences between the blue of the sea tiles and the blue of the coastal tiles of the islands. I tried to solve that problem, but i failed.

 

Edited November 10, 2024 by Gepard

[+EricJ]

I mean it's tolerable, I wouldn't let it hinder me from downloading it.

[+daddyairplanes]

if your talking the brown on the coastline i could understand. but i cant tell any difference myself on blue areas

[+Gepard]

The brown water close to the coastline comes from the sat picture. This is intended to be so.

The following screenshot shows the problem, which i mean:

If you look directly under the F-4J(UK) you see a straight line which devided the coast tile with the sea tile. This is clearly visible and i found no way to solve that problem. It's the first time, that i have this problem and i dislike it.

 

[Blade]

2 hours ago, Gepard said:

This is clearly visible and i found no way to solve that problem. It's the first time, that i have this problem and i dislike it.

Hi,

Could you upload a sea tile and a differing shoreline tile so that we could take a look at them?

[+Wrench]

yes, what Blade said!!!

I've never run into that, meself

[+Gepard]

Guernsey 3 Tiles.7z

In the zip file are TGA versions of following tiles

 

[Blade]

I tested your tiles (both in game and in PhotoShop).

The first screenshot shows your original tiles in the game. The demarcation is clearly visible.

The second shot shows the tiles after I edited the edges of the alpha channels. The result is not perfect, but it looks much better.

When resizing, PhotoShop sometimes leaves a ‘frame’ around the edges of the image, this is what might have happened to your tiles (just a guess, I am not sure). What I did to your alpha channels was covering the ‘frame’. I hope this makes sense to you.

Edited November 11, 2024 by Blade

[+Gepard]

18 hours ago, Blade said:

 I hope this makes sense to you.

I will try it. Perhaps i will get a better look.

[+Gepard]

I always thought, that sea tiles must be TGA files only.

But then i played a little bit with Michigan terrain and made the sea tile as JPG.

This is the result:

No difference to TGA files, but with much smaller memory load.

I think coastal tiles and river tiles will need TGA, but for the sea tile itself a JPG could do the job too.

 

[+EricJ]

I mean us at the end user level won't know the difference anyway, as long as it works.

[+Wrench]

so, they still have the alpha channel, right? I didn't know you could do that with a jpg!!!

[+Gepard]

5 hours ago, Wrench said:

so, they still have the alpha channel, right? I didn't know you could do that with a jpg!!!

No, no alpha channel in jpg.

[Texture034]
Filename=USASEA.JPG
HasWater=2   <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< This line is responsible, that the water effect is activated.
HeightMap=USASEA_hm.BMP
HeightMapScale=0.000000
Color=0.109358,0.191711,0.205712
SolidObjectTexture=
AlphaObjectTexture=

[+Menrva]

A bit of clarification to be precise. When there's no transparency in the texture (regardless of the file format) and it gets HasWater other than 0, the water bump map effect is applied fully.

TGAs are required for mixed areas, where the ground requires full transparency, while water areas must not have any transparency at all, or can have slight transparency just to obtain a less pronounced water bump map effect.

If you use a JPG for the sea tile, then you must make sure that all coastline tiles have water areas with absolute zero transparency. If those have a little alpha channel value in their TGA textures, then you get the visible edges Blade showed.

[+Gepard]

Sit rep for my small Michigan fun project.

I made 3 new tiles. It are small towns or big villages (dont know how the Americans call it).

All tiles a made by sat pictures. From altitudes higher 1.000 meters they are looking really good, i think.

Sit rep for Battle of Britain 1960th project.

I'm creating new target areas in southern England, in that way, that i place factory buildings or warehouses at townfiles.

Edited November 20, 2024 by Gepard

[+daddyairplanes]

generally town, or township if its really small

im sure theres a few communities that call themselves villages. but none i've heard of (and ive been in 33 states for more than just passing thru an airport) and they would be the rarity

[+Wrench]

"village" I've heard used in some of the Eastern US states (north eastern) Out here in The West, it "small town"

[+Gepard]

Some guys wanted to know something about Michigan terrain. Which areas are included and how far the project is gone today.

To beginn. There is a small problem with the GOTOPO30 database, which is the basic of terrain making. As more you come to north as more "warped" is the terrain data. The north to south distances are shorter as in reality while the west to east distances are more or less correct. For instance, the Lake Michigan is around 500 km long in north south direction, while the GOTOPO30 gives it a lenght of around 300 km. I have tried to equalize the data to get the correct distances. On the first view the result was promissing, but then i found strange artefacts on the terrain heightmap, like hundrets of 50 meter high hills in the Lake areas and other strange things. Thatswhy i decided to use the data, which i got from Terrain Editor.

The hightfield you see in the right part of the following screenshot. As you surely see is that the dimensions of the Big Lakes are not so, how we know it from the map. But we will have to live with it, so as it is.

The left side of the screenshot shows the tiling of the map at the moment. As you see Lake Michigan is done. The rest is farmland, with one exception, at the left lower part of the Lake you see the first Citytiles, at the place were Chicago will be.

The next step will be to bring Lake Huron, Lake Erie and Lake Superior on the map.

The next 3 screenshot showing the Citytiles and how the looks from different altidues.

 

[+EricJ]

So as I understand, this will be a largeish map to fly in then?

[+daddyairplanes]

2 hours ago, Gepard said:

 at the left lower part of the Lake you see the first Citytiles, at the place were Chicago will be.

will you be including NAS Glenview, Midway Airport and O'Hare International? all airfields in Chicago, O'Hare and Glenview with military presence as well. 

really great if you add Miegs Field. now closed, it was a small field on a peninsula (almost an island though) in Lake Michigan. mostly light civil aviation, it was (barely) capable of landing a 727 though so medium cargo and fighters should be no prob

[+Gepard]

18 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

will you be including NAS Glenview, Midway Airport and O'Hare International? all airfields in Chicago, O'Hare and Glenview with military presence as well. 

 

One step by another.

First i made the basics of the terrain. And this means making the Lakes by hand. The TerrainEditor cant handle this in this terrain, because the lakes have different high levels.

And when the lakes are placed, i will creating forrest tiles and when this tiles are layed out, then i will create transistion tiles. And when this is done, then i will create the target areas, beginning with the airfields.

So the terrain looks at the moment:

You see, that Lake Huron is now on the map. The next lake will be Lake Superior.

 

[+Wrench]

Quote

And this means making the Lakes by hand

Don't I know that one!!! On the MidWest USA map, EVERYTHING had to be done by hand; all the rivers, lakes and such like.

I feel your pain, brother!!!

[+Gepard]

But now we have Mue's powerfull TFD tool. It helps very much.

 

[snowburn]

On 23/11/2024 at 4:45 PM, daddyairplanes said:

really great if you add Miegs Field. now closed, it was a small field on a peninsula (almost an island though) in Lake Michigan. mostly light civil aviation, it was (barely) capable of landing a 727 though so medium cargo and fighters should be no prob

i loved that place, It was the default home airport for the early microsoft flight simulator games (until FS98 i think)

[+Menrva]

16 hours ago, Gepard said:

Mue's powerfull TFD tool

You mean Gerwin's. From Mue we got other important tools, but not TFDtool.

Keep up the great work!