New 16k Earth Texture - Warning Large graphics inside!!

[Don. Edwards]

Well Its been some time since I made my 8k Earth Texture. I always intended to build up a 16k version but not being able to crunch it to a .dds pretty much put that on hold. Well now that I have experimented with Pixels little hack to make big .dds files I thought I would show everyone what’s coming within a week. BTW these images are 10% of the full size 16384 x 8192 textures. I did this so that some detail can be seen.

First I am going to show what the Blue Marble texture would look like before I went to work on it. So here is a non color corrected shot of the original.


Now my new 16k based on the color ranges from my 8k Earth texture.


And a snap of my 8k texture for comparison.


As it stands now the texture is already 75% finished. I still have a few things to do before I start building the .dds files. I have no idea at this point how big it will be. As soon as I have the first build of the .dds finished I will post some pictures. If everyone then thinks its ready to roll it will be ready to post. As always all comments welcome.

Don.

[ANDREA]

Absolutely beautiful, Don.
Your 16K image is increadibly real.
I can't wait the moment to check it at high magnification.
I'll stay tuned.
Thank you.

Andrea

[Darkmiss]

Great work as usual Don
The colouring looks great too

I used to have a 16k BM earth texture
But i never liked the Over saturated colours of the BM textures

[bh]

Don...looks great. Can you show us a real scale screenshot?

Regards in anticipation...bh.

[billybob884]

hmmm... why is there such a color difference in your south pole and the origional?

[Don. Edwards]

Well it’s the same reason there is no snow or ice at the North Polar Region. Blue Marble’s texture is supposed to represent high summer in both hemispheres so there is a maximum of vegetation. Of course this is unrealistic because you can't have summer in both the north and south at the same time. That’s why I still plan on implementing seasonal texture variation. With the right coding in the solar system.ssc the texture could change as the seasons change here on the Earth. You could say my texture represents high spring in both hemispheres in stead. Really the only thing you loose in Antarctica may be the dry valleys. But they really are not visible at any detail but on a 32k version of the texture. At the present time working a 32k texture is not possible for me due to memory problems. I thought working on a 16k texture was tough. I will need 3Gigs of RAM to comfortably work on 32k texture at this point. So I hope that answers your question.
Also blue Marble does have a texture like mine but only at 8k and it shows the south polar ice at its maxim so its really a south winter based map. Look here.

I am getting some things from this map but again it has to be sized up so I can extract things from it. Mainly I am pulling shallow water details from this map. They don't need any real sharp detail so you would have never noticed unless I told you about it. And even then the detail you are looking is the land not the water.

Don.

[Don. Edwards]

Well I put the first version of the .dds texture together as a test and here are some shots of what it looks like.

West Coast of South America


West coast of North America.


The Himalayas.


Afghanistan and Pakistan.


Europe.


Now in some of the images you may see a bright line following the coastlines. That is due to a mismatch in the specmap. I am going to have to rework the specmap for everything to look right when the texture released. I now am at about 85% to 90% completed at this time. The texture seems to run quite well on my GeForce4 with 128mb of VRAM. I will be trying it out on a NVida Quadro 2 64mb card to see how it works on lower memory and older cards.

Don.

[jim]

Hi Don,

really nice work! But can you make the map a bit brighter ? Another point is the water. The Blue Marble texture has this unnatural blue wather. I noticed you have already modified the water but I think the oceans should look more grey blue and the lakes almost grey maybe with a bit cyan. The blue appearance of earth in Celestia should caused by the haze effect and the blue filter of the cloud map.

This should be a suggestion and not as criticism.

Bye Jens

[Don. Edwards]

Hi Jim,
I might adjust the color a bit more but not from what you are seeing. If I take the coloring in to far in one direction than I will get a half dozen comments about why the texture now looks this way.
When the texture is loaded into Celestia many users see the texture differently depending on there video card and the rendering it can do I have to try and take all these things into consideration. Also I have never seen any picture of the Earth with gray oceans. The oceans on my texture are quite dark as they are from a great distance from the Earth. The texture is not supposed to be an orbital view and those things you mentioned can be adjusted in the solar system.ssc.
Tell you what I will do. I will take the my 8k version of the new texture and make some of the adjustments you mentioned. Then I will load it into Celestia and take some pictures with and without clouds and post them. If you like them and the feed back from everyone else is good than I might consider forking the project into 2 textures. But no promises.

Don.
Don.

[bh]

Don...it's looking quite staggering already!!

Jens...I have to disagree with you about the ocean colour, I've posted on this subject many times:
http://www.rhundley.freeserve.co.uk/earthwater.html

Many of us will be using this texture for orbital views and ocean colour can depend on many things ie. which cloud map you use, atmosphere colour ect.

Don, please leave the ocean colour as you've got it.

Many regards...bh.

[Darkmiss]

I agree with bh.
those last full scale shots look fantastic.

when its all put together, the colour may change on the haze settings,
colour settings, and cloud map.

We should start a collection to buy Don 3gig of ram

Is it ready yet...... is it ready yet....

[Don. Edwards]

Well I did a little experiment with Jim's idea and I have one word.
"PUTRID"
I am sorry Jim but it makes the Earth look as though the oceans are dead and devoid of any life. Have a look.

Jim's idea new texture but at 8k for speed.

With clouds.


Normal new 16k.

Witth clouds.

As you can see there is quite a difference in color and my cloudmap doesn't really make it better or worse. So needless to say I will stay on course as things are. Now I just need to work on the specmap. So much for it scaling up without any artifacts.

Don.

[bh]

Don...looking great already!!

I'm looking forward to seeing the shallow water on this 16k texture...I may be a little over the top with my 8k version...although I won't have the computer power to rack it up to 16k I suspect!!

Would you consider having a go at my waves spec map sometime...just for fun?

It needs a finer pitch on the 'noise' filter...

Regards....bh.

[HankR]

Don,

Very nice work, as usual.

But, I noticed, in the Caribbean, on either side of the Yucatan penninsula, there are these two round white clouds, and above (north of) each of them is a little comma-shaped cloud. Together they look sort of like a pair of eyes with eyebrows. Once you've noticed them, they're hard to miss. It seems fairly obvious that there's been some Photoshop copying here. You might want to try and see if you can make it a bit less obvious.

- Hank

[Don. Edwards]

Those clouds are inherent to the master texture. I never really noticed that they were identical. I will kill them in the texture. I hate patterns like that. Thanks for pointing that out. I can't believe I never noticed it before.

Don.

[Darkmiss]

Don would you mind posting you Earth Colour and haze settings

as i tryed to compare your 8k verision over afghanistan
but on my screen the sands was looking very pink'ish.

[jim]

Hi Don,

I think there was a little misunderstanding. Your colors are very good especially if you look from a large distance. Here are two pictures (Sorry I don't know where I found these on the web).


Now my idea was to include the haze effect and a blue filter by the cloud map to produce these colors. Here is a little demonstration what I mean. I've used your 'jim's-idea1.jpg'-picture for my modifications. I made the water a bit more dark and added a 15% blue filter, a haze effect and your clouds. (The blue filter can be integrated in the cloud map.)



And this is the result:


Now this was a quick work and shall only demonstrate my idea.

I think a 16k map will be viewed from a orbit below 1000km and for this case there are many photos made from space shuttle. These pictures have most times a bit differnt looking than your Earth. Especialy a strong light-blue haze can be often seen.

Now I think it's not easy to build a earth which looks always perfect. See my post as an ispiration. Maybe i will build my own earth sometime ( if my Photoshop crash no longer while saveing large PSD-files ).

Bye Jens

[Don. Edwards]

Hey all,
Well bh wanted to see some closeups of the shallow water areas. So I thought I would post a few.



Jim,
As you said these things can be set in the .scc and should be to the users choice. Inthe following pictures you can see a few things I changed in my cloudmap. The base of the cloudmap was based on Fridger's original bumpmaped cloudmap. I originaly reduced the saturation level so that users could adjust color and haze settings. Well In these pictures I have the saturation turned back up to Fridgers original levels. You will see the diference.



As you can see when you get closer the water does get a gray tint as you get closer but this is because of the specular lighting effects.
More to come.

Don.

[bh]

Don...great stuff. Shallow water areas look so nice at this res. Can you post a pic of the Nile delta/Red Sea? One of my favourite views at the moment.

I doubt if I will be able to combine my 8k shallow water to this Earth texture...a distinct lack of computer power here! But it looks real nice at 16k...well done!

A question. At the moment I'm using release 1.3.0...with no bump mapping. It looks fine to me. I just wondered what your views are on this subject...I guess you will supply a normal map or similar?

Many regards...bh.

[Don. Edwards]

bh,
Actually the texture from Blue-Marble that you based your shallow-water texture on is under-blended under my part of the water texture. The brightness is nowhere near what yours was but it can be seen. Here is an example.


As you can see the detail is there its just muted. Also if anyone notices that all of a sudden the water looks darker it is. Its not in the texture but the specmap. I have been experimenting on making it behave better with the 16k texture. I am sure most of you were noticing how the coastlines were very jagged. I have pretty much fixed this. I was experimenting with the intensity of the specmap by altering the white section to more of a gray tone. It has the effect of making the water darker. Needless to say I will be moving back to a true black and white specmap for further pictures.
Also here is that picture of the Nile you asked for. I left the clouds off and turned off the verbose text just in case you want to something else with the picture.

And lastly this picture will only have meaning for those of us that work with Frank on the NASA stuff.

Well back to work on the texture.

Don.