Terrain Improvement (dev branch)

[das attorney 857]

Actually everyone with even gimp can help me^^

Thing is: I found out that bing maps is an incredible awesome place to get environment textures from. even better than google maps.

But to get textures that are good enough one needs to make screenshots and add them together one by one.

Also you need time to actually find interesting and usefull environments on bing maps.

Time that would be better spend in integrating this textures into the game;)

So if anyone is interested? Yes yes?^^

Hello,

I used to use an awesome tool for X-Plane 9 called G2XPL that downloaded images from Google Maps and then stitched the images together as a terrain file so you could have free photoscenery for X-Plane. Example below:

Look what happened when this guy got his fingers burnt - now no-one can easily get and use Google Map data.

http://forums.x-pilot.com/topic/4511-where-did-g2xpl-go/

I'm only mentioning this in case you do a lot of work derived from GM and then someone takes a dislike to what you're doing.

[Greenfist 1863]

I guess using just bits and pieces from GM and then edit and overlay them on Altis results in something so beyond recognition that anyone will have a hard time to dispute it.

[NordKindchen 12]

Why not just use satellite images from Lemnos?

Because that does look terrible;)

Thanks Greenfist!

Hello,

I used to use an awesome tool for X-Plane 9 called G2XPL that downloaded images from Google Maps and then stitched the images together as a terrain file so you could have free photoscenery for X-Plane. Example below:

Thanks for the info!

But as Greenfist states I only use parts of the terrain and overwork it. Hard to recognize the area again. Therefore it should be in line with the law about recreation of artistic work.

You can use work of others as long as you derivate it enough to be a work of its own. Like collages for example.

However...is there maybe a program who does this for bing maps? Or does someone still have that program?

I didn't quite get the process, NordKindchen, could expand on that a bit?

I might be able to help. I've been spending hours a day with photoshop at work for last 7 years so I'm quite comfortable with it. I know nothing about modding but PS I do. Heck, I could even do this at work since the christmas time is a bit slow there. (Just kidding. Okey, boss?)

Maybe this will make it more clear

This is how the final file should look like (execpt 20 times bigger).

To get such environment in high detail you must zoom in to a distance of 100 feet and make your screenshots and then put them together.

At least till someone finds a program that does this automatically;)

Greetz!

[Greenfist 1863]

Isn't that example just a stiched together image of bing screenshots? That can't be used directly with Arma, right? You'll have to overlay it with arma texture and make the terrains to match? Is it a one big image that you port to the game? (edit. Of course not just one, but how many & at what res?)

You could just take a grid of screenshots and stitch them to together with PS or some other dedicated software out there automatically. One could even build a program that scrolls through bing with set intervals and saves every image.

I did this with arma2 the other way around. I had a script that took aerial photos of Chernarus every 200m. I just let photoshop to combine them automatically to get a huge aerial map of Chernarus. I didn't have the computing power to get whole map and my script had some issues to keep consistent so all the images didn't match. But it was a fun personal proof of concept.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Greenfist

[das attorney 857]

However...is there maybe a program who does this for bing maps? Or does someone still have that program?

The program is called G2XPL. I don't think it's freely available these days due to aformentioned issues.

There was a similar program it was based on called TileProxy (for FSX):

http://www.edtruthan.com/tileproxy/tutorial/

They're both just little programs that go through GM systematically and store each image for a set lat lon - once cached, they build it into the format you need. Google tends to get upset though if you're doing this, so you have to do some magic with cookies to stop them from suspending your browser priviledges. (That happened to me loads). It's actually pretty unfair considering you use less bandwidth than the average user browsing maps of the world.

I think you would need to do some magic with the formats though. I'll check in to this when I get home, but it would most likely need a re-write (and I'm not sure if the source code is freely available).

EDIT: When Googling around I found this:

http://www.maptiler.org/

Assuming it's not bloatware/riddled with virii, I'll download and have a play around later.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Das Attorney

[toiletguy 1]

I guess it's not possible to throw them up into the modfolder and got it working right? So far i see no red stripes or any 'awesome' texture in game yet.

[NordKindchen 12]

put it in @yourmodfolder/addons/ Thats the way its allways been. Since this is just a rough WIP file I threw in to hear your opinions I didnt put no readme with it.

[St. Jimmy 272]

I guess it's not possible to throw them up into the modfolder and got it working right? So far i see no red stripes or any 'awesome' texture in game yet.

The mod doesn't work for some reason if you try to enable it from the game with the expansion menu. You need to put -mod=@yourmodfoldername in your launch parameters.

[toiletguy 1]

The mod doesn't work for some reason if you try to enable it from the game with the expansion menu. You need to put -mod=@yourmodfoldername in your launch parameters.

Tried this as well, still getting blury vanilla texture. Might be a problem on my end since i'm using dev build.

[dancanman 10]

But to get textures that are good enough one needs to make screenshots and add them together one by one.

is Microsoft ICE (Free Program) what you're after? It will attempt to create a panorama of images that you feed it automatically.

Tried this as well, still getting blury vanilla texture. Might be a problem on my end since i'm using dev build.

This only seems to work on a small section of Stratis currently, near the airfield. You should see red and blue lines crossing the hills outside the airbase.

Edited December 9, 2013 by dancanman

[old_painless 182]

IrfanView will do so as well. Can stitch both sideways and top to bottom. Even has batch mode built in

[Greenfist 1863]

But you can't really use big stitched images directly anyway. Maybe not even single screenshot without heavy editing, right? Combining about 10 satellite images should be enough for every situation I think. And that's not the issue, just a bit of work for example with MS ICE. The biggest labour is in making the image match the Arma's terrain. (Unless I have misunderstood the process completely)

Edited December 10, 2013 by Greenfist

[twisted 127]

Here are some comparissons between vanilla Arma and Arma with my WIP addon + Bad Bensons midrange textures.

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Greetz

wow. am impressed.

[big_t 1]

Ok - I am on the topic again! Gonna start working on it again.

If someone wants to help: I could use someone that finds interesting areas on bingmaps and saves me the areas. Anyone interested hahah^^

I'm truly glad to hear you are back on the case, it's hard to play Arma now knowing what it could look like with your amazing texturing to mid range landscape.

I agree Tactical Battlefield has breathed new life into the game.

I will try to get you some textures but I have a feeling there must be a way to batch processes them from bing maps. (say define a starting point and then grab a few square kilometers and auto patch them together.)

[Greenfist 1863]

I will try to get you some textures but I have a feeling there must be a way to batch processes them from bing maps. (say define a starting point and then grab a few square kilometers and auto patch them together.)

I haven't found a way to grab images with a batch but you can take 8000x8000 screenshots while browsing the bing map. (sample, 16MB JPG) Anything bigger crashed my Firefox every time.

You could stitch them together, edit this one big image and then save it to appropriately sized slices with photoshop. But I have no idea how to put them back together for arma so that file names match Arma's textures.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Greenfist

[big_t 1]

I haven't found a way to grab images with a batch but you can take 8000x8000 screenshots while browsing the bing map. (sample, 16MB JPG) Anything bigger crashed my Firefox every time.

You could stitch them together, edit this one big image and then save it to appropriately sized slices with photoshop. But I have no idea how to put them back together for arma so that file names match Arma's textures.

Can I ask how did you do the 8000 x 8000 screen capture? I tried with conventional screen captures and scrolling around but things are jamming up trying to stitch large areas.

[vegeta897 13]

Am I the only one who thinks this thread no longer belongs in this section? This is after all the dev branch forum.

This thread seems to now only be focused on Nord's work, which I don't see ever being officially implemented by the devs as it involves using satellite imagery from Microsoft without permission (as far as I'm aware). So this seems better suited to the mods and addons section than a section for official developer work.

At the very least, discussion about Nord's work doesn't seem to belong here.

[NordKindchen 12]

The Devs pushed it into the Dev-Branch forum. Also they were the ones renaming it.

[sproyd 2]

Great job, the new screenshots look incredible -like a different game (Arma 4?). Please keep up the good work!!

[vegeta897 13]

The Devs pushed it into the Dev-Branch forum. Also they were the ones renaming it.

I know, I'm just stating an observation because it seems misplaced to me :)

[NordKindchen 12]

Now I have some time to answer all the questions^^

@vegeta: Yes you are right. On the other hand I put much effort in pushing this topic and dont feel like abandonning it since has nearly 80.000 views.

Also theres important stuff to bring forward to the Devs once the mod is in an appropriate state which I will state at that point.

But I will open another topic in the addons section once I got all of Stratis covered and can begin focussing on the details.

If it wasnt for university work Id say it would be possible to achieve this goal till end of this month. However finals are coming february and theres lots of lots of work to do.

@Greenfist: I am interested in anything that help gathering textures faster so your help is welcome=)

Also thanks towards "Das Attorney " and "dancanman"!

[EricM 0]

@Greenfist: I am interested in anything that help gathering textures faster so your help is welcome=)

Ultimate MAP downloader would do the trick I guess (and yes it works with bings).

[Greenfist 1863]

Can I ask how did you do the 8000 x 8000 screen capture? I tried with conventional screen captures and scrolling around but things are jamming up trying to stitch large areas.

You'll need Firefox and the "Pearl Crescent Page Saver" firefox addon. Go to bing maps and click the share button and choose to embed the map in a web page. Copy the code and save it to html file. Change iframe and map dimensions in it to something bigger like 8000. Open the file and use the page saver to capture the big map to a image file. You can use this embedded map just like the actual page and find new areas while you're in it.

I tried multiple other free addons and programs for this but the above combination was the only one to capture images of that size and do it quickly (=instantly). All other solutions either crashed, took a really long time or made the whole process too troublesome.

@Nordie: I would have been really interested in taking part in doing Altis textures since I realized I don't even play much on Stratis so my work would go to waste on Stratis. I like doing stuff mostly for my own benefit and just a little for the community's. :) But I do visit this thread often and will try to help when I can. I can even point you to any promising textures I may come across.

By the way, I dug in to Altis data and found only textures of 512x512 size while ones in Stratis are 1024; are they really smaller on Altis or didn't I just find the right ones?

Edited December 11, 2013 by Greenfist

[Polygon 11]

Amazing improvements. Feels like an another title!

[VanZant 48]

Maybe I can provide something, if this resolution is fine.

http://imgur.com/iPfZgPv