Problem Texture Elevation Rendering Jagged

[mharleman]

Notice this screenshot: http://tinypic.com/m/jj9yz5/3

Do you see how the ground elevation is very pointy. This only seems to occur when I am on the ground. It's possible that the textures are designed that way. I have tried both hires and lores textures. I get the same result in both. I have tried both linear interpolation and cubic interpolation with the default setting of Max resolution level 19. I really don't know what else I can do to correct the problem. In the air or in orbit the Earth looks terrific. But on the surface it looks very jagged. I ran the Solar System scenario with both hires and lores textures and it looked identical, but that is because I wasn't on the ground. Lores textures seem to smooth it out some but the screenshot is lores. I tried the Extra > Planet Rendering > Linear Interpolation (high quality). That didn't even get rid of the jagged edges. On the ground I see no trees. Where trees and hills and bushes should be I see pointed elevated peaks. Am I doing something wrong? I followed the directions to install the textures for Orbiter 2016 to the letter. Is it supposed to look that way?

I checked to make sure this question hasn't been addressed by someone else. There appear to be no posts regarding elevation issues. Is there a setting I am missing? I am running Orbiter on two different machines. One has a very high end $400 graphics card and one has a less expensive AMD XFX Radeon 250X. Even the less expensive card has 2GB of video memory.

Thanks in advance

 

[Face]

Notice this screenshot: http://tinypic.com/m/jj9yz5/3

Do you see how the ground elevation is very pointy.

Do you mean the micro-texture emulation of plants around the launch area? This pointy-ness is on purpose, I guess.

 

[mharleman]

@Face thanks for the reply. It didn't look normal. If I disable the surface elevation mapping will that get rid of the pointy look? I guess I can answer that one on my own just by giving it a try. Would I even want to do that considering that is the main new feature of Orbiter? Sorry for all the questions. It just looks really odd to me on touch down to have a bunch of jagged edges all around me.

I gave it a try, and I don't know which way I like better to be honest. I can see what the graphics engine is trying to do. It is rendering bushes, trees, and hills as elevated ground. From the air or orbit I see no difference. It looks really good either way. I will just how to keep working with it and decide which way I like it.

 

[4throck]

It's the same solution Google Maps uses for its 3D map.
I'm not a big fan of how it looks, but it works and is logical.

 

[Urwumpe]

I would prefer a procedural solution there, but that is much more work and much more GPU heavy.

 

[marcogavazzeni]

@Face thanks for the reply. It didn't look normal. If I disable the surface elevation mapping will that get rid of the pointy look? I guess I can answer that one on my own just by giving it a try. Would I even want to do that considering that is the main new feature of Orbiter? Sorry for all the questions. It just looks really odd to me on touch down to have a bunch of jagged edges all around me.

I gave it a try, and I don't know which way I like better to be honest. I can see what the graphics engine is trying to do. It is rendering bushes, trees, and hills as elevated ground. From the air or orbit I see no difference. It looks really good either way. I will just how to keep working with it and decide which way I like it.

You can always lower the level, perhaps 18 to see...

 

[mharleman]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I have been running the tutorial lessons from Bruce Irvington (hopefully I got the name right), and in one place he shows you how to jump to another spacecraft and take over from wherever it is. I must be doing something wrong because I don't get a list of spacecraft when I hit F3. Probably because the book is dated for Orbiter 2006. Anyway I did manage to get to the SH-01 on the moon and there by using the Main Menu and the elevation mapping looks excellent. You only have a problem with it when you have vegetation to deal with. The majority of places you will go in Orbiter don't have vegetation, so I guess this really isn't a big deal anyway.

 

[Face]

You only have a problem with it when you have vegetation to deal with. The majority of places you will go in Orbiter don't have vegetation, so I guess this really isn't a big deal anyway.

Keep in mind that the vegetation emulation around the KSC area via micro-leveling was done on purpose. You don't have to model plants that way.

 

[mharleman]

Yes. Microsoft FSX does a pretty good job of modeling vegetation at the same time it models elevation. Maybe it will be possible to do that with Orbiter someday. Perhaps someday Orbiter will even deal with hypothetical space travel like interstellar travel. However, mapping what little of the Milky Way we know about would be a phenomenal task, and I wouldn't expect that to honestly ever happen. It's just to big a project.

I just read a book by John Anderson and Ctein called Saturn Run in which they create interplanetary spacecraft that haven't been built yet, but are scientifically sound. As a matter of fact the engines used in the spacecraft such as VASIMR engines have already been built on a small scale. John Anderson says in the epilogue that they did hundreds of simulations in Orbiter in order to calculate exact dimensions and scientifically possible spacecraft that could travel to Saturn in a year and a half. I thought that was fascinating and it sparked my interest in Orbiter again. I had messed with it before, but not in any depth.

I think modeling vegetation, so the demands on the GPU are lighter makes sense. A lot more people are going to have access to Orbiter that way. Another way Doctor Schweiger makes it usable for a lot more people is by not forcing them to use high resolution textures on slower machines. Orbiter still works, and can still be enjoyed even without a high end gaming machine.

 

[Abloheet]

Notice this screenshot: http://tinypic.com/m/jj9yz5/3

Do you see how the ground elevation is very pointy. This only seems to occur when I am on the ground. It's possible that the textures are designed that way. I have tried both hires and lores textures. I get the same result in both. I have tried both linear interpolation and cubic interpolation with the default setting of Max resolution level 19. I really don't know what else I can do to correct the problem. In the air or in orbit the Earth looks terrific. But on the surface it looks very jagged. I ran the Solar System scenario with both hires and lores textures and it looked identical, but that is because I wasn't on the ground. Lores textures seem to smooth it out some but the screenshot is lores. I tried the Extra > Planet Rendering > Linear Interpolation (high quality). That didn't even get rid of the jagged edges. On the ground I see no trees. Where trees and hills and bushes should be I see pointed elevated peaks. Am I doing something wrong? I followed the directions to install the textures for Orbiter 2016 to the letter. Is it supposed to look that way?

Yes. It is supposed to look that way. MartinS did that pointy-ness on purpose, so there is an effect of the surface having some micro terrain and detail up close. Of course, Orbiter isn't advanced enough that it will be able to render realistic grass and trees... most of the pointy-ness is random noise which martins added manually by hand to the high res tiles using tileedit utility

 

[mharleman]

I would think trying to model interstellar travel too would be too hypothetical and theoretical and a lot more like science fiction than science which defeats the purpose of Orbiter. I have seen some addons that are designed off science fiction television series, so I'm aware that not all spacecraft addons we have access to are ever going to be reality. It's Orbiter's sticking like glue to real physics that fascinates me so much with it.

Orbiter is meant to be based on real science (physics, orbital mechanics) that is at least theoretically possible. I would be interested to know if anything like the Delta Glider actually could be built simply because of fuel consumption of today's rockets. It would have to be powered in some way we simply haven't developed the technology for today. At least as far as I know, and I have very limited knowledge of what can and cannot be done. As close to realism as Dr. Schweiger sticks in his development of Orbiter there must be something that he has in mind in its design for thrust since he included it in the stock install.

Interstellar travel is not completely off the grid either. The movie documentary in which they discuss the science behind the movie Interstellar explains how the things the movie depicts could actually someday become reality. It will be well after all of us are gone no doubt, but it was interesting to hear some of the physics behind the movie explained.