Viewing walks in 3D with Memory-Map

Terry Pinnell wrote:

> there's a lot of '3D work' that can be achieved
> with more modest software like Memory-Map (MM) and Google Earth (GE).

> But the *3D* facilities in these two programs are also worth serious
> consideration in this context IMO. I've shown some examples from MM
> below, following experiments over the last couple of days.

The quality is not bad at all, considering. There are three issues compared
to FSX. The main one is obviously the lower resolution, which is not really
a problem for an overview, but you can't see the fine detail when you get up
close. For example, last night I was studying a bracken covered slope in the
Beacons and I was able to pick out some very faint paths through it, in
addition to the larger more obvious paths. I think I can even make out sheep
tracks now.

Another issue is that there's no anti-aliasing, which creates a nasty effect
in the distance, seen as "shimmering" in the background in your videos. And
of course pixelisation in the foreground, which the flight sim smoothes out
so it doesn't look so bad.

> MM

BTW, you inserted two hyphens below MM, which is used as a sig separator, so
it's possible some people didn't see what you wrote afterwards in their
newsreader, if they have it set to ignore sigs.

> As a walking test area I chose Snowdonia, to compare views with Paul's
> more detailed scenery. It's also a realistic reason for using MM
> instead of GE, as the latter's resolution for central and northern
> Wales is far poorer than much of the UK.

One thing I've just noticed about MM is that it uses the same source of
aerial photos as Horizon's photo scenery, albeit at a lower resolution.
Certain quirks in the landscape give this away. There are certain summits in
the Beacons where the photos don't align properly with the terrain
grid/mesh, and these errors are identical. Also there are odd colouration
quirks which match, noticeable in your Foel Gron screenshot.

> One issue was how much or how little to label the map before switching
> to 3D World, either for a Fly-Through or manual exploration. I'm still
> experimenting but I think it's probably best to include some labels at
> first for navigational purposes, then remove them to get more natural
> views.

Yes. I tend to just place a few waypoints.

> #3 MM3D-03.jpg (312 KB)
> http://www.speedyshare.com/990661887.html
> Approaching Halfway Station. I'd made the track invisible, but was
> still using place names at this stage of my experiments. Note how they
> are embedded in the bitmap. Not vectors like GE. So they are virtually
> unreadable in this direction, especially on a fly-through.

That's one advantage of FSDiscover! (yes, the name includes an exclamation
mark), it shows the names correctly from any angle, even when you bank the
plane.

> #4 MM3D-04.jpg (255 KB)
> http://www.speedyshare.com/194902393.html
> Approaching Snowdon summit. Track had been set to a faint orange line.

Notice the really dark shadows, which are also present in Horizon's scenery.

> #5 MM3D-02.jpg (235 KB)
> http://www.speedyshare.com/659314704.html
> From Snowdon summit, looking back down Railway walk. Note pixelation
> on close up sections.

As I say, pixels are blurred in the flight sim so they look a lot better,
but there's much more detail than this anyway.

> Couple of lakes on left look as if they're on
> the slopes.

That's due to you using an extremely wide view, it's created an
(uncorrected) ultra-wide-angle lens distortion effect. Notice the curvature
of the horizon in the background. FSX also has the option of a very wide
view like this, but it is corrected (to keep the horizon horizontal).

> #7 MM3D-07.jpg (237 KB).
> http://www.speedyshare.com/395244840.html
> Walking over Foel Gron. Roughly similar view to Paul's foelgron-jf.jpg
> and foelgron-ho.jpg.

This is the screenshot that shows the odd colouration. Notice the yellowish
terrain in the foreground, which suddenly changes to a more accurate colour.
This is exactly the same as in the Horizon scenery.

>The Just Flight distant scenery top left for both
> Eilio and Gron looks surprisingly different to MM's.

Oh, I forgot to point out the reason for that. My screenshots were taken
using the demo scenery which only covered a small area, so the distant
scenery was the default (non-photographic) FSX scenery. Actually, I haven't
got the northern area yet, I ordered it but it was out of stock. The central
area doesn't quite reach the North Wales coast.

> #8 MM3D-06.jpg (247 KB)
> http://www.speedyshare.com/380680403.html
> Near Moel y Dyniewyd. Roughly same view as Paul's dyniewyd-ho.jpg and
> dyniewyd-jf.jpg, although the latter's lake colour has had significant
> editing?

No, they haven't edited the lake colour, what they've done is turned it into
"real" water. They've basically just cut a hole in the photo scenery, to
match the edges of the lake, and the sim creates the water effect. This
includes waves and ripples, reflections of the sun and of the scenery, all
of which varies with the weather and time of day, including the colour.
There are different graphics settings which affect the look of the water too
(if you set it really high it looks fantastic, with mirror like reflections
of the scenery in the ripples, but that's a frame rate killer). It actually
looks more realistic if you turn the water effects down a bit, because the
reflections rarely look that good in real life.

> #9 MM3D-08-penyrolewen.jpg (229 KB)
> http://www.speedyshare.com/423512168.html
> Looking across Llyn Ogwen at Pen yr Ole Wen. Broadly similar view to
> Paul's penyrolewen-ho.jpg and penyrolewen-jf.jpg.

This is a good comparison for picking out detail in the terrain. Notice that
on my screenshot you can see a network of walls in the bottom right of the
picture, but you can't make them out at all in yours.

Actually, one thing I really like about MM and Anquet is being able to see a
3D view of the maps, with shadow effects. It's sort of halfway between
reality and a flat 2D map. It's good for seeing the shape of the terrain and
all the map detail at the same time. Very useful for seeing how the contour
lines relate to the actual shape, especially for those who aren't used to
visualising contours (and very useful in complex areas like the Moelwyns).

> VIDEOS

> Most of these are in wide format for possible inclusion in DVDs for my
> wide-screen TV. They're quite large, so some players on lower powered
> PCs might display them a bit jerkily at full size.

They display jerkily on mine! I'm guessing it's because they were created on
your low powered PC. I've made some videos that are 10 times larger and they
play perfectly.

Some general comments. As you say there's a lot of pixelisation close up,
and also background shimmering. Far better than nothing, but really not a
patch on the flight sim. As I've mentioned before, you really have to see
the flight sim in action (i.e. moving, not screenshots) to really appreciate
it.

There's also the weather in the flight sim, which takes it to a whole new
level. My previous screenshots were taken with weather "turned off" (i.e. no
clouds, no wind, unlimited visibility and at midday), but when you add
weather (particularly real-time weather downloaded off the net, rather than
the simple presets), it adds another dimension and changes it from simply
"viewing a 3D model of the terrain" to almost being there!

I've taken some screenshots in real weather, so I'll have to upload those
too.

Anyway, back to the video. Thanks for pointing out FRAPS, I've wanted
something for making videos of the flight sim for some time. This seems to
do the job really well (I've done a few 30 second grabs with the trial
version). Since my screen res is 1680x1050, it can only record half-size
videos at 840x524, but that's fine, I wouldn't want them any larger than
that.

But I'm wondering what you've done to your videos. Clearly you've converted
them to mpg, What software did you do that with? FRAPS recommend some
software for compressing them (then saving as AVI) but I haven't tried those
yet.

Once I've figured out how to compress them I'll post a few.

> If there's enough interest, I'll post some equivalent GE examples
> later (not Wales!).

That would be interesting. Apparently there is a flight sim mode in Google
Earth, but I still haven't tried it yet.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/weblog/

"Paul Saunders" <[email protected]> wrote:

>Terry Pinnell wrote:
>
>> there's a lot of '3D work' that can be achieved
>> with more modest software like Memory-Map (MM) and Google Earth (GE).
>
>> But the *3D* facilities in these two programs are also worth serious
>> consideration in this context IMO. I've shown some examples from MM
>> below, following experiments over the last couple of days.
>
>The quality is not bad at all, considering. There are three issues compared
>to FSX. The main one is obviously the lower resolution, which is not really
>a problem for an overview, but you can't see the fine detail when you get up
>close.

Agreed.

>For example, last night I was studying a bracken covered slope in the
>Beacons and I was able to pick out some very faint paths through it, in
>addition to the larger more obvious paths. I think I can even make out sheep
>tracks now.

>Another issue is that there's no anti-aliasing, which creates a nasty effect
>in the distance, seen as "shimmering" in the background in your videos. And
>of course pixelisation in the foreground, which the flight sim smoothes out
>so it doesn't look so bad.

Agreed.

>> MM
>
>BTW, you inserted two hyphens below MM, which is used as a sig separator, so
>it's possible some people didn't see what you wrote afterwards in their
>newsreader, if they have it set to ignore sigs.

Thanks - never would have thought of that possibility! (I'd be
interested to know if anyone here *did* actually get that result?)

>> As a walking test area I chose Snowdonia, to compare views with Paul's
>> more detailed scenery. It's also a realistic reason for using MM
>> instead of GE, as the latter's resolution for central and northern
>> Wales is far poorer than much of the UK.
>
>One thing I've just noticed about MM is that it uses the same source of
>aerial photos as Horizon's photo scenery, albeit at a lower resolution.

Ah - I thought so!

>Certain quirks in the landscape give this away. There are certain summits in
>the Beacons where the photos don't align properly with the terrain
>grid/mesh, and these errors are identical. Also there are odd colouration
>quirks which match, noticeable in your Foel Gron screenshot.
>
>> One issue was how much or how little to label the map before switching
>> to 3D World, either for a Fly-Through or manual exploration. I'm still
>> experimenting but I think it's probably best to include some labels at
>> first for navigational purposes, then remove them to get more natural
>> views.
>
>Yes. I tend to just place a few waypoints.
>
>> #3 MM3D-03.jpg (312 KB)
>> http://www.speedyshare.com/990661887.html
>> Approaching Halfway Station. I'd made the track invisible, but was
>> still using place names at this stage of my experiments. Note how they
>> are embedded in the bitmap. Not vectors like GE. So they are virtually
>> unreadable in this direction, especially on a fly-through.
>
>That's one advantage of FSDiscover! (yes, the name includes an exclamation
>mark), it shows the names correctly from any angle, even when you bank the
>plane.

Is that another FSX add-on?


>> #4 MM3D-04.jpg (255 KB)
>> http://www.speedyshare.com/194902393.html
>> Approaching Snowdon summit. Track had been set to a faint orange line.
>
>Notice the really dark shadows, which are also present in Horizon's scenery.

Yes.

>> #5 MM3D-02.jpg (235 KB)
>> http://www.speedyshare.com/659314704.html
>> From Snowdon summit, looking back down Railway walk. Note pixelation
>> on close up sections.
>
>As I say, pixels are blurred in the flight sim so they look a lot better,
>but there's much more detail than this anyway.
>
>> Couple of lakes on left look as if they're on
>> the slopes.
>
>That's due to you using an extremely wide view, it's created an
>(uncorrected) ultra-wide-angle lens distortion effect. Notice the curvature
>of the horizon in the background. FSX also has the option of a very wide
>view like this, but it is corrected (to keep the horizon horizontal).

Thanks, understood.

>> #7 MM3D-07.jpg (237 KB).
>> http://www.speedyshare.com/395244840.html
>> Walking over Foel Gron. Roughly similar view to Paul's foelgron-jf.jpg
>> and foelgron-ho.jpg.
>
>This is the screenshot that shows the odd colouration. Notice the yellowish
>terrain in the foreground, which suddenly changes to a more accurate colour.
>This is exactly the same as in the Horizon scenery.
>
>>The Just Flight distant scenery top left for both
>> Eilio and Gron looks surprisingly different to MM's.
>
>Oh, I forgot to point out the reason for that. My screenshots were taken
>using the demo scenery which only covered a small area, so the distant
>scenery was the default (non-photographic) FSX scenery. Actually, I haven't
>got the northern area yet, I ordered it but it was out of stock. The central
>area doesn't quite reach the North Wales coast.

Thanks, that had been really puzzling me.

>> #8 MM3D-06.jpg (247 KB)
>> http://www.speedyshare.com/380680403.html
>> Near Moel y Dyniewyd. Roughly same view as Paul's dyniewyd-ho.jpg and
>> dyniewyd-jf.jpg, although the latter's lake colour has had significant
>> editing?
>
>No, they haven't edited the lake colour, what they've done is turned it into
>"real" water. They've basically just cut a hole in the photo scenery, to
>match the edges of the lake, and the sim creates the water effect. This
>includes waves and ripples, reflections of the sun and of the scenery, all
>of which varies with the weather and time of day, including the colour.
>There are different graphics settings which affect the look of the water too
>(if you set it really high it looks fantastic, with mirror like reflections
>of the scenery in the ripples, but that's a frame rate killer). It actually
>looks more realistic if you turn the water effects down a bit, because the
>reflections rarely look that good in real life.
>
>> #9 MM3D-08-penyrolewen.jpg (229 KB)
>> http://www.speedyshare.com/423512168.html
>> Looking across Llyn Ogwen at Pen yr Ole Wen. Broadly similar view to
>> Paul's penyrolewen-ho.jpg and penyrolewen-jf.jpg.
>
>This is a good comparison for picking out detail in the terrain. Notice that
>on my screenshot you can see a network of walls in the bottom right of the
>picture, but you can't make them out at all in yours.

I'll take another look - I'd convinced myself I could just see them
;-)

>Actually, one thing I really like about MM and Anquet is being able to see a
>3D view of the maps, with shadow effects. It's sort of halfway between
>reality and a flat 2D map. It's good for seeing the shape of the terrain and
>all the map detail at the same time. Very useful for seeing how the contour
>lines relate to the actual shape, especially for those who aren't used to
>visualising contours (and very useful in complex areas like the Moelwyns).

Agreed

>> VIDEOS
>
>> Most of these are in wide format for possible inclusion in DVDs for my
>> wide-screen TV. They're quite large, so some players on lower powered
>> PCs might display them a bit jerkily at full size.
>
>They display jerkily on mine! I'm guessing it's because they were created on
>your low powered PC. I've made some videos that are 10 times larger and they
>play perfectly.

I'm puzzled by that jerkiness.

>Some general comments. As you say there's a lot of pixelisation close up,
>and also background shimmering. Far better than nothing, but really not a
>patch on the flight sim. As I've mentioned before, you really have to see
>the flight sim in action (i.e. moving, not screenshots) to really appreciate
>it.

Agreed.

>There's also the weather in the flight sim, which takes it to a whole new
>level. My previous screenshots were taken with weather "turned off" (i.e. no
>clouds, no wind, unlimited visibility and at midday), but when you add
>weather (particularly real-time weather downloaded off the net, rather than
>the simple presets), it adds another dimension and changes it from simply
>"viewing a 3D model of the terrain" to almost being there!
>
>I've taken some screenshots in real weather, so I'll have to upload those
>too.

See my comments in your thread. I love the weather effects.

>Anyway, back to the video. Thanks for pointing out FRAPS, I've wanted
>something for making videos of the flight sim for some time. This seems to
>do the job really well (I've done a few 30 second grabs with the trial
>version). Since my screen res is 1680x1050, it can only record half-size
>videos at 840x524, but that's fine, I wouldn't want them any larger than
>that.

See my other post in your thread.

>But I'm wondering what you've done to your videos. Clearly you've converted
>them to mpg, What software did you do that with? FRAPS recommend some
>software for compressing them (then saving as AVI) but I haven't tried those
>yet.

Big subject, and definitely OT! I'll come back to it more fully if you
want, or by email. But in short, I use Womble MPEG Video Wizard or
MemoriesOnTV.

>Once I've figured out how to compress them I'll post a few.
>
>> If there's enough interest, I'll post some equivalent GE examples
>> later (not Wales!).
>
>That would be interesting. Apparently there is a flight sim mode in Google
>Earth, but I still haven't tried it yet.

Later...

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Terry Pinnell <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Paul Saunders" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> MM
>>
>>BTW, you inserted two hyphens below MM, which is used as a sig separator, so
>>it's possible some people didn't see what you wrote afterwards in their
>>newsreader, if they have it set to ignore sigs.
>
> Thanks - never would have thought of that possibility! (I'd be
> interested to know if anyone here *did* actually get that result?)

It has to be hyphen-hyphen-space, and you had hyphen-hyphen-return. So a
newsreader shouldn't have cut that off, providing it was working correctly.
I don't know, however, how accurately newsreaders implement it.
Mine (tin) showed the whole article but it's old enough to have been
around when that feature was more widely used.

-adrian

Adrian Godwin <[email protected]> wrote:

>Terry Pinnell <[email protected]> wrote:
>> "Paul Saunders" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>> MM
>>>
>>>BTW, you inserted two hyphens below MM, which is used as a sig separator, so
>>>it's possible some people didn't see what you wrote afterwards in their
>>>newsreader, if they have it set to ignore sigs.
>>
>> Thanks - never would have thought of that possibility! (I'd be
>> interested to know if anyone here *did* actually get that result?)
>
>It has to be hyphen-hyphen-space, and you had hyphen-hyphen-return. So a
>newsreader shouldn't have cut that off, providing it was working correctly.
>I don't know, however, how accurately newsreaders implement it.
>Mine (tin) showed the whole article but it's old enough to have been
>around when that feature was more widely used.
>
>-adrian

Thanks Adrian.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Terry Pinnell wrote:

>> BTW, you inserted two hyphens below MM, which is used as a sig
>> separator, so it's possible some people didn't see what you wrote
>> afterwards in their newsreader, if they have it set to ignore sigs.
>
> Thanks - never would have thought of that possibility! (I'd be
> interested to know if anyone here *did* actually get that result?)

I didn't, but I'm running OE Quote-Fix which colours quoted text
differently, and I noticed that everything after your two hyphens was shown
in grey. At first I thought your post was really short, until I scrolled
down.

>> One thing I've just noticed about MM is that it uses the same source
>> of aerial photos as Horizon's photo scenery, albeit at a lower
>> resolution.
>
> Ah - I thought so!

Whereas Just Flight have obviously used a different set of photos.

>> That's one advantage of FSDiscover! (yes, the name includes an
>> exclamation mark), it shows the names correctly from any angle, even
>> when you bank the plane.
>
> Is that another FSX add-on?

Yep, it costs $29.95, currently £14.80.
http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=fsdisc
http://www.flight1software.com/showcase/fsdiscover/

>> They display jerkily on mine! I'm guessing it's because they were
>> created on your low powered PC. I've made some videos that are 10
>> times larger and they play perfectly.
>
> I'm puzzled by that jerkiness.

Maybe it's the time they take to decompress that's causing the jerkiness?
Ironally an uncompressed video may play better.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/weblog/

"Paul Saunders" <[email protected]> wrote:

>Terry Pinnell wrote:
>
>>> BTW, you inserted two hyphens below MM, which is used as a sig
>>> separator, so it's possible some people didn't see what you wrote
>>> afterwards in their newsreader, if they have it set to ignore sigs.
>>
>> Thanks - never would have thought of that possibility! (I'd be
>> interested to know if anyone here *did* actually get that result?)
>
>I didn't, but I'm running OE Quote-Fix which colours quoted text
>differently, and I noticed that everything after your two hyphens was shown
>in grey. At first I thought your post was really short, until I scrolled
>down.

Seems odd given Adrian's point?

>>> One thing I've just noticed about MM is that it uses the same source
>>> of aerial photos as Horizon's photo scenery, albeit at a lower
>>> resolution.
>>
>> Ah - I thought so!
>
>Whereas Just Flight have obviously used a different set of photos.
>
>>> That's one advantage of FSDiscover! (yes, the name includes an
>>> exclamation mark), it shows the names correctly from any angle, even
>>> when you bank the plane.
>>
>> Is that another FSX add-on?
>
>Yep, it costs $29.95, currently £14.80.
>http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=fsdisc
>http://www.flight1software.com/showcase/fsdiscover/
>
>>> They display jerkily on mine! I'm guessing it's because they were
>>> created on your low powered PC. I've made some videos that are 10
>>> times larger and they play perfectly.
>>
>> I'm puzzled by that jerkiness.
>
>Maybe it's the time they take to decompress that's causing the jerkiness?
>Ironally an uncompressed video may play better.
>
>Paul

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Terry Pinnell wrote:

>> I didn't, but I'm running OE Quote-Fix which colours quoted text
>> differently, and I noticed that everything after your two hyphens
>> was shown in grey. At first I thought your post was really short,
>> until I scrolled down.
>
> Seems odd given Adrian's point?

Yeah, it does. Maybe it's something to do with the fact that OE routinely
chops off the space at the end, so it probably doesn't expect it.

Paul
--
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/
http://www.wilderness-wales.co.uk/weblog/