Discussion Default bases surface tiles

[Cosmic Penguin]

I took a look at the default list, and quite a lot of them have detailed surface tiles already available on different add-ons available. So let's put those bases in different categories:

Bases with detailed tiles available on O-F and other places:

Alcantara
Baikonur
Canaveral
Edwards
Hammaguira
Jiuquan
Kagoshima
Kourou
Plesetsk
Sriharikota
Tanegashima
Vandenberg
Wallops_Island
White_Sands
Woomera

For those which don't, some of them are much more important than others, so I'll suggest those bases that are in much need of adding tiles:

Bases that should be included in this project with priority:

• [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xichang_Satellite_Launch_Center"]Xichang[/ame] (actual co-ordinates: 28° 14′ 45.66″ N, 102° 1′ 35.6″ E) (China's beyond-low-Earth-orbit space launch center and busiest spaceport, with many communication satellites and even the Chinese lunar orbiters (and in the future, Chang'e-3, China's first lunar lander) leaving Earth via here. Will be featured in my currently dormant Dragons of the Middle Kingdom project)
• [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyuan_Satellite_Launch_Center"]Wuzhai[/ame] (actual co-ordinates: 38° 50′ 56.71″ N, 111° 36′ 30.59″ E) (China's main polar orbit spaceport, and also a major ICBM and missile test center. Will be featured in my currently dormant Dragons of the Middle Kingdom project)
• Habana (actual co-ordinates: 22° 59′ 21″ N, 82° 24′ 33″ W) (more commonly known as Havana, the capital of Cuba is an early point of entry and departure to and from Earth since the early days of Orbiter. The base and runways are put exactly on where its international airport is).
• Peenemunde (actual co-ordinates: 54° 8′ 34.8″ N, 13° 47′ 38.4″ E) ("THE base" for the A-4/V-2)
• [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapustin_Yar"]Kapustin Yar[/ame] (actual co-ordinates: 48° 35′ 9.6″ N, 45° 43′ 12″ E) (one of the earliest center of Soviet rocketry development, later an ICBM test range and space launch center)
• [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Cosmodrome"]Svobodniy[/ame] (actual co-ordinates: 51° 49′ 0″ N, 128° 15′ 0″ E) (ex-Soviet ICBM base, hoisted several orbital launches of converted ICBMs a few years ago, and now the selected site of the Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia's next generation spaceport)
• [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonghae_Satellite_Launching_Ground"]Musudan[/ame] (actual co-ordinates: 40° 51′ 0″ N, 129° 40′ 0″ E) ("the" North Korean missile launch base)
• Matagorda (see several posts above)

I will comment on the other sites when I have time....

 

[4throck]

Tiles are not the problem. There are indeed excellent add-ons that will give you detailed bases. I'm not intending to replace those.
The goal here is generic but accurate scenery with minimal impact on loading times and file size.

Here are some images of almost complete bases (by my simplistic criteria) with the proper Landsat tiles:

Inyokern and China Lake

Matagorda

Esrange

An Anbar

(really nothing to see here!)

Penemuunde

And here's a WIP Kagoshima:

Galactic Penguin SST, thanks for the detailed input. Perhaps you can add those summaries to the articles on Orbiter Wiki? :thumbup:

---------- Post added 4th Dec 2012 at 10:23 ---------- Previous post was 3rd Dec 2012 at 23:27 ----------

Just to add that a nice source of images that can be used/redistributed (as far as I understand it) to create surface tiles is this:

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/simple.pl


Of course, the photos are not projected or oriented, so some processing skills are needed. Only some places have high enough resolution, but it is a nice resource of proper Earth images!
If someone wants to go through the site and locate suitable images, that would help !

For example, here's Havana (not exactly the Orbiter base location):

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I think AR81 had a surface tile mod for Habana over on the 'hangar.

 

[4throck]

Indeed, here it is:
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3601"]Habana airport[/ame]

I like it, it blend reality with sci-fi elements. Really don't see much purpose in redoing it, but I'll deal with it when I get there. Still plenty of "empty" bases to work on.


Keep those suggestions going and, by all means, ADD THE INFO ABOUT ADD-ONS TO THE WIKI!

See what I did here: http://www.orbiterwiki.org/wiki/Kourou It doesn't need to be complicated.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Some questions to all:

- How to do places that have changed over time? There's a time parameter for the base objects. Should I consider using it ?

- Should I only consider the bases as they are today? This means that some will have nothing more that the tiles...

Great initiative btw, good luck with this project.

As to the timeline feature... I used this for my original Ascension Island add on and it's easy enough to implement. However I'm not sure how much it was actually used. Also, since I was developing my own fictional base it seemed appropriate to offer users the original 'real' version too as a TAL abort site. But since all your bases are real ones, which functionally speaking probably haven't changed much with regards to their usability as airfields, its probably more work than it is worth to do timeline versions, or more work than would be used by orbinauts anyway.

I know ascension isn't on your/the list, but it seems a vaguely historically important airfield, so feel free to rip the surface tiles from my addon should you want to include ascension in your list/addon in return for no extra work.

 

[4throck]

I'm pressing on and really having fun doing this.

Here's a first try at Xichang:

And here's Musudan:

Of course, airports always look better. Here's Gran Canaria:

The Landsat textures are not that detailed, but, as I mentioned before, we can use astronaut photos like this (also Gran Canaria):

 

[4throck]

Small update. I've decided to tackle first the all the bases with runways.

Edwards is finished. Really nice place to land the shuttle :thumbup:

Gran Canaria also looks good, only needs some color/alpha work.

Penemuunde, Hamaguira and Matagorda are also 99% done.
I'm happy with the level of detail on the surface tiles and with the way the generic 3D buildings/structures help to give a sense of scale and reality.
I was also able to integrate the default Orbiter pad perfectly. It blends seamlessly.

 

[Hlynkacg]

Just want to say that this is awesome, by the way.

 

[Loru]

That's really amazing work

 

[4throck]

Thanks all for the feedback and nice words :thumbup: !

Vandenberg is also done, but still needs to have the Landsat 15m imagery replaced / merged with better views from ISS photos. I'm amazed at the quality of this type of images. Of course, they are not map corrected and mean more work, but I don't get why people don't use them more often.

The Wiki page is done: http://www.orbiterwiki.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Airforce_Base . The Wiki content will be the documentation for the bases.

 

[csanders]

Do you still want an OBM that downloads Landsat?

I ended up removing landsat because the servers aren't super reliable. I would frequently get "can't download right now" errors.

 

[4throck]

Yes, Landsat as an option would be perfect. That would help me/others that want tiles they can distribute ;-) while at the same time allowing for higher resolution tiles to be downloaded as each user sees fit ;-).

Another nice feature would be image registration. Let's say I have a photo of an area taken from Orbit. The geometry is of course distorted, and the image is not oriented. Now, if I could select matching features on that photo and on the Landsat images (or any other image tiles), the software could compute a best fit and map the image to the surface. That would be IMMENSELY useful
I know it's an advanced feature normally found on GIS software, but I'm doing it by hand distorting layers in Photoshop!

On my end, Vandenberg is almost done. I tested it with an Orbiter install that featured a detailed SL6 pad for Shuttle / Dynasoar and found no major problems.

Because I'm underestimating the height of the structures I'm placing, all of the custom meshes that are generally loaded by the scenarios cover them completely.:thumbup:

 

[Weirdo Earthtorch]

These look great.

 

[4throck]

I looked at the file size and this will certainly be released in parts.
Perhaps by continent; it makes sense to have all the USA south-west bases together. I'm limiting coverage to level 4 and to areas very close to the pads/runways. Even so, the megabytes keep adding!

The next step will probably be, for the bases already done, tweaking of alpha/blending into the default Earth global textures and a check of radio frequencies.


One thing that would benefit this work would be reentry/land scenarios for bases with suitable runways using the default Orbiter spacecraft.

My own tests with the Shuttle were inspiring. Sudendly I felt the same buzz I get out of FlightSim. Scenery gives the sense of scale and speed !
The only thing missing in Orbiter is wind and turbulence. But it is good as it is.

---------- Post added at 21:51 ---------- Previous post was at 10:36 ----------

And here's White Sands. I had to turn contrast really down to match the default textures, so it's not that spectacular. Specially at dawn as is the case here.

Anyway, one more base done :thumbup:!

 

[csanders]

Link to OBM with landsat option (version 1.1.4). User has to change it in the "Orbiter Base Maker Configuration" window:

NOTE: This version draws wire-frames of the meshes when one places them on a base. So if there is a huge performance issue with this while editing bases, let me know and I can make that an option as well.

NOTE 2: the version available in the [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5607"]hangar[/ame] is 1.1.3, so you can revert back if there is some issue with 1.1.4. I haven't tested 1.1.4 enough to put in the hangar.

http://growlersoftware.com/users/OrbiterBaseMaker/OBMSetup.1.1.4.zip

 

[4throck]

Thanks! Will test it when possible.
Completely agree with the option screen. Self explanatory :thumbup:

 

[4throck]

Tested the new version of OBM. Works fine here. Image server change works, but I had to delete the cached files manually. Otherwise no tile update. That's OK for me, but might confuse novice users.

Right now I'm working on Wallops Island (still needs much adjustment):

 

[N_Molson]

Excellent work 4throck ! You really fill a gap in Orbiter ! :thumbup:

 

[4throck]

I've given much thought about how to release this, and have decided to do it by continents, using the criteria indicated on Wikipedia (7 continents).

The first release will feature the North America bases:

• China Lake
• Edwards
• Habana
• Inyokern
• Matagorda
• Vandenberg
• Wallops Island
• White Sands

All of these have runways, so they are useful for DG like vehicles.
White Sands, Edwards and Vandenberg are relatively close to each other and feature extra long and wide runways, so they are interesting to land the shuttle, do drop test with the x-15, etc, etc.

So this group of bases really belong together.
I'll release a test version on this thread when possible.

 

[RisingFury]

You're not just gonna donate these bases to stock Orbiter release?