32k BlueMarble Virtual Earth Texture is now available

[selden]

bh,

I'm beginning to think there may be some bugs in how the virtual textures are being loaded. For example, when I first tried it and was looking at the whole globe at a distance of about 30,000 km, it frequently would flash white over most (but not all) of the visible surface of the globe.

This stopped happening after I moved all of the other addons into a different directory where Celestia couldn't find them.

FWIW, here's the ssc I'm currently using. I'm sure some of the entries don't do anything.

Code: Select all

AltSurface "BlueMarble DDS" "Sol/Earth"
{
   Color [ 0.6 0.6 1.0 ]
   Texture "BlueMarble DDS.ctx"

   NightTexture "earthnight.*"

   BumpMap "earthbump.*"
   BumpHeight 4.5

   SpecularTexture "earthspec.*"
   Color [ 0.85 0.85 1.0 ]
   SpecularColor [ 0.5 0.5 0.55 ]
   SpecularPower 25.0
   HazeColor [ 1 1 1 ]
   HazeDensity 0.3

}

System:
256MB 500MHz P3, WinXP Pro SP1
128MB GF4 Ti4200, Detonator 44.03 whql, OpenGL 1.4
Celestia v1.3.1pre9

[DJ_Night]

fsgregs,

This was addressed earlier in the topic, but the thread has gotten long so I'm not surprised you didn't find it.

You can fix the blurriness by editing your .ctx file. Change the TileSize from 512 to 256 or even 128. This will cause Celestia to pick up higher resolution layers at higher altitudes. /Walton

thanks Walton, it now looks great and sharp and still Loads/runs way faster then a single 16k/32k texture even with a lower TileSize Value such as 128, I could explore this beutiful planet for ages.

[jim]

Hi Walton,

Can you build a 32k specular map from the 42k blue marble texture? I know that's an immense work but it seams that we need urgendly a specular map for your 'BlueMarble Virtual Texture'. My level6 and level7 addons for your texture need a basic specular virtual texture.
Sorry I can't do this job at the moment because can't get the blue marble texture (dialup).

If realy nobody can provide a good 16k or 32k specular virtual texture I would upload my 99% finished 8k map. 99% means that it's not perfect in my eyes but better than all I've seen so far.

Bye Jens

[t00fri]

Hi Walton,

Can you build a 32k specular map from the 42k blue marble texture? I know that's an immense work but it seams that we need urgendly a specular map for your 'BlueMarble Virtual Texture'. My level6 and level7 addons for your texture need a basic specular virtual texture.
Sorry I can't do this job at the moment because can't get the blue marble texture (dialup).

If realy nobody can provide a good 16k or 32k specular virtual texture I would upload my 99% finished 8k map. 99% means that it's not perfect in my eyes but better than all I've seen so far.

Bye Jens

Jens,

why on earth would you want such a hires specular map??
Since the purpose of a specular map is to just define the reflectivity of sunlight, I don't see any reason to make it hires. Or is it because you want to see some reflectivity in tiny lakes?

I think a good 32k normal map tile set is much more important. Also if there are too many different tilesets to be loaded, at least my system gets quickly "saturated".

Despite my new really superfast harddisk (of 122 GB), the disk operations get soon excessive with too many different tilesets. Notably if you use several sets with small tiles like 0.5k!

I made systematic studies with 0.25k, 0.5k and 2k tilesets for the 32k GLOBE-DE normal map. So I know precisely what works best for me.

Oh yes, I can tell you why I would want a 32k spec map: namely to use it as a selection map for making separate color corrections (desaturation) of the 32k BM sea colors...

Bye Fridger

[JackHiggins]

A 32k specmap would be great for seeing the reflectivity in all the tiny lakes & coastal inlets (Like northern canada/finland etc)- because when you use a medres (4k or so) specmap with a 16k or 32k virtualtex, you get shiny land & dark sea, which looks pretty bad...

If celestia supported gif images for specmaps (2 colours only) would this reduce the file size much, or does dds etc already take only the 2 colours into account?

I agree with fridger though, I'd prefer to have a 32k Normalmap first!

[ElPelado]

Hi Walton,

Can you build a 32k specular map from the 42k blue marble texture? I know that's an immense work but it seams that we need urgendly a specular map for your 'BlueMarble Virtual Texture'. My level6 and level7 addons for your texture need a basic specular virtual texture.
Sorry I can't do this job at the moment because can't get the blue marble texture (dialup).

If realy nobody can provide a good 16k or 32k specular virtual texture I would upload my 99% finished 8k map. 99% means that it's not perfect in my eyes but better than all I've seen so far.

Bye Jens

Are your level6 and level7 available for download anywhere?

[jim]

Jens,

why on earth would you want such a hires specular map??
Since the purpose of a specular map is to just define the reflectivity of sunlight, I don't see any reason to make it hires. Or is it because you want to see some reflectivity in tiny lakes?

I think a good 32k normal map tile set is much more important. Also if there are too many different tilesets to be loaded, at least my system gets quickly "saturated".

Fridger, after viewing a lot of 250 meter images of Earth and playing with some 128k tiles I came to several results.
1. The real colour of water vertical viewed is black or dark blue.
-> The water colour of the BlueMarbele texture is not realy bad (only red should be reduced)
2. The bright blue to silver appearance of water that we all know comes only from the specular reflections. I can present some real pictures if you want.
3. The specular reflection in Celestia works better than I thought so far. We are very close on reality.
4. Without specular reflection the BlueMarbele texture looks very unnatural in Celestia.
5. My 128k island tiles look absolute ugly with a 8k spec map. I found out that it's acceptable if the level of the spec map is one below the suface map.

Can you now unterstand why I find a good specular map very important?

Yes Fridger, I want see some reflectivity in every tiny lake. And as long as Celestia runs with up to 100 fps on my old Duron900/Geforce3/1024x768-32bit with 32k/128k VT Earth, 8k/128k VT spec map, 4kx4k clouds, 8k normal map I can't see any problem with a 32k spec map.

ElPelado, I will upload my tiles but have you or somewhere else a VT 512 (virtual texture) specular map where you can add my tiles?

Bye Jens

[t00fri]

Jens,

why on earth would you want such a hires specular map??
Since the purpose of a specular map is to just define the reflectivity of sunlight, I don't see any reason to make it hires. Or is it because you want to see some reflectivity in tiny lakes?

I think a good 32k normal map tile set is much more important. Also if there are too many different tilesets to be loaded, at least my system gets quickly "saturated".

Fridger, after viewing a lot of 250 meter images of Earth and playing with some 128k tiles I came to several results.
1. The real colour of water vertical viewed is black or dark blue.
-> The water colour of the BlueMarbele texture is not realy bad (only red should be reduced)
2. The bright blue to silver appearance of water that we all know comes only from the specular reflections. I can present some real pictures if you want.
3. The specular reflection in Celestia works better than I thought so far. We are very close on reality.
4. Without specular reflection the BlueMarbele texture looks very unnatural in Celestia.
5. My 128k island tiles look absolute ugly with a 8k spec map. I found out that it's acceptable if the level of the spec map is one below the suface map.

Can you now unterstand why I find a good specular map very important?

But Jens you don't have to convince me that specular reflections are important in principle. I run them since more than 1 1/2 years. That also was not the point of my question.

OK, DBrady has made a nice case that it may indeed be worthwhile to have all those little lakes reflect the sun. So far I thought 4k or at best 8k might be enough. He convinced me to a large extent. But as I said several times, before my overall performance drops badly, I would always prefer to have 32k normal map tiles and get along with 4k or 8k spec maps....

Yes Fridger, I want see some reflectivity in every tiny lake. And as long as Celestia runs with up to 100 fps on my old Duron900/Geforce3/1024x768-32bit with 32k/128k VT Earth, 8k/128k VT spec map, 4kx4k clouds, 8k normal map I can't see any problem with a 32k spec map.

No wonder when you run in 1024x768!;-)

This would really be not much fun on my 21" monitor... Run 32k base + 32k normal maps in 1600x1200x32 full screen. Then you will certainly need

1) a fast CPU >= 1Ghz
2) a super card like I have it (256 MB DDR)
3) a super fast HD (>50MB/sec load speed)

and you will nevertheless hear your HD scream and will be happy to see 30-50 fps...near level transitions. I promise.

And then the question becomes very "topical":

'spec' or 'normal' map tiles?

Finally, what is really critical is not the fps rate at the highest tile level. It is the delays and HD activity that occur upon zooming accross the levels.
Bye Fridger

[billybob884]

Are your level6 and level7 available for download anywhere?

Yes, i would love to download them as well

[bh]

Fridger...your are compramising quality with performance. We are all doing this. I'm willing to give it a try...it's what you developers should be doing anyway. Those spec maps look amazing.

I went out and bought this particular machine a year ago because my old one couldn't handle Celestia. Since then I've bought a new card...(ok...only a GF2 but I'm skint!).

Can you give it a try with 32k everything?...you may be surprised!!

Regards...bh.

[Pollux]

http://www.marfig.com/celestia/ seems to be down.
Any mirror out there?

[Pollux]

Marfig.com is up now again. I hope it hold out till a complete download.

[don]

Walton, I LOVE your virtual texture. Just loaded it and tried it.

One question...

Is it "normal" to see the tile seams at level 5?

Thank you,

-Don G.

[don]

A general question regarding virtual textures...

Is it "normal" for Celestia to pause for a fraction of a second while loading a level worth of tiles, even on a 3.06 Ghz CPU with fast drives?

-Don G.

[chris]

A general question regarding virtual textures...

Is it "normal" for Celestia to pause for a fraction of a second while loading a level worth of tiles, even on a 3.06 Ghz CPU with fast drives?

-Don G.

Yes, this is normal . . . Several texture tiles are probably getting loaded, and unfortunately it causes a noticeable stutter even on my Athlon 2500. Once a few other virtual texture issues are worked out, I'm going to try to make it so that textures are loaded in a separate thread. There might be a bit of lag before the texture is loaded, but this should be less distracting than pausing.

--Chris

[wcomer]

Chris... loading the textures in a seperate thread... will wonders never cease. That would be fantastic.

Don, The seams are normal and due to mismatches between the -dxt1c compression of adjacent tiles. I don't know of any compression formats that filter the edges so as to assure proper matching. Probably the only solution is to use a lossless compression like .png or to use -u888 dxt format. Unfortunately the -u888 format requires 8x as much disk space as -dxt1c. Naturally the .zip archive will be considerably larger as well. While it is possible to use .png this will create incompatibility with some of the very high resolution geographic region add-ons that are coming out. So in a nut-shell it seems that we are stuck with the seams.

-Walton

[bh]

I'll go with the flow...

[don]

Yes, this is normal . . . Once a few other virtual texture issues are worked out, I'm going to try to make it so that textures are loaded in a separate thread.

Thanks Chris. The separate thread idea sounds like a good one!

Just a thought -- Does the VT tile loader process currently take into consideration the speed at which the camera is approaching the object?

For example, let's say the camera is at 30,000 km and I press and hold the Home key to get closer. In my mind, I want a target Distance of about 800 to 1,000 km when I let go of the Home key. This is going to fly me through several VT levels that I'm not even going to see (mainly because of the "stutter" right now), but I will actually only need *one* level to be loaded / displayed -- when I slow down / release the Home key / etc.

IF there is any way for the tile loader to "guesstimate", then it could save itself a lot of time loading level 1, 2, 3, etc. when it only *needs* to load level 4. See what I mean?

-Don G.

[don]

Don, The seams are normal and due to mismatches between the -dxt1c compression of adjacent tiles. I don't know of any compression formats that filter the edges so as to assure proper matching.

Howdy Walton,

Let me see if I'm learning correctly ... the individual textures (one for each level, right?) are "cut up" into tiles first, and then the individual tiles are compressed? Are you using this procedure, instead of compressing the full texture *first*, and then cutting into tiles, because of image size / memory restrictions? Or for some other technical reason, like a lower quality end-result?

-Don G.

[selden]

Don,

You can't cut up a compressed image.

When you compress an image, one of the things that happens is that pixels get deleted if they're the same as adjacent pixels. The compressed file just contains a count of the adjacent identical pixels and not the pixels themselves. (This is just a very simple description of one of the many things compression does.)

As a result, the region where you need to cut often will fall into a section where the original compression had eliminated pixels. You can't cut what's not there