PREVIEW: Earthnight 128 k !

[Fightspit]

Hello, it's my first post and I am creating an Earthnight package of 6 level (0 to 5).
At the time, I've finished the level 0, 1 and 2.

Screenshots and thx to ImageShacks:







It's recommanded to have a speed computer.
Bye!

Ps: sorry for my bad english.

[guest jo]

deleted

[Fightspit]

Sorry , i've discovered ImageShacks for the fisrt time and I'don't know how it run.

[t00fri]

Sorry , i've discovered ImageShacks for the fisrt time and I'don't know how it run.

As far as I am aware, a raw 128k nightlights texture does NOT exist, certainly not from BlueMarble.

It would be useful to quote your raw image sources if you are making previews...

Bye Fridger

[danielj]

t00fri,
How fast do you think the computer must be?
Actually I have an Athlon XP 1800 and 512 MB RAM.In July,I intend to upgrade to an Athlon 64 3000 socket 939 and 1 GB RAM.Do you think this second computer will run 128k VT nightmap?
My video card is a Geforce FX 5700 128 MB for at least more 6 months.
Congratulations for your computer!It??s a very good one.

[t00fri]

t00fri,
How fast do you think the computer must be?
Actually I have an Athlon XP 1800 and 512 MB RAM.In July,I intend to upgrade to an Athlon 64 3000 socket 939 and 1 GB RAM.Do you think this second computer will run 128k VT nightmap?
My video card is a Geforce FX 5700 128 MB for at least more 6 months.
Congratulations for your computer!It??s a very good one.

Daniel,

for doing anything "big" at the texture front, you need at least
3-4GB of RAM + lot's of swap (disk) space. You actually
need much more than me, since you are a "Windows-clicker",
while I usually work on the (Linux) console with my scripts.
The great advantage is that one saves another 500-700 MB
of RAM by not running Windows or the Linux X-server during
VT-cutting etc!

1GB Ram is really too little. With all tricks (that you probably
don't even know) you may barely do 32k texture work...
Please don't forget that Windows takes 500 MB alone to
work well. So you got 500 left, while a 32K file +buffers
need 4000 MB (!!!) of memory to load...I don't have to tell
you how much space you'd need for doing a 128K texture

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Well I have to disagree a little with Fridger here. I have 1.5 gigs of ram and I can work on 32k non-virtual textures with Photoshop CS. Photoshop CS has a better memory manager than version 7 or earlier versions had. This was the main reason I stopped work on my 32k texture 2 years ago was because of RAM issues. You do have to know how to tweak Photoshops settings for scratch disk and memory buffers but once setup you can work on 32k textures without much of a problem. Working on a 128k texture you will probably have to work on it in sections and that can cause problems unto itself. If you are not careful you can get color mis-matches along with seam lines and the list goes on. That is why I alway try to limit my work to at most 2 texture chunks. One single image file is best for keeping everything clean and balanced.

The main thing Fridger failed to answer is that you would be better off with a video card with 256mb of VRAM if you want to start using something that big.
The other thing is were are you going to getting this data from. As he said there isn't any data that create a texture that size as far as I know. If you are just going to blow the 43k texture up to 128k what would be the point of that? You would actualy be loosing detail as the image is being stretched and distorted to the size you wish. This happens to be the opposite of what you would really want.

Don. Edwards

[t00fri]

Well I have to disagree a little with Fridger here. I have 1.5 gigs of ram and I can work on 32k non-virtual textures with Photoshop CS. Photoshop CS has a better memory manager than version 7 or earlier versions had. This was the main reason I stopped work on my 32k texture 2 years ago was because of RAM issues. You do have to know how to tweak Photoshops settings for scratch disk and memory buffers but once setup you can work on 32k textures without much of a problem. Working on a 128k texture you will probably have to work on it in sections and that can cause problems unto itself. If you are not careful you can get color mis-matches along with seam lines and the list goes on. That is why I alway try to limit my work to at most 2 texture chunks. One single image file is best for keeping everything clean and balanced.

The main thing Fridger failed to answer is that you would be better off with a video card with 256mb of VRAM if you want to start using something that big.
The other thing is were are you going to getting this data from. As he said there isn't any data that create a texture that size as far as I know. If you are just going to blow the 43k texture up to 128k what would be the point of that? You would actualy be loosing detail as the image is being stretched and distorted to the size you wish. This happens to be the opposite of what you would really want.

Don. Edwards

Don,

your 1.5 Gig of memory, just fit nicely to my previous estimate: I said you need close to 1 Gig /available/ memory to do work with 32k (I used the console and procedural (batch) operation, hence with my previous PIII/ 1Gig RAM system I practically could use all of the 1GiG of RAM for texture work). You got an extra 500Meg which you use to run PS under Windows. That just fits. Why did you think you disagree with me?

Of course 256Meg cards are better, but if he exclusively concentrates on VT's he can well use 128MEG. But his planned RAM size is definitely too small.

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

I guess I just didn't read it careful enough. Sometimes I go through these posts a little to fast.
You are right though, he is going to need more RAM as am I.
Right now I really pushing the limit. I am also looking at what we in the Windows world need to do once a year. A clean install of XP. I know that there will be some nay-sayers out there but as I work in this field, computer maintanence, things really haven't changed from the days of Win98. But instead of needing to do it twice a year we can get away with a clean install once a year. The main problem is regisrty bloat. Even with really good third party utilities for cleaning the reg files they still get bloated and as time goes by the system needs more memory and resorces. The best fix is to back up important data and format and reinstall. I will doing this I think this coming weekend. I have built myself a custom XP installer DVD that will install almost everything I need while I park my butt in front of the television or go to the Cinima and see Star Wars. I think the latter will do nicely as it is for my birth day.
Well this got off topic. Don't you love when that happens.

Don. Edwards

[danielj]

No,I don??t want to do anything in this texture.I only would like to know if it will work in my Celestia with a decent framerate.

t00fri,
How fast do you think the computer must be?
Actually I have an Athlon XP 1800 and 512 MB RAM.In July,I intend to upgrade to an Athlon 64 3000 socket 939 and 1 GB RAM.Do you think this second computer will run 128k VT nightmap?
My video card is a Geforce FX 5700 128 MB for at least more 6 months.
Congratulations for your computer!It??s a very good one.

Daniel,

for doing anything "big" at the texture front, you need at least
3-4GB of RAM + lot's of swap (disk) space. You actually
need much more than me, since you are a "Windows-clicker",
while I usually work on the (Linux) console with my scripts.
The great advantage is that one saves another 500-700 MB
of RAM by not running Windows or the Linux X-server during
VT-cutting etc!

1GB Ram is really too little. With all tricks (that you probably
don't even know) you may barely do 32k texture work...
Please don't forget that Windows takes 500 MB alone to
work well. So you got 500 left, while a 32K file +buffers
need 4000 MB (!!!) of memory to load...I don't have to tell
you how much space you'd need for doing a 128K texture

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

No,I don??t want to do anything in this texture.I only would like to know if it will work in my Celestia with a decent framerate.

t00fri,
How fast do you think the computer must be?
Actually I have an Athlon XP 1800 and 512 MB RAM.In July,I intend to upgrade to an Athlon 64 3000 socket 939 and 1 GB RAM.Do you think this second computer will run 128k VT nightmap?
My video card is a Geforce FX 5700 128 MB for at least more 6 months.
Congratulations for your computer!It??s a very good one.

Daniel,

for doing anything "big" at the texture front, you need at least
3-4GB of RAM + lot's of swap (disk) space. You actually
need much more than me, since you are a "Windows-clicker",
while I usually work on the (Linux) console with my scripts.
The great advantage is that one saves another 500-700 MB
of RAM by not running Windows or the Linux X-server during
VT-cutting etc!

1GB Ram is really too little. With all tricks (that you probably
don't even know) you may barely do 32k texture work...
Please don't forget that Windows takes 500 MB alone to
work well. So you got 500 left, while a 32K file +buffers
need 4000 MB (!!!) of memory to load...I don't have to tell
you how much space you'd need for doing a 128K texture

Bye Fridger

But the framerate is determined ~ entirely by your graphics card. If you stick to VT's you should be fine with your present card, but certainly a 256MB card is much faster.

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

No,I don??t want to do anything in this texture.I only would like to know if it will work in my Celestia with a decent framerate.

But the framerate is determined almost entirely by your graphics card.
If your continue with your old card on the new computer, not really much will change. The CPU speedand RAM is only of secondary importance for the graphics performance!

If you stick to VT's you should be fine with your present card, but certainly a modern (and quite expensive) 256MB card is much faster.

Bye Fridger

[danielj]

Are you kidding?You are saying that increasing the memory is useless.But I always listen that Celestia needs video card power AND MEMORY!

No,I don??t want to do anything in this texture.I only would like to know if it will work in my Celestia with a decent framerate.

But the framerate is determined almost entirely by your graphics card.
If your continue with your old card on the new computer, not really much will change. The CPU speedand RAM is only of secondary importance for the graphics performance!

If you stick to VT's you should be fine with your present card, but certainly a modern (and quite expensive) 256MB card is much faster.

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

Are you kidding?You are saying that increasing the memory is useless.But I always listen that Celestia needs video card power AND MEMORY!

No,I don??t want to do anything in this texture.I only would like to know if it will work in my Celestia with a decent framerate.

But the framerate is determined almost entirely by your graphics card.
If your continue with your old card on the new computer, not really much will change. The CPU speedand RAM is only of secondary importance for the graphics performance!

If you stick to VT's you should be fine with your present card, but certainly a modern (and quite expensive) 256MB card is much faster.

Bye Fridger

No, I am not kidding: I said CPU power and RAM are of secondary importance. Means, not entirely unimportant, but not decisive for good performance. After all, almost the entire graphics processing is done in the GPU of your card, NOT in the main computer. Of course for running the Celestia engine well (which involves a lot of math), you also require a certain minimum of RAM and a fast enough CPU. Probably 512MB is NOT quite enough. So you may expect some improvement with 1GB, but not really very much, I am afraid!

Why don't you just watch the memory consumption in your present machine while Celestia is running (with the standard XP tool). If you operate very close to the maximum, 1 GB will help to improve significantly. Otherwise NOT.


Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

Not sure he is getting the idea here. Celestia's core application only needs so much memory to run. But when you start loading large textures these are cached up into RAM and than into your video cards memory buffer being it a mere 32mb all the way up to 256mb. The more memory your graphics card has is the true determination of how big of textures you can use and how many of them.
Another issue is memory bandwidth. Not all nVidia cards are the same. The memory bandwidth on an FX 5200 is about half of what it is on a FX 5900.
This determines how fast those textures can get loaded into the cards memory and how fast the GPU can access the image data for redrawing the scene or loading a new texture. As an example, the venerable GeForce TI 4600 had a memory bandwidth of 10GB/sec. of memory bandwidth. The FX 5200 has about the same were the FX 5900 series has 23GB/sec. memory bandwidth and the is on the XT model not the GT or Ultra model. Now there are differences with the newer GeForce 6 family. In some cases the memory bandwidth is lower than the FX 5900 but because there are more rendering pipelines and faster GDDR3 memory chips this all balances out.

danielj,
The weakest link in your system is the amount of system RAM you have and the video card. Moving to an Athlon 64 will speed up some applications but if you are doing this upgrade for the sake of using it for Celestia your money could and should be spend more wisely. The Athlon 64 is a fast CPU but its 64bit instructions will do you no good when it comes to Celestia. If you are considering moving to the 64bit version of Windows XP in the process you may find it more troublesome than advantageous. The 64bit version of XP has some major compatibility problems with some software and certain programs actually run slower in the 64bit version than the standard version. Windows XP 64bit still has a long way to go. I could list a slew of problems that are cropping up with this version of Windows but I won?€™t. The other issue is if you insist on moving to the Athlon 64 DO NOT BUY a socket 754 based CPU and motherboard. AMD is ?€?End Of Lifeing?€

[Fightspit]

Toofri say:

As far as I am aware, a raw 128k nightlights texture does NOT exist, certainly not from BlueMarble.

It would be useful to quote your raw image sources if you are making previews...

Bye Fridger

My original picture is here: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?vev1id=5826 (16384x8192)

Then I selected a zone of earth to do a new picture called tx_X_X at level0
but it's at 8192x8192.
With Photoshops Elements 2.0 I can decrease the picture's size to 2048x2048.
And then, at the level 3 to 5, the tx_X_X 's size is < 2048x2048 but i can increase the picture size (for example 1024x024 to 2048x2048).


bye!

[Fightspit]

If you want, I can delete 1 or 2 levels for people who doesn 't have a speed computer (i can upload the three level (0,1,2)).
Or, I can decrease the picture size (2048x2048 to 1024x1024 or to 512x512)and there will be 6 level (0 to 5).
What do you think ?

Bye.

[t00fri]

Toofri say:

As far as I am aware, a raw 128k nightlights texture does NOT exist, certainly not from BlueMarble.

It would be useful to quote your raw image sources if you are making previews...

Bye Fridger

I use Photoshops Elements 2.0 and I can increase the resolution of a picture (for example :to transform a 1024x1024 to 2048x2048).
And you can have a picture with more pixels.

bye!

One moment of thinking will tell you that this is not a very clever idea, indeed. It is of course not the number of pixels that is relevant in a texture, but rather the imaging information contained in one pixel. You are just blowing up the original texture thus creating to yourself a huge amount of useless work, while the information content in your blown-up texture remained unchanged!

In addition, from an image manipulation point of view, blowing up images is much more damaging to quality than scaling down an image in size. In case you know just a bit of math, the reason is that interpolation is much safer than /extrapolation/...

Just in case, you did not really get my point, here is an example:



Now using your software you may double the pixels horizontally and vertically such that the image now contains 4 times as many pixels than the original. Yet the sharpness and information content has not improved whatsoever! While there are routines that may smooth a bit the doubled identical pixels by exploiting information in neighbory pixels, you can never GAIN this way...




Bye Fridger

[Fightspit]

Toofri say:

As far as I am aware, a raw 128k nightlights texture does NOT exist, certainly not from BlueMarble.

It would be useful to quote your raw image sources if you are making previews...

Bye Fridger

I use Photoshops Elements 2.0 and I can increase the resolution of a picture (for example :to transform a 1024x1024 to 2048x2048).
And you can have a picture with more pixels.

bye!

One moment of thinking will tell you that this is not a very clever idea, indeed. It is of course not the number of pixels that is relevant in a texture, but rather the imaging information contained in one pixel. You are just blowing up the original texture thus creating to yourself a huge amount of useless work, while the information content in your blown-up texture remained unchanged!

In addition, from an image manipulation point of view, blowing up images is much more damaging to quality than scaling down an image in size. In case you know just a bit of math, the reason is that interpolation is much safer than /extrapolation/...

Bye Fridger

I edited my post, read the second time and sorry for that.

[Fightspit]

But, if you reduced the second picture as the first, there are more detail than the first .