Celestia Forums

Ok everyone. The Realistic Earth 32k texture has reached a fork in the road. Meaning the texture is now in two distinct forms. Actually meaning there are now four pieces to the puzzle. I have my original with a somewhat cleaned up ocean layer carried over from my 16k texture. The other was a slight diversionary experiment that seems to be a better choice. It already has the oceans cleared of the large blocks of color that are a remnant from the Space-Graphics original. I went back to the source, BlueMarble and enlarged the ev11612_land_ocean_ice_8192.tiff to 32k, well really two 16k tiles. After a few tweaks of color and saturation I now have an ocean that is for the most part clean if just a little lighter in some areas. I can get away with enlarging the water like this because the water has no fine detail. Only the land masses have the detail. So here is what I need input on. Should I go with the new textures or the old. Also I need to know to know witch is better for Antarctica. Antarctica with pack ice all around it or the more summer time look of no pack ice. There is also some changes to the ice in the north as well but its not as big a deal I feel. So here are two sample shots of the western hemisphere that demonstrate the changes. Look them over and give me a little feed back as to witch is better.


Original 32k west side



New 32k west side


Don. Edwards

Howdy Don,

Doing a side-by-side comparison of the two images above, here are my comments...

* The ocean in the new one seems to be darker. Hmmm, everything seems to be darker, including the land masses. Or is it a higher contrast?

* I like the "cleaned up" water of the new one.

* I like the ice on the old one (less). But, which one is most realistic?

* I like the land and water colors on the old one (a bit lighter), but again, which one is most realistic?

-Don G.

Overall I like the new one better. I actually like the pack ice around Antarctica.

Just my 2 cents.

I agree with wazoqaz's point of view... I also like the water color near de poles landmasses

As usual, you are doing a great job Don

Personally I like everything about the new one.
I like the Ocean Colouring, the packed Ice around the south,
and the land colour too.

New 32k west side, Gets my vote.

Great work Don

Hi Don,

As you know I like your textures, but since you ask I will give my comments hoping it will help you improve them even further! I like the changes to the northern ice shelf, I am not sure about the variant to choose for southern ice, but the deciding factor should be reality (if anyone can find what it looks like in reality...). I liked the slightly redder south west US and Afirica deserts in the old one. And I wonder if the deep ocean should not have the same uniform colour everywhere. That's it, I hope it will help.

Hello Don...I like the new one.

Regards...bh.

Hey Buzz, Darkmiss, bh, praesepe and everyone else,
Well I have looked at what’s been said I think the second variant is the one to use. Of course there will be further adjustments made. As Buzz noted about the color, actually they have the same tonal value but the saturation is set higher in the older version. I intended to include a color identical sets of pictures but it takes five minutes just to load these textures into Photoshop. Every time I make a change and save it, it takes about seven to ten minutes to save the changes. You can see why this is going to take a while and when I went to do a capture Photoshop went and did an accidental undo so I lost my settings for the shot. So I just used the image I already had of the first texture. Buzz & wazoqaz also noted the difference in the ice around the south polar region. I will be clipping most of this out the keep the texture with a more seasonal neutral feel. So the texture will approximate early summer north and early winter south. I will only be doing this with the 32k texture. I still plan on making seasonal textures for Earth and I will be making those at the 16k level and lower only. It would just take to long to try and implement that into the big 32k. It would mean there would at least four variants of the 32k texture. That would give it an equivalent size to a 64k texture. Remember texture sizes when going from one size to the next isn't a simple doubling of size but a quadrupling of the texture size. Meaning a 32k is in reality is 4x the size of a 16k texture. Now you know how this can kill a graphic’s cards performance and bring even a fast 2GHz+ computer to its knees in Photoshop while editing these monsters. Now the ocean color, I personally think I have the color about right. But I may take some of the lighter coloring down just a tad. In order to test the coloring of the texture I plan on sizing the western half down to 8k x 8k and superimposing it over my older 16k. I can then take a few shots of it in Celestia and post them so everyone can get an idea of what it should look like on there systems, color wise at least. I believe the lighter coloring in the polar areas are there for many reasons. It is not caused by the depth but I believe the lighter color is a result in the massive amounts of plankton that grow in the colder waters. I believe when NASA colored and created the texture this is only one of the many things they had in mind. So I don’t want to get rid of it totally as that would take us right back to the plain dark oceans we have on the plain 42k texture halves that were used to create this thing in the first place. It would have been nice if they could have just posted all there various textures they have at all the resolutions but they only the oceans/landmass texture. So I have to add what they left off and bring it up to size. So if all goes well in next couple of days I will post a few shots of the texture at 16k to demonstrate the coloring of the texture. Then I will go back to work and finish the western hemisphere and then start the eastern hemisphere.

BTW,
Some of you may be wondering what all the big deal is with making these textures as they seem to be pre-built already. Well one of the most time consuming things about working on the BlueMarble texture is the coloring they used for the oceans. You see I have to totally remove the oceans from the texture leaving me with nice transparent oceans instead. This also takes 90% of the lakes color out as well. When I superimpose the transparent landmass texture over my chosen ocean texture the alignment is perfect but there are major artifacts left behind in the process. You see, most of the BlueMarble textures if you look real close look like the continents are outlined in black. So when I paste the textures together all the coastal areas have black around them. If you have Walton’s 32k virtual texture or even my 16k texture if you load it and look around the northern landmasses you will see this black trimming. Now I did my best to remove as much to it as possible but I have found that there are a few places on my 16k texture were I missed this. Working at the 32k level I can remove even more. So the 16k texture that get based off this 32k beast will be nearly perfect because nearly all this black will be gone except in the cases were the land is so dark that it really makes no difference.
Here are some samples that show what I am talking about.





As you can see the difference is quite dramatic and the end result beautiful.
These picture are taken in Photoshop at 50% size so this is equal to 16k level of detail.
It gives you a good idea of what the 32k will look like. Well I think that covers things for now. Keep an eye on this section for more news and updates as I can see making a new thread for this topic until the release is ready however I manage to do that.

Don. Edwards

Thanks for this extensive answer Don! And WOW, you did a very good job on the black coasts removal, beautiful!

Wow, that is indeed a drastic difference! GREAT work!

Thanks for the explanation of your process Don!

-Don G.

Very beautiful.

So will this texture become your new Earth version 3 ?
Replacing the 16, 8, and 4k versons too ?

and will this be Virtual, single or both ?

Well at this point there will be a full 16k version as well as lower resolutions based on it. They will be the belated update I promised a few months back.
The packaging of the 32k texture is still in the air. I still am not sure how I am going to package it. Right now, as said earlier before it broken into two separate textures. I will probably break it down into eight pieces minimum and package it up and see if someone else wants to break it down further into a set of virtual textures. Or I may give it a try my self. But I still need the tools for carving it up into such small tiles. The conversion to .dds won't be too difficult I think. This is another reason I put out the flag for help but as of yet no one has offered to help. So we will have to just wait and see.

Don. Edwards

Don,

the black seam of the Blue Marvel texture is indeed astonishing. Looks like they did an alpha blend against a black background instead of the ocean ...

Your version looks much better, except for the turquise spots in the river delta.

Do you know the MODIS images at http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime?

You might find a comparison of your texture with these images helpful to get even more realistic. I've put together some links of flyovers with the Amazonas delta centered, at various dates this year with changing mud washout, sun reflection and clouds (annoying here, but well):

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003155/crefl1_143.A2003155135001-2003155135500.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003171/crefl1_143.A2003171135000-2003171135459.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003187/crefl1_143.A2003187135000-2003187135500.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003203/crefl1_143.A2003203135001-2003203135501.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003219/crefl1_143.A2003219135000-2003219135500.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003235/crefl1_143.A2003235135001-2003235135500.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003251/crefl1_143.A2003251135000-2003251135500.1km.jpg
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2003267/crefl1_143.A2003267135001-2003267135500.1km.jpg

These images are quite raw, without atmospheric corrections (and without correction for geometric distortion, see http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/faq/faq.cgi#06 and following), so to my understanding they should be pretty close to what a human spectator would perceive visually.

Concerning the river delta, all images show a solid brown color all through the delta, sometimes with reddish-brown structures, but no turquise.

What do you think?
Wolfgang

If you take a closer look to my first texture you wil see the water in the delta is the right coloring. I did mess around a little with the second one. But as I said there is always some adjustments to make and nothing in this texture is written in stone thus far.
I can easily remuddy the waters to the original specs.

Don. Edwards

Don,

I thought I'd include a list of errata I've noticed in the BM texture that need to be fixed. I assume you've seen these already but I'm making a note of them 'just in case'.

1) Horizontal noise in the South Pacific.
2) Last several southernmost pixels are all black when they should be white. This creates a very small hole in the south pole. Or perhaps the hollow earthers are right after all.
3) There is a black patch of water along the eastern Antartic coast due south of Madagascar.
4) Harder to fix is the square patchwork throughout the Arabian Empty Quarter.

cheers,
Walton

wcomer,
My textures already have any of the ocean problems removed because I simply deleted the entire color that was the ocean in the main texture. This of course only left the landmasses, the shallow waters, and the darn black borders around them. I then layer this on top of a texture that has the oceans I want. That’s how I am able to give the water the slightly marbled look and maintain the high resolution of the landmasses. Since the water has no real detail when zooming in I can get away with this. At a level 5 32k texture we are still not at the level were we can see waves on the ocean. As for the line in the Antarctic that will get, or has already been cleaned up when I tinted the Antarctic white again. So this shouldn't be visible. But thanks for the pointers on were to look for glitches. If you come across any others please let me know and I will see if somehow I can compensate for them.

Don. Edwards

Well everyone,
I have good news and I have some bad news.
Bad news first. I have lost my cable modem conection and will have to live with dail-up for a while. Its going to be tough but I think I will survive.
Now the good news is that I have an early screen-shot of what the coloring of the 32k and new 16k texture will look like. I have nearly finished with the western hemisphere and hopefully will be getting started on the easrern hemisphere with in the week. The reason its taking so long is that I have four times the coastline to clean up and its dlow going. So without making you all waite I wanted to at least give everyone the promised sample shot of the coloring I am using. So here it is.



Now I now some of you may thing this is looking a little to on the purple side but really it is no where near as purple as the original Blue-Marble textures.
And now for a picture that will no doubt freak some of you out have a look at this.

The left side is my original 16k Earht texture and the new coloring on the right. So have a look.



Now I now this may look bad but really its not as bad as it looks and if everyone thinks it is really too on purple side I can easily tweak it the other way.
So let me know what you think and I will go from there.

Don. Edwards

Hi Don,

I don't want to criticize your great work, but since you asked: You predicted it right, I like the "old" blue on the left better...

Don. Edwards wrote:...the good news is that I have an early screen-shot of what the coloring of the 32k and new 16k texture will look like. Now I now some of you may thing this is looking a little to on the purple side but really it is no where near as purple as the original Blue-Marble textures.
And now for a picture that will no doubt freak some of you out have a look at this.
The left side is my original 16k Earht texture and the new coloring on the right. So have a look.Now I now this may look bad but really its not as bad as it looks and if everyone thinks it is really too on purple side I can easily tweak it the other way.
So let me know what you think and I will go from there.
Don. Edwards

Don, first of all thank you for the incredible work you've done .
Second, you are the author, so the final decision must be your one, as you prefer .
Third, my opinion is that probably the best colouring is in the middle, I mean a bit less purple than the right side, a bit darker than the left one .
But, as I told, it's only my feeling, so if you let it as is on right, it's OK for me .
And fourth, please, Don, even if the images you put in the forum are exceptional and even if you advice that this post contains very big images, I waited a very very long time , even with ADSL, to see both of them on my screen .
Could it be possible to have smaller image clips , that in my opinion can equally give the idea of final results?
Thank you again .
By

Andrea

Hello Don
Its great to see this project nearing its completion.

As for the colouring, Im with Andrea on this one.
I too think it should be somwhere in between, bordering on the darker version.