DCS and terrain textures

[snacker]

I love this sim because of it's realistic avionics, damage model, awesome scenery and I get to blow stuff up. A-10 has everything I can hope for. And the terrain mesh is an improvement from previous series. But the textures....

I know they have done a great job and improved the textures and tiles. But in the 2nd decade of the 21st century, shouldn't sims start thinking of using satellite imagery? Why not?

Is it the cost? The system performance? The ammount of man hours needed? Is it impossible today? (so why can we fly tileproxy on FSX)

Or is this merely a modders job.

I was hoping A-10 would showcase all around the dead sea terrain, even go into Iran. But I am fine as it is. The Caucasus scenery is really breathtaking in real life.

But in the future, what are the chances of flying something close to the real thing? (without using tileproxy)

Here are examples of the caucasus, the top is Google earth and the bottom DCS A-10. I even had to increase the contrast of the bottom image to make it look better.

 

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I wish one day we can fly on scenery taken from satellite and modified tiles to trick the eye into thinking it's a seamless scenery. Is this achievable in the short term? Are we getting close to total reality?

Edited October 26, 2010 by snacker

[Boberro]

Tileproxy is really nice! Some textures are amazing.

 

I know in the past there have been tests with real satellite images in FC and it looked IMHO nice.

 

Hope to see better tiles resolution, current aren't too pretty compared to rest of details. Put great A-10 skin or road texture next to terrain tile and it is big hole :(

[pitbldr]

Personally, I've never liked satellite imagery as scenery. I feel like I am flying over a picture (as in FSX). I much prefer scenery that may not be completely realistic, but is believable.

Even if the satellite images were put together seamlessly, you'd still have flattened structures and forests. They'd have to add 3D objects over top of all that to create a realistic environment. It could be done, but wouldn't the work involved end up being more than if they had not used satellite imagery in the first place?

 

Just my thoguhts/opinion. :)

[Agg]

I would say that I have to agree with you, with new gorgeous aircraft models being implemented into DCS (for instance the new Strike Eagle and the Hog itself) Im feeling that the scenery is really starting to lag behind...

[Boberro]

Yes it is huge piece of work especially over cities where you have buildings. But even now currently there are many places where you don't see buildings, just bitmap with it.

Satellite images would be cool on less populated area... mountains, fields, farms ect where you don't have to work on every building :P

[sobek]

I think Nevada uses satellite images, does it not?

[Mule]

Personally, I've never liked satellite imagery as scenery. I feel like I am flying over a picture (as in FSX). I much prefer scenery that may not be completely realistic, but is believable.

Even if the satellite images were put together seamlessly, you'd still have flattened structures and forests. They'd have to add 3D objects over top of all that to create a realistic environment. It could be done, but wouldn't the work involved end up being more than if they had not used satellite imagery in the first place?

 

Just my thoguhts/opinion. :)

 

 

 

I agree. I don't like feeling like i'm flying over a template it feels detached. I don't mind it looking unrealistic as long at fits in with the overall sim.

 

Sometimes you just have to use your imagination and take a bit of a leap.

[Yellonet]

Personally, I've never liked satellite imagery as scenery. I feel like I am flying over a picture (as in FSX). I much prefer scenery that may not be completely realistic, but is believable.

 

Even if the satellite images were put together seamlessly, you'd still have flattened structures and forests. They'd have to add 3D objects over top of all that to create a realistic environment. It could be done, but wouldn't the work involved end up being more than if they had not used satellite imagery in the first place?

 

Just my thoguhts/opinion. :)

Completely agree.

[snacker]

Personally, I've never liked satellite imagery as scenery. I feel like I am flying over a picture (as in FSX).

Satellite imagery is specially stunning on deserts. It doesn't feel like a picture.The Nevada theater has nice use of it. Shame it's just a finite square.

[Kula66]

I bought a load of UK satellite imagery for FSX a few years ago and thought it look really poor in comparison to LO at the time ... The buildings just didn't seem to integrate with the land.

 

It would be good to see more 3D features in DCS, hedges, ditches, different heights of trees (and hopefully collidable in DCSW)

[Lixma 06]

I think the current terrain needs two things. First, trees that react to the light in a similar fashion to the rest of the terrain. As they are now (and have been for years) the trees only look relatively believable at 12:00 noon. Before or after and they start turning black....looks very weird.

 

The second thing needed is some kind of coherence with regard to urban areas. For the most part cities and towns consist of a satellite texture sprinkled randomly with buildings at any angle with roads just slashing through whatever lies in their way. The buildings often do not have any relationship to the texture they're sitting on. The newer towns/urban areas (e.g. around Tbilisi) are a bit better with a regular grid pattern of roads and buildings being placed in line with their textures but it's all still ageing badly.

 

Also, I too wouldn't like to see liberal use of satellite imagery. Looks nice for screenshots but not for general use.

[snacker]

I wonder which Military Sim is using this or planning to use it.

http://outerra.blogspot.com/

or this:

[kylania]

Everytime I've seen Outerra mentioned as a "must have" engine, it's been followed by pages of why it won't work. :) It's a very pretty world, but useful for just that, being pretty.

[y2kiah]

I don't understand why you think that. I've been following Outerra on gamedev.net since its very early days, before all the hype in the flight sim community started. I've never seen anything but constant improvements coming from that team. If they had to target their engine toward military flight simulation, they could do it.

[Boberro]

Everything is possible but I think it'd take too much time to move to new engine. Old is well known, new isn't.