16k earth nightmap

[JackHiggins]

Someone may have done this before i'd be interested to know...

On the blue marble site, there is a 30k earth night map available (grayscale gif) Some time ago I downloaded it, but never actually did anything with it... Today I shrunk it down to 16k, and saved it as a 0 quality JPG in photoshop (Still over 1MB) I've actually never used a 16k texture before!

Here are the results...



(Note the dark patch where North Korea is, and compare that to the south...)

Anyway I wonder has anyone made a 32k night earth map, or a reasonably sized 16k dds version? I haven't really heard much talk about the earth nightmap ever, just wanted to get everyones opinion...

[billybob884]

I think it looks incredible! When will it be available?

[JackHiggins]

Um... well... I can put it up for download on my site in a while if you want...? Are you sure you want a 0 quality jpeg though?!! (It took about 10 minutes to load for me!)

I have an 8k version as well (loads in about 1 1/2 minutes for me) which is actually pretty similar quality (7/12 quality jpeg)

Tell me which one you want & i'll put it up on my site later!

[praesepe]

Woah!

This nightmap looks absolutely detailed! You can almost see lots of city lights along the coastline (I specially like the one on the first shot, in which appears Spain and specially the Mediterranean coastline )

Um... well... I can put it up for download on my site in a while if you want...? Are you sure you want a 0 quality jpeg though?!! (It took about 10 minutes to load for me!)

Umm, ten minutes is a long time to wait.. may be compreessing it to dds will do the trick, I'd love to have that 16K texture running on my Celestia

[JackHiggins]

On second thoughts, why not? I'll put up both of them later on tonight! I might make a 4k version also...

[Darkmiss]

Jack, if you convert them to a DDS map they should load a lot faster.

if not i could convert them for you and send them back to you.

[JackHiggins]

My dds converter plugin for photoshop has stopped working (GREAT... ) so if you could convert them that'd be great. They'll probably be huge though (my dds files always are, but I could be doing something wrong...)

I'll email them to you in a while so- but if you want you can just get the original huge gif from the blue marble site & do it yourself (i haven't modified it in any way just resized it)

Also I exaggerated originally- the 16k takes 6 minutes & 17 seconds to load for me, and another 50 seconds or so before time starts to go forward again... I only get a frame every 5 seconds while viewing earth!!

[JackHiggins]

Ah well why not...

Get the 0/12 quality jpeg 16k version here (used in the first screenshots):
http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackhiggins ... ght16k.zip

or the 7/12 quality jpeg 8k version:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackhiggins ... ight8k.zip

(I discovered some free space on my old server...)

Both are around 600kb

If someone wants to make dds versions, you should probably work from the original at BM. I would be very ineterested to see if someone could make a 32k version (the detail would be incredible!)

[praesepe]

Jack,

I can give a try with the larger sizes if you want Would you mind to post the BM links of those "monster" textures?

Thanks

[Darkmiss]

I wouldn't be able to do the 16k texture as my system just dies when i try.
not powerful enough

Don E. and Praesepe, both have system capable of 16k conversions

So here is the direct link to the Blue marble 16k tiff
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/data/ev58/ev5826_land_lights_16384.tif

and the 8k is here
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/data/ev58/ev5826_land_ocean_ice_lights_8192.tif

Im not too keen on the bright blue areas of this texture though.
just seens too bright to me.

[JackHiggins]

This is the 30k gif i worked from:

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/data/ev58/ ... tearth.gif

tiffs always have huge file sizes...

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

(Note the dark patch where North Korea is, and compare that to the south...)

Holy crap! I knew they were somewhat behind technologically (well, nuclear reactors aside ), but that shows it rather spectacularly! (Unless they either have stupidly efficient street lighting, or curfews that mean nobody's awake at all anywhere after sunset. Who knows.)

[JackHiggins]

(Note the dark patch where North Korea is, and compare that to the south...)

Holy crap! I knew they were somewhat behind technologically (well, nuclear reactors aside ), but that shows it rather spectacularly! (Unless they either have stupidly efficient street lighting, or curfews that mean nobody's awake at all anywhere after sunset. Who knows.)

I heard this mentioned on the radio recently too... When all of your budget goes into the military, & your population is still living in medieval standards, it's easy to understand how north korea looks so dark at night... Good for astronomy though!

[Guest]

Jack...bh here...sorry log in problems again! Your dds converter has stopped working? Is it the photoshop plug-in? Mine stopped on 8k textures a while back...just stopped! I wonder why?

I've yet to try the latest Nvidia drivers...about an 18 meg download. I hope this might work but I doubt it somehow. The plug-in was working fine and seemed to stop all on it's own! Wierd!

I can still open a texture and SAVE to 8k...I just can't see the results.

I must post Doug.

Regards...bh.

[JackHiggins]

Jack...bh here...sorry log in problems again! Your dds converter has stopped working? Is it the photoshop plug-in? Mine stopped on 8k textures a while back...just stopped! I wonder why?

I've yet to try the latest Nvidia drivers...about an 18 meg download. I hope this might work but I doubt it somehow. The plug-in was working fine and seemed to stop all on it's own! Wierd!

I can still open a texture and SAVE to 8k...I just can't see the results.

I must post Doug.

Regards...bh.

Yup it's the PS plugin... I get an "error in the file format something" when i try to load textures, and when I try to save it's an "unsupported input format" error... AAHH!!

I got the latest version of the plugin about a week ago too... (double AAHH!!!!)

Yes I hope doug can help; where would I be without my dds conversions...? The world of JPEGS is just isn't detailed enough...

[Darkmiss]

Try the DOS NV Tools, it works very well.
but on my system only up to 8k sizes.

http://www.bt.homepage.btinternet.co.uk/Files/DDsTextureConverter.zip

Just edit the bat file to be able to convert from JPG, or PNG, TIF, TGA or BMP.
It is currently set to TGA.

And edit the bat file for dds compression rate, 1, 1a, 1c, 3, or 5.
it is cuurently set to 1.

[praesepe]

Ok, here are the shots of the 16K version:

[JackHiggins]

Is that your 16k version or mine?

[praesepe]

It is a resized version of the 30K map at visibleearth ( http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/data/ev58/ ... tearth.gif ) at 16K and dds format

[JackHiggins]

rocking- what size is it?