Celestia Forums

I have made a new Virtual Earth texture from 2 of the 43k Blue Marble textures and scaled up to 64k to fit in Celestia.Unfortunately though to keep a lot of the detail I had to make it in PNG format so it is huge-1.6G .I also added the Arctic to look more real.If you are interested check these pics
http://www.geocities.com/jestrjestr/images/images.html
and you can download it if you have a lot of patience from here
ftp://81.108.220.185
I have also added a JPG version of the above texture which is a lot smaller at 151Mb and also made new levels 8- 10 tiles for Cornwall and parts of Devon,both in UK,check out 'Cornish Coast','Plymouth',and'Torbay' at the above link,
I have also made a DDS version of the above texture but I dont recommend downloading it because it is not very good quality even though levels 0-5 is 1.2G in size.The JPG version is much better and only 540Mb
Have fun Jestr
Any problems E-mail me at jestr@ntlworld.com

Is this a VT?
If not when you make it a VT convert the textur to dds
If so convert the VT to dds
Pleas

I have made a JPEG and PNG version using Ulead smart saver pro to cut the original texture up into tiles,but this program cant handle DDS.I can do it in Photoshop but it will take forever and may be inaccurately chopped up.If anyone else wants to chop it up (using Gimp ?)I have the BMP version of the texture I have made from Blue Marble,so this is 43200x21600,then they can Email me at jestr@ntlworld.com and arrange a way to transfer.I think in BMP it is 2.6G.All the best Jestr

I will convert your textur:D

If someone will anser this one question: HOW DO YOU CONVERT PNG,JPG, OR BMP TO DDS!

Star Lion wrote:I will convert your textur:D

If someone will anser this one question: HOW DO YOU CONVERT PNG,JPG, OR BMP TO DDS!

Use the nxdvt program from here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_texture_tools.html
There is also a Photoshop plugin for opening and saving dds files.

Brendan

Download time: 2 days and 23 hours. On a cable modem.

C'mon! My computer won't go that long without crashing.... I guess I'll have to try.

StarLion,

To convert an image file to .DDS
First use a graphics editor or converter to convert the image to .TGA

Then download the DDS converter from my web site below

extract all the files
place the .TGA image in the same directory
then run the .BAT file

TGA to DDS converter here http://www.bt.homepage.btinternet.co.uk/Files/Celestia/DDSConverter.zip

I'm looking forward to this one...keep it up guys!

Regards...bh.

Downloading soon
I will try to convert this monster VT to dds(Can a G-Force 5900 handle this file?).
I also have one more question, How do you convert to tga without PhotoShop? MS Photo Editor, Gimp?

I went to the 64k blue marble folder, but all that was there was a ton of png files, billybob seems to get it in one file where is that?

If you right click on 'JestrMarble PNG' folder and copy to your hard drive it will download whole folder.If you get cut off mid way you should be able to resume where you left off next time.There isnt much point converting the PNG files to DDS though because I think they will be bigger in file size but not in quality.The best way would be to convert from the full size BMP and chop it up ,(or chop BMP up and then convert to DDS).You'll have to Email me for this though because I dont have room on my server for both.Cheers Jestr

If you right click on 'JestrMarble PNG' folder and copy to your hard drive it will download whole folder.

No the only thing I can do is save a HTML page

left the computer on for a good time last night, and later on when i checked it, it hade like 6 days to go. gonna have to wait for the dds version...

I downloaded up to level 3...and some areas level 4, but it takes much too long to download it entirely -my computer estimated it would still take 8 days. I think DDS has several advantages, since the files are smaller.
Additionally already with level 4 resolution the program gets pretty slow using png if you observe earth in high resolution, I have a 64Mb GeForce 4...png files take longer to load. With dds the program will run faster with a similar quality.
I could convert the files to dds, but no chance to store so many big files online, it would still be 800 MB or so Also I would have to let my computer on a full week to get all the pngs. Hopefully a dds version comes soon.

Cheers for making your texture available Jestr, but I fear it's file size will be too large for most of us to download, and also add to this, the fact that many of us are successfully running either the faster DDS 32k bluemarble, or (if I can remember) a JPG version?

However there may be a simple solution, depending on whether your texture is / or can easily be made compatible with the afore mentioned texture? (It would be nice to see some arctic ice!)

I assume a 64k (or modified 43k ) resolution for the bluemarble would just be like adding the next level of detail to the original 32k texture - I think it is level 6 for the equivalent of 64k?
Maybe it would be better to produce a compatible level 6 detail only in both DDS and JPG formats, which means a smaller download for us all. This could be treated as an 'optional extra' to the original bluemarble texture.

Just an idea!

regards,
TERRIER

P.S. Further to my idea, perhaps downloads for large VT's should be made available, broken down into more 'reasonable' file sizes. Especially the more detailed levels, from level 4 upwards, which I reckon should be kept as separate downloads.

You are right it is like adding another level to the 32k texture however,the colour of the texture made by Walter differs from the original Marble texture and mine does also (I hope the colours are fairly realistic) so to combine this with Walters texture would look odd when you go to the highest level,also as I have included the arctic this would suddenly appear at highest level.My texture only has 5 levels though ,the same as Walters but the tile size is doubled to 1024x1024-this is because level 5 contains 2048 tiles (which takes long enough to make)going to level 6 means 8192 tiles just in level6(nightmare!).I have just tried to convert to DDS up to level3 and it does load a lot easier,but is no better than JPG version (though the files are 3 x bigger).This was only DXT1 though,maybe DXT3 would look better-but this would make the file sizes bigger again.Its a pity its not possible to have an asterisk in the CTX file so you could mix texture formats in virtual textures,all the best Jestr

Hi,

thanks for this 64k monster. I have downloaded the jpg version and it looks great. Especially those level 10 areas in south UK are very, very, very beautiful!

Ciao
Dora

jestr wrote:If you right click on 'JestrMarble PNG' folder and copy to your hard drive it will download whole folder.If you get cut off mid way you should be able to resume where you left off next time.Cheers Jestr

I did it, Jestr, and after some ADSL hours I had the monster in my PC.
But now here is the problem: the image appears as follows:



Where did I make a mistake?
Why the image is so distorted?
I put the ctx and ssc files in the same directories like BlueMarbleVT.
Can you help me?
Thanks a lot.
By

Andrea

check your .ctx at the line :

TileType "png"

maybe was it "jpg" written down ?

I hope so...

Psykotik wrote:check your .ctx at the line :
TileType "png"
maybe was it "jpg" written down ?
I hope so...

Hello Psykotik, here is my JestrMarble JPG.ctx

*******************************
VirtualTexture
{
ImageDirectory "JestrMarble JPG"
BaseSplit 0
TileSize 1024
TileType "jpg"
}
*******************************

and this is my earth64k JPG.ssc

**********************
AltSurface "earth64k JPG" "Sol/Earth"
{
Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
Texture "JestrMarble JPG.ctx"
}
**********************
and the VT files are all .jpg
Any idea?

By and thank you

Andrea