MapMFD Custom Maps?

[Arthur Dent]

I love the new MapMFD. But I wonder how I can make custom maps for custom planets. I didn't find any resources in the OrbiterSDK for that. Maybe I'm blind.

So does anyone know where I can find some related documentation? Does somebody know how to make custom maps?

It seems to be vector based, so I doubt it takes information from the planet water mask.

 

[martins]

$ORBITERROOT/Config/$PLANET/Data/coast.vec
$ORBITERROOT/Config/$PLANET/Data/contour.vec

Have a look at one of the existing ones (Earth, Moon, Mars). Format should be fairly self-explanatory.

 

[Arthur Dent]

I see. Thanks for the quick answer.

I hoped it would be less daunting than writing manual vector coordinates. Maybe someday someone will write a tool to "paint" vector coastlines and puts them in the vec file

But lazy people can still go back to the legacy model (I read that in a helping document)

 

[martins]

There are tools to generate contour vectors from images. I used Matlab to generate contour plots from planet surface bitmaps, and exported the vector lists. There are probably free alternatives.

 

[EtherDragon]

A super quick google for "free alternative to matlab" yielded this site as the first hit...

http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/~ehrhardt/matlab_alternatives.html

I have not tried any of the links, and cannot guarantee that they are not all links to virus/trojan/spam filled pools of junk code.

 

[martins]

Note that with "free alternatives" I meant alternatives for creating vector graphics, not necessarily alternatives for matlab (installing matlab or a clone just to create maps for orbiter would be overkill. I just used matlab because it's a tool I am using every day).

Regarding the list you posted, scilab and octave are quite well-known. Python with extensions seems to be getting very popular for numerical computation. I don't know the others. However, I can't guarantee that any of the clones has exactly the functions required to output the vector maps for orbiter.

 

[orb]

You could try to convert a bitmap to a vector image with Inkscape, but to save it to format used by Orbiter, you'd need some plug-in for it, or some additional svg to vec converter, that can be created.

 

[martins]

A few practical tips when generating the vector maps:
Drawing the Map MFD can be expensive on some computers, so try to keep the number of vectors in the contours to a reasonable minimum:

• select a moderate density of contour lines
• smooth the bitmap before creating the contours, to avoid high spatial frequency features that require a lot of vector segments to trace.

 

[Arthur Dent]

Thanks for the tips and useful links.

I don't even need a bmp to vector converter. It would be enough to manually trace the contours.

Unfortunately, I have zero MatLab/SciLab/Octave experience, so I really don't have a clue what to do and where to start. Maybe it is quicker to manually create a vec file...

 

[Loru]

Is there any plugin for corel draw to export in .vec format ?

 

[Arthur Dent]

Apparently, there isn't a plug in for any graphics editing software, yet.

---------- Post added at 11:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:31 PM ----------

Adding the line "MapMFDVersion = 0" to the Orbiter.cfg doesn't revert it to the legacy MapMFD. After starting Orbiter, the line even gets kicked out of the orbiter.cfg again.

 

[martins]

MFDMapVersion

 

[Arthur Dent]

Great. Thanks!

I just copied and pasted it from the official orbiter documentation...

 

[martins]

I just copied and pasted it from the official orbiter documentation...

I'll correct the doc for the next beta.

 

[Bloodworth]

Is it possible to replace the current 2010 maps with the high res maps I had for the 2006 version? I really cannot stand the mars and moon maps that are provided.

 

[orb]

Is it possible to replace the current 2010 maps with the high res maps I had for the 2006 version? I really cannot stand the mars and moon maps that are provided.

Insert this line in Orbiter.cfg:

MFDMapVersion = 0

Orbiter will use the old Map MFD then, so the bitmap maps of planets, that can be replaced by your hi-res maps, but this will disable other features of new Map MFD too.

 

[Arthur Dent]

Please delete

 

[orb]

Hi Orb!

Just copy your old maps into your new Orbiter 2010 folder and add the line "MFDMapVersion = 0" to the Orbiter.cfg

It reverts to the old MapMFD and allows you to use the bmp images instead of vectorized images.

I just said almost exactly the same thing.

 

[NukeET]

Orbiter will use the old Map MFD then, so the bitmap maps of planets, that can be replaced by your hi-res maps, but this will disable other features of new Map MFD too.

Then what's the point?

 

[orb]

Then what's the point?

To use colorful bitmaps, created for example from level 4 or 5 surface textures, as the maps used by this MFD for planets and moons, as it was asked by the poster, instead of vector maps, that are for now available only for Venus, Earth, Moon and Mars, and use only 2 colors for indicating contours and coasts.