Materials changes version 2 - Iceland and California
1. Keep regional definitions for the new default airport BIKF, and Iceland. Uses
new grass colours texture airport-grass-summer3.png with custom autumn effect i
n alpha channel, and bare volcanic bare ground layer - to produce patchy grass a
nd blend in with surrounding landclasses. 3d grass overlays have height modulati
on turned on so grass patches are followed. Actual grass cover and colour at BIK
F varies a lot even for the same month in different years going by photos, needs
autumn effect to depict the range properly. The grass near the terminal areas s
eems to receive a more water while the rest is often quite bare in photos - the
current patchy-ness is a compromise. The texture for low settings is still autum
n-grass-summer2.png.
2. Keep regional definitions for KSFO and California. Switches to grass effect s
o 3d grass is enabled. Grass layer and patchy bare ground layer format with heig
ht modulation for 3d grass. Currently tuned to hints of dry green grass similar
to the old version.
1. Changed airport_grass_overlay.png to airport_grass_structure_overlay2.png
- africa_rainforest.xml, azores.xml, brazil_amazon_forest.xml, brazil_pampas.xml, brazil.pantanal.xml, california.xml, corse.xml, global-summer.xml, mexico.xml, south_east_asia.xml, southern_europe.xml, tropical_south_america.xml, us_southwest.xml
2. Added old airport_grass_overlay.png as airport_grass_structure_overlay1.png
- jan-mayen.xml, ascension.xml (volcanic island)
3. Changed <overlay_layer_magnification> for files using airport_grass_structure_overlay2.png. Conversion: 8.0 units in structure_overlay1 = 60.0 units in structure_overlay2.
- 60.0: africa_rainforest.xml, azores.xml, brazil_amazon_forest.xml, brazil_pampas.xml (4.0), brazil.pantanal.xml, california.xml (grain_layer), corse.xml (grain_layer), global-summer.xml, jan_mayen.xml, mexico.xml (grain_layer 4.0), south_east_asia.xml, southern_europe.xml (grain_layer 4.0), tropical_south_america.xml (grain_layer), us_southwest.xml (grain_layer)
4. Specified <overlay_layer_magnification> for AirportKeep using a normal texture in the n="14" slot instead of a structure texture without specifying magnification. The reason is the new default structure texture uses a much higher magnification. The old value used was 8.0 from global-summer.xml.
- us_southwest.xml (8.0), california.xml (8.0),
5. Specify <grain_layer_magnification> as 4.0 for jan-mayen.xml. Global-summer.xml didn't specify it so the material got settings from the effect default.
6. Multiply alpha channel of airport_grass_structure_overlay2.png by 0.7 to reduce very subtle tiling to almost zero for worst case (e.g. white areas of southern_europe.xml keep). This is visible only at closer ranges at very specific angles. Change southern_europe.xml grain_layer_magnification to 50.0. Best fixed with grain_alpha uniform.a new
7. Increase <overlay_alpha> to greater than 1.0 in global_summer.xml for structure overlays for keeps to compensate for multiplying strucuture_overlay2.png alpha by 0.7. Target goal was 0.85 - there is some almost imperceptible tiling from very specific angle close up and this can be lowered a bit further if needed.
8. Specify <overlay_alpha> as 1.0 for overlays where airport_grass_structure_overlay2.png is not used, or is used in the n="15" grain layer slot.
- africa_desert.xml, africa_mediteranean.xml, ascension.xml, brazil-caatinga.xml, corse.xml, california.xml, greenland.xml (new definition), hawaii.xml, iceland.xml (new definition), southern_europe.xml, tropical_south_america.xml
9. Changed name of airport-grass-autumn.png to airport-grass-summer2.png.
10. Use airport-grass-summer2.png (brown-grey-green) grass texture for in greenland.xml as the green one is out of place. D-ECHO is working further on Northern area keep.
11. Changed <texture> reference in california.xml from airport-grass-autumn.png to airport-grass-summer.png.
12 Grass scale for airport-grass-structureoverlay2.png: roughly 60 (roughly guessed by displaying RBG strucuture texture against airport_grass2.png.).
13. Changed california-grass.png to california-grass2.png:
mexico.xml,
14. Added 3d grass to california and iceland grass definitions.
15. Iceland and BIKF for the moment uses the dull brown-grey.green airport-grass-summer2.png. Once a control for specifying grass texture magnification is in it's possible to do a dark volcanic underlying texture with spots of grass/moss.
16. Started a Keep definition in europe.xml so maybe in future a new global grass type can be a bit less yellow than for Europe and mid latitude locations away from the equator.
----
Note:
Possible unresolved minor problem found with colour of 3d grass: AirportKeep effects can specify textures with grass colours in either the base slot or the overlay slot. e.g. us-southwest.xml specifies the grass colour in the overlay slot and the ground underneath in the base layer slot.
The 3d grass shader assumes a magnification of 1.0. When overlay or base layer magnifications are not 1.0 same the grass colours don't quite line up. Some difference between ground underneath and grass is probably desired to make the grass blades more obvious. It's not a big problem in dryer areas as the grass density is low and the dry textures colours are similar looking. Eventual fix: add a <grass_color_layer_magnification>.
Change the minimum latitude for the North Atlantic Islands
regional materials from 55N to 60N. This means it doesn't
cover Scotland, and therefore interfere with the united_kingdom.xml
materials.xml.
This was causing a problem in cases where united_kingdom.xml was
inheriting texture definitions, in particular Landmass.
the fixes missing from FGDATA are:
- fixing the Portuguese and Spanish islands in the Atlantic (Madeira, etc.) which had been erroneously assigned to Africa given their proximity. Now they belong to European Mediterranean region, which makes them look better
- improvements to autumn textures in Europe
- huge improvement of the airport grasses all over the world, including hi-res overlays
- matching runway shoulders for the whole globe
- Asian capitals added to list of large cities so they get more density of road lights
- Emirates region
and possibly more.
I created a substantial quantity of new work in the New Regional
Textures project and I would like to ask if anyone could review and
perhaps commit them into FGDATA. The modifications are:
- New textures and material definitions for California
- New textures and material definitions for Mexico
- New material definitions for Central America
- New textures and material definitions for Southern Europe
(Mediterranean region: Portugal, Spain, south of Italy, Greece, coast of
Balkans)
- New airport grass texture (global)
- New airport grass texture for Latin America
- New American town texture (global)
- Small improvement to grass blade textures (to better fit the airport
grass texture)
If this will be committed, we must add a note thanking the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) for the satellite images of California (
http://www.usgs.gov/ ) to the Thanks file.
I created a substantial quantity of new work in the New Regional
Textures project and I would like to ask if anyone could review and
perhaps commit them into FGDATA. The modifications are:
- New textures and material definitions for California
- New textures and material definitions for Mexico
- New material definitions for Central America
- New textures and material definitions for Southern Europe
(Mediterranean region: Portugal, Spain, south of Italy, Greece, coast of
Balkans)
- New airport grass texture (global)
- New airport grass texture for Latin America
- New American town texture (global)
- Small improvement to grass blade textures (to better fit the airport
grass texture)
If this will be committed, we must add a note thanking the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) for the satellite images of California (
http://www.usgs.gov/ ) to the Thanks file.
I did quite a lot of work on textures and materials lately and I'd like
to ask if someone could please take a look on it and maybe commit it to
FGDATA if judged positively.
Starting with commit 0da71d2288836df05548f5f343fe3977ebb2955f of my
repository (see
https://github.com/gilbertohasnofb/new-regional-textures/commits/master
) I did:
- improved urban effect for the Latin American city texture
- improved the Mediterranean city texture (and also better urban effect)
- created new textures for asphalt and concrete runways
- created a new industrial texture (as well as winter version and urban
effect)
- created winter versions for European 18th century city and town textures
- applied urban effect to European 18th century city and town textures
- created a new material in which small areas around 80 large cities
around the world in which the street lights have higher density (1000
for mega cities such as NY and Tokyo, 2000 for large cities such as
Munich and Dubai, while keeping the default 10000 for all the rest of
the globe)
I also created a texture with skid marks for Thorsten's new effect, but
we are still working on this one and this may not even be used.
Everything else is ready to go.
I know this is a lot of things to test, and as Thorsten pointed out in
the forum I it would be better if next time I submit my work in several
chunks (which makes testing easier). So I could break this new work like
that if necessary, but here is a reasonable plan for anyone willing to
test it as it is now:
- start at LIRN at noon during summer. Check the new asphalt runway.
Take off fly around the city centre (it's just in front of the airport).
Test the improved European 18th century city and town textures, as well
as the new industrial texture. Change the environment to winter and
check these three textures once again.
- start at KLAX at noon. Check the new concrete runway. Take off, change
the time to midnight and check the street lights (Los Angeles is a "mega
city" so should be very bright).
- start at SBRJ at noon and check the improved Latin American city
texture. Take off, change the time to midnight and check the street
lights (Rio de Janeiro is a "large city" so should be quite bright).
- start at DTTG @ runway 06 and check the town by the left of the
airport for the improved Mediterranean city texture.
Also, there are plenty of screenshots of this work starting with this
post here: http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=26031&start=150#p261282
All tree texture sheets now contain 4 different texture sets for
different conditions. See Docs/README.materials for details.
Also retire the -summer and -winter variants of tree textures, which
are now redundant.
