Celestia Forums

I have a nice hi-res image of S. Marco Square and Doge's Palace in Venice (Italy) so I decided to improve the already existing kinderino's level6-7-8-9-10 containing the same area.
I followed this procedure:
1- using "Jim" Jens Meyer's spreadsheet VT-tile-calculator, I found the image codes for the relevant area, for both levels 11 and 12;
2- using PhotoShop CS2 I converted to .jpg the single kinderino's 2048x2048 level10 image, divided it in four 1024x1024, and resized each ot these to 4 2048x2048 level11 images;
3- found the right one, I pasted on it the hiresimage, with same resolution as level11, and saved it as level11;
4- divided it in four 1024x1024 images, and resized each ot these to four 2048x2048 level12 images;
5- on the right one I pasted the original hires image, with the same resolution of the level12 one.
At this point I had four level11 and one level12 images, that I converted again to .dds format using XNView 1.83, and put in the level11 and level12 subdirectories of BlueMarble DDS.
The problem is that I don't reach those levels, when I go closer nothing happens.
I use CelestiaFT1.2 and latest Nvidia drivers.
Where did I make a mistake?
Don't think it's in converting dds to jpg and viceversa, my new .dds filea are all 2049kb, like kinderino's level10 dds files.
The exact coordinates of my hires image center are:
longitude 12.33800 latitude 45.41900 and here the file names containing these coordinates:
tx_1094_253.dds level10
tx_2190_520.dds level11
tx_4381_1039.dds level12.
Please help me, I was enjoyng doing this, and would like to go on.
Bye and thank you

Andrea

Hi Andrea,it seems that levels11 and 12 are not working in Celestia FT1.2 (dont know about FT1.1 though).Try them in Celestia V1.4.0 pre6,they should work fine,Jestr

jestr wrote:Hi Andrea,it seems that levels11 and 12 are not working in Celestia FT1.2 (dont know about FT1.1 though).Try them in Celestia V1.4.0 pre6,they should work fine,Jestr

Thanks a lot for your info, Jestr.
I'll try with FT1.1, may be they'll be OK, otherwise I'll cross to 1.4.0pre6.
Bye

Andrea

Added later: no, FT1.1 gives the same problem.

Just a info.
1.4.0pre7 works well

When can we see your work ?

jdou wrote:Just a info.
1.4.0pre7 works well
When can we see your work ?

jdou, immadiately after I'll be sure that the images codes are OK, because I have some doubt.
I have tried with 1.4.0pre6, doesn't work.
So now I'll try with 1.4.0pre7, and then I'll inform.
Bye soon

Andrea

Andrea,if it isnt working in V1.4.0 pre6,I think you must have an error somewhere,I have thousands of level12 tiles of the south UK and they work fine in Celestia 1.4.0 pre6 (pre7 cant show Nebulae,so I dont use it).Jestr

jestr,

Pre7 has no problems displaying Nebulae if you turn them on.

It's not yet in the Render/ViewOptions menu, but the keyboaard shortcut
"^" = "caret" toggles Nebula display.
(probably "caret space" on keyboards that support diacritical marks.)

Thanks Selden,for the info,I thought it was something like that but didnt know which key to press,cheers,Jestr

jestr wrote:Andrea,if it isnt working in V1.4.0 pre6,I think you must have an error somewhere,I have thousands of level12 tiles of the south UK and they work fine in Celestia 1.4.0 pre6 (pre7 cant show Nebulae,so I dont use it).Jestr

At this point I suppose that the problem is in the images names/codes.
Can someone check it for me?
I've tried again, but I obtain the same results, the ones given in my first post:
longitude 12.33800 latitude 45.41900 and here the file names containing these coordinates:
tx_1094_253.dds level10
tx_2190_520.dds level11
tx_4381_1039.dds level12.
Obviously I'm making some mistake, but I don't find it.
Thank you very much.
Bye

Andrea

Hi Andrea,assuming the level10 tile number is correct,the level11 and 12 look wrong to me.If level10 is
tx_1094_253,then level11 from this should be

tx_2188_506,tx_2189_506
tx_2188_507,tx_2189_507

and the level12's

tx_4376_1012, tx_4377_1012, tx_4378_1012, tx_4379_1012
tx_4376_1013, tx_4377_1013, tx_4378_1013, tx_4379_1013
tx_4376_1014, tx_4377_1014, tx_4378_1014, tx_4379_1014
tx_4376_1015, tx_4377_1015, tx_4378_1015, tx_4379_1015

it sounds like you dont need all of these level11 and 12 tiles,but the ones you want should be amongst them,cheers Jestr

jestr wrote:Hi Andrea,assuming the level10 tile number is correct,the level11 and 12 look wrong to me.If level10 is
tx_1094_253,then level11 from this should be

tx_2188_506,tx_2189_506
tx_2188_507,tx_2189_507
and the level12's
tx_4376_1012, tx_4377_1012, tx_4378_1012, tx_4379_1012
tx_4376_1013, tx_4377_1013, tx_4378_1013, tx_4379_1013
tx_4376_1014, tx_4377_1014, tx_4378_1014, tx_4379_1014
tx_4376_1015, tx_4377_1015, tx_4378_1015, tx_4379_1015
it sounds like you dont need all of these level11 and 12 tiles,but the ones you want should be amongst them,cheers Jestr

Wow jestr, it seems I'm absolutely wrong.
It's better for me to try to better understand that spreadsheet.
Thanks a lot, I'll check and upload the relevant tiles.
Bye

Andrea

Though I'm sure the spreadsheet is helpful if you understand it, I tend to just do the tile calculations in my head. You just need to remember that the resolution doubles at each level, with the tile #'s doing similarly. So the tiles that represent a higher res tile end up being the old tiles values x2, and x2+1

So for tx_1094_253....

1094x2=2188
1094x2+1=2189
253x2=506
253x2+1=507

So as Jestr pointed out the tile for the upper left portion of the tx_1094_253 at the next level would be...

tx_2188_506
tx_2189_506
tx_2188_507
tx_2189_507

Kolano wrote:Though I'm sure the spreadsheet is helpful if you understand it, I tend to just do the tile calculations in my head. You just need to remember that the resolution doubles at each level, with the tile #'s doing similarly. So the tiles that represent a higher res tile end up being the old tiles values x2, and x2+1

Thank you Kolano, now things are a bit more clear in my mind.
Appreciated!
Bye

Andrea

Well, I modified the filenames, and now it works OK, thank you jestr and kolano.
But I have another problem: the image quality is lower when the image is seen in Celestia.
I mean that the Celestia image seems less than half-resolution than the same image as seen in XnView or PhotoShop CS2.
I have a powerful graphic card now, so this should not be the reason why.
Perhaps it's due to my file conversions, i.e dds to jpg->jpg to dds?
I would like to see the Venetian gondolas in Celestia, as I see them in PS or Xn.
Someone can help me, please?
Bye

Andrea

Andrea,

Unfortunately, DDS has a limited number of colors, and JPEG compression throws away both resolution and colors. Converting between those formats makes images even worse.

If at all possible, you should try to start with a very high quality image in a lossless storage format (like PNG, BMP, or TIFF) and do all of your image manipulations in that format. If you have to start with a lossy format like DDS or JPEG, translate it into a lossless format before resizing, merging or cutting the image into pieces. Only the very last step should be to translate the final image into the format that you'll be using with Celestia.

selden wrote:Andrea, Unfortunately, DDS has a limited number of colors, and JPEG compression throws away both resolution and colors. Converting between those formats makes images even worse. If at all possible, you should try to start with a very high quality image in a lossless storage format (like PNG, BMP, or TIFF) and do all of your image manipulations in that format. If you have to start with a lossy format like DDS or JPEG, translate it into a lossless format before resizing, merging or cutting the image into pieces. Only the very last step should be to translate the final image into the format that you'll be using with Celestia.

Hello Selden, surely I had some doubt regarding dds-jpg conversion, but I was absolutely unaware that dds was the weak point to be checked.
In my mind I always thought that this format was the best one for Celestia, without compromises regarding color number or quality.
Well, everyday we learn something new, so now I'll start again, following your suggestions and converting my original hi-res image in .png or tiff (but before this I will check in the Web, if I don't mistake I found a page with this Venice image in various formats, and I'm almost sure it was in .tif too).
Thanks a lot, Selden, you are truly helpfull!
Bye

Andrea

Andrea,there are quite a few different types of DDS files.The best I think is DXT3,which can also handle an alpha channel (useful for specular map).When I have tried DXT1 the colours seem to be more limited.Jestr

jestr wrote:Andrea,there are quite a few different types of DDS files.The best I think is DXT3,which can also handle an alpha channel (useful for specular map).When I have tried DXT1 the colours seem to be more limited.Jestr

Jestr, this was one of the (few) things I understood very well, following the long topics on DXT1-DXT3 subject, more than 1 year ago.
And for this reason I saved my level 11-12 files as DXT3, but bad results were due to the original problem of the jpg file.
Hope to have the wished results in a short time.
Thank you anyhow for the information, very kind and appreciated.
Bye

Andrea

My understanding is that only the DDS A8R8G8B8 and R8G8B8 formats preserve 24bit colors. The other formats all reduce the number of bits available to one or more of the three (RGB) color channels.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defau ... format.asp

selden wrote:My understanding is that only the DDS A8R8G8B8 and R8G8B8 formats preserve 24bit colors. The other formats all reduce the number of bits available to one or more of the three (RGB) color channels.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defau ... format.asp

Selden, this brings me to another question: being dds files not so good as the uncompressed ones, can .png files be mixed with .dds ones?
I mean, while BlueMarble DDS is, obviously, done with .dds textures up to level10, can level11 and 12 be made of .png textures?
This could solve the problem, IMHO, but I have many doubts on this possibility.
Is it possible? Please tell me "yes"!
Thanks a lot

Andrea