Surface Base Lajes Fields for Orbiter 2010

[SolarLiner]

This is one of the Emergency Landing bases used by Space Shuttle in that case of abort sequence. Adds surface tiles, runways, and rough 3D placements.
As fas as I know, this site had not be used by the Shuttle.

This thread will be used to write your comments, suggesitons and bugs reports.

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5825"]DOWNLOAD ![/ame]

PS: Yes I've made an "Orbit Hangar post" like.

 

[DaveS]

This is one of the TAL bases used by Space Shuttle in that case of abort sequence. Adds surface tiles, runways, and rough 3D placements.
As fas as I know, this site had not be used by the Shuttle.

This thread will be used to write your comments, suggesitons and bugs reports.

DOWNLOAD !

PS: Yes I've made an "Orbit Hangar post" like.

Lajes Air Base is not a TAL site but a Emergency Landing Site (ELS). The official TAL sites are:

• Zaragoza Air Base, Spain, mid/high inclination
• Moron Air Base, Spain, low/mid/high inclination
• Istres-Le-Tube, France, mid/high inclination
• Banjul, The Gambia, low/mid inclination
• Ben Guerir, Morocco, low/mid/high inclination

 

[SolarLiner]

Lajes Air Base is not a TAL site but a Emergency Landing Site (ELS). The official TAL sites are:

• Zaragoza Air Base, Spain, mid/high inclination
• Moron Air Base, Spain, low/mid/high inclination
• Istres-Le-Tube, France, mid/high inclination
• Banjul, The Gambia, low/mid inclination
• Ben Guerir, Morocco, low/mid/high inclination

Ah ... My sources are not correct so. Thanks ! :thumbup:

 

[SolarLiner]

I so decided to take a look at my add-on again.
Following Loru's advices (and the powerful GIMP's Heal Selection plugin), I removed almost all the clouds in the map (Landsat imagery is full of clouds, clouds everywhere). But there are two big overcast places, on the west and just over the base. I was not able to find any other good ground imagery, so if you have any links, you'll be thanked (with special place into the doc).

Here's the current state of the tiles:

 

[4throck]

Don't laugh, but the fastest solution is to use imagery from one of the other Azores islands.
The terrain + vegetation cover is similar, so it will fit.

I'm 100% for accuracy, but if you have clouds, there's not much you can do.


This being said, did you try to search through the ISS astronaut photography of Earth ?
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/
http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/QuickView.pl?directory=ESC&ID=ISS004-E-10890

This image is not map corrected. You will have to fit it to the Landsat one. Between both you can get rid of most of the clouds.

You can also use images from Wikipedia. Harder to correct, but usable for the areas around the base:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerial_photographs_of_the_Azores
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aeroporto_das_Lajes,_costa_Norte_da_ilha_Terceira,_A%C3%A7ores,_Portugal.JPG

I can help you with these if you want. I can register the images to Orbiter tiles, that you can then import into OBM.
I'll leave color balancing, alpha transparency and cloud removal for you to have fun, though

 

[SolarLiner]

I can help you with these if you want. I can register the images to Orbiter tiles, that you can then import into OBM.

Muahaha, that's actually the easier part of the tiles texturing :lol:
But thanks for the ideas of photographs and the other islands. I'll find that!

The only thing is every base maker seems to have links to beautiful, detailled scenery and ground imagery, while I found Landsat website, where you can only download 1.5Gb coverage of an entire continent. I've been searching for ages these sites, but no. Nothing to do, others are $150+ for local areas... Not gonna spend that money !

 

[4throck]

I don't quite get it... I've provided you the best links and free distributable imagery there is.
So you can't complain about only having access to Landsat lower resolution imagery.

Unless you are talking about people using Google / Bing imagery and redistributing it. Which will sooner or later bring trouble to OH...
For some reason OBM can't connect to GMaps servers anymore.

Anyway, if you need or want something just say so. The Azores are part of my country!

 

[SolarLiner]

I don't quite get it... I've provided you the best links and free distributable imagery there is.
So you can't complain about only having access to Landsat lower resolution imagery.

Well, the two first links are not accessible, and the two last are part of my online doc on the island.

The Azores are part of my country!

Ahh, everyting is clearer ! This site is one beautiful piece of land ! :tiphat:

Anyway, dev part:

But look at the faces count ...:facepalm:

 

[Urwumpe]

But look at the faces count ...:facepalm:

There is a greedy algorithm around that can fit a mesh with a fixed number of faces on a digital elevation model. I wanted to turn it into a small C++ program already, I simply never found the time for it.

Essentially, the algorithm is simple as that:

1. Start with two triangles, that create a flat square below the DEM.
2. Search for the point, that has the biggest height error between triangle and DEM.
3. Insert vertex at this point and split triangle below into three triangles with this vertex.
4. Repeat 2 & 3 until desired number of faces reached or maximum height error is below target.

The big challenge are only the geometric functions there (triangles, distance between point and triangle, splitting triangles), anybody could write such a tool, I am sure.

 

[4throck]

Indeed, http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ seems to be down now...
Yet the image I linked from there is accessible and you can use it. You only need to give proper credit as indicated on the page.

As for the rest, I like the mesh Try the Blender modifiers to bring polygons down. Actual terrain resolution can be very low and still look good. Specially if you use normalmaps :thumbup:

Regarding the Azores being nice, I don't know, never been there. It looks nice though
Here's a decent view over the main runway: https://www.google.com/maps?ll=38.750201,-27.045765&spn=0.077246,0.169086&cbp=12,315.3,,0,8.83&layer=c&panoid=Q1M9sAhgH84nRzxs39CT-w&cbll=38.750227,-27.078525&dg=opt&t=h&z=13

 

[SolarLiner]

Essentially, the algorithm is simple as that:

1. Start with two triangles, that create a flat square below the DEM.
2. Search for the point, that has the biggest height error between triangle and DEM.
3. Insert vertex at this point and split triangle below into three triangles with this vertex.
4. Repeat 2 & 3 until desired number of faces reached or maximum height error is below target.

I need to get into 3D coding, but it seems doable with a handy data type to handle the triangles and the vertices. (I'll be using my Vector3 class done with AOSP, I knew I will have to use it one day)