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Author
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Topic: Satellite of love
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Pachy
Pilot
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posted 02-26- 10:10 AM
   
This is an attempt at using satellite pics as terrain textures for SDOE. And it's quite disapointing. Basically the SDOE terrain is quite close to the real thing (except too much elevation, but this is a design choice), and the pics could be altered by hand to fit.
But: first, all those small fields we have here make a highly contrasted countryside that looks ugly when antialiased. Second, the satellite photographs use false colours because the originals are B&W. And these false colours will look terrible, no matter how long you spend in your favorite image editing program. Third, these images are from a copyrighted CD-ROM so I cannot redistribute them. And fourth the ImageSplitter tools chrashes when outputing 24-bit TIFs, so I had to degrade output quality.
Nevertheless here's what REAL dover terrain looks like:  
Above Boulogne-sur-Mer, with Le Touquet behind. Notice It's a little off, but not much. 
Above the bay of Somme. Abbeville is visible near the horizon. The real terrain is near the city 25km inland.
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bjorn
Pilot
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posted 02-26- 11:16 AM
Disapointing, yes, sort of, but does it have to be, or were you just unlucky in the choice of satelite images? I'm thinking of how wonderfully Flight Unlimited III uses satelite images to get very good views of the Seattle region. I think this is well worth looking into more, and also use real elevation data.
_
/Bjorn.IP: Logged |
JT
Pilot
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posted 02-26- 11:38 AM
I think if you tone down the contrast between the light patches and the green areas, it will be much more convincing. Also, there is too much white. White needs to be used very sparingly. Finally, I think the colors need to be unified a bit. I would add a very faint shade of blue to all the colors. Colors always grey out to a pale blue as they receed into the distance.
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Spanky the Mad Dog
Pilot
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posted 02-26- 12:07 PM
Spanky here..
Actually guys i don't know if sat photos will ever cut it. I find EVERY game except SDOE looks like crap when your really low. The textures look great from 10000 feet but once you get low they turn out to be huge pixels.
Wouldn't this do the same thing?
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