[WIP] Solomon 1943 V.2.0

[roger-wilco-66]

Nice videos, Francois. Love the laying of the steel matting, that must have been a horrible job under the tropic sun (or torrential rains).


Cheers,
Mark

[warchild]

Nice videos, Francois. Love the laying of the steel matting, that must have been a horrible job under the tropic sun (or torrential rains).


Cheers,
Mark

and dont forget the sand storms.. it surprised the hell out of us when researchin the p-61 liveries that many of those nice black paint jobs were literally sanded off bt the weather there.. those guys had it majorly rough..

[Sundog]

and dont forget the sand storms.. it surprised the hell out of us when researchin the p-61 liveries that many of those nice black paint jobs were literally sanded off bt the weather there.. those guys had it majorly rough..

..and I as learned recently reading up on them, the pumice from the volcano on Iwo.

[MudMarine]

Someday soon I'll wake up and Solomon's V2 will be ready to download and it will be a truely joyous day!!

[fliger747]

Surprisingly the worst "Haboob" or sandstorm I ever saw was in Sydney OZ. They can carry for some distance. A few years ago we had a "slot race" from Espiritu Santo to Rabaul, a lot of fun, we should have another one!

Keep up the good work!

T

[roger-wilco-66]

and dont forget the sand storms.. it surprised the hell out of us when researchin the p-61 liveries that many of those nice black paint jobs were literally sanded off bt the weather there.. those guys had it majorly rough..

hmm ...a nicely weathered paint job for the upcoming P-61...

[roger-wilco-66]

While sifting through the scenery for corrections (which is rather boring) I made some earth moving equipment in GMAX: variations of the Caterpillar D7 dozer and crawler, a road roller, and a LeTourneau "Carryall" and "Turnapull" (they had funny names these days) road scaper in varations. The road grader and a crawler shovel are still in the works.
Now the airfields can have a bit of the construction site atmosphere, which they had on historical photos.

[OleBoy]

Those look great!
I should stop messing around with GSU and learn Gmax. I could have a lot of creative fun. It's just that the learning curve is...is confusing for me.

[roger-wilco-66]

Those look great!
I should stop messing around with GSU and learn Gmax. I could have a lot of creative fun. It's just that the learning curve is...is confusing for me.

I'd like to encourage you to pursue that. I was fighting with GMAX for two years (on and off) until I hit the curve. There are a lot of good tutorials out there, which really helped. But once you understand the basics of GMAX or 3D Studio Max (expecially texture mapping), the sky's the limit :-) . I also found that happiness is a good texture set. You can make very good looking, but technically simple 3D models if you have good texture maps.

Cheers,
Mark

[stovall]

Fantastic images Mark. The equipment is the best I have ever seen. Looking forward to any new images and the complete package for sure. Good work.

[trucker17]

Looking awsome as always Mark......

[Francois]

While sifting through the scenery for corrections (which is rather boring) I made some earth moving equipment in GMAX: variations of the Caterpillar D7 dozer and crawler, a road roller, and a LeTourneau "Carryall" and "Turnapull" (they had funny names these days) road scaper in varations. The road grader and a crawler shovel are still in the works.
Now the airfields can have a bit of the construction site atmosphere, which they had on historical photos.

These look awesome !!!
I found a website focusing on Airfield Building in Normandy (after D-Day and they show many of the same equipment! AND all the airstrips and their location and layouts !

We can rebuild 1940-45 the world yet !

[roger-wilco-66]

Thanks guys, glad you like it.
This probably won't be of much interest for non developers, but last night I had a major breakthrough with a problem I'm after now for over a year.
The Solomons seem to be just about the worst place on this planet to get decent GIS data (mapping, satellite images for reference, DEM data for the mesh) for. I made about 20 high resolution DEM meshes (19m-30m meter) for all areas that have airfields or prominent landscapes features like volcano calderas or numerous islands, but they are full of typical raw errors like spikes, holes and other anomalies.
Last night was the first time I had a fix on a stable workflow that lets me edit and correct raw satellite digital elevation models, keeping the geo reference and the WGS84 projection and bring the data back in the correct format for the FSX/P3D SDK resampler.

Now I have to go over the 20ish hd meshes. I almost dropped the idea of using them at all because I wasn't able to solve this until now.


Cheers,
Mark

[Francois]

That's cool !!

[mike_cyul]

Tremendous work!


Mike

[stovall]

I knew you could do it Mark, it was just a matter of time. Congratulations on solving the problem. Looking forward to what this will do for the final. Good work.

[MudMarine]

I just can't wait!! But I guess I'll have to....

[MCDesigns]

Outstanding Mark! The HD mesh will really make a difference. What a fantastic package this will be when done. now you just need to find a way to use the VRS Tac Pack weapons package for WWII aircraft, LOL.

[Pips]

The detail you are putting into this scenery is simply outstanding! Mind boggling in fact!

[Sundog]

WTG Mark, I'm definitely glad you figured that out. The results look outstanding.

[Meshman]

Now I have to go over the 20ish hd meshes. I almost dropped the idea of using them at all because I wasn't able to solve this until now.

What's wrong with the first two pics? Makes night time flying more... adventurous! :isadizzy:

Now left wondering how good the tool might be at resolving the "ASTER problem"?

[roger-wilco-66]

Hehe, those spikes look quite monumental in-sim. Also some of the holes.
And yes, it solves the "ASTER-Problem". In fact, this __was__ the ASTER-Problem from the beginning.
I wonder why some areas are totally free of anomalies, like Bougainville or Rabaul. A blind guess is that the government of PNG paid NASA for a corrected DEM (Bougainville is a mining area and Rabaul is a critical volcano area, so there are reasons for that). The rest of the Solomons is a bloody mess, DEM wise. Probably nothing of interest there.

Here's the workflow:

source-Geotiff -> load in Daylan Leveller to correct anomalies -> save in DTED format (keeps geo-reference and wgs84 projection) -> open DTED in GDAL / Globalmapper etc and save as Geotiff 16bit integer -> resample with SDK -> load in FSX/P3D and drool :-)

Unfortunatly the Daylan Leveller only imports Geotiff. If it could export this format the whole brouhaha with the DTED/Geotiff conversion could be omitted. Since I bought the Software (it's a steal at 49 $) I'll file a request for that for the wish list.
Another nice thing about the Leveller is that you can create synthetic meshes with it, similar to WILBUR, but much easier and intuitive to work on (IMHO).

Cheers,
Mark

[Meshman]

The rest of the Solomons is a bloody mess, DEM wise.

Looking at the dates of the Solomons v1 release I see it's been a while. But I want to say there was an ASTER v1 put together before release? It showed similar night flying obstacles. V2 of ASTER is not much better than v1, from what I looked at. But maybe another satellite can be funded to give things another try... :mixedsmi:

Will probably whip out the credit card for Leveller later today.

Looking forward to the release of v2 of the Solomons!

[CrisGer]

Is there a version of this scenery available.? i saw a note about Version 1? if so where can we find it? thanks

[roger-wilco-66]

V1 is not online anymore, you'll have to wait for the V2 release..
I'm about 90% done, I assume. The new mesh looks terrific, but I have to revisit the whole scenery for elevation errors (there are numerous flat polygons with elevations that have to be adapted to the new mesh).

Cheers,
Mark