dominique Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 Hi Holger Now that P3D adds the third dimension to water bodies, do you deem it possible to have a better render of coral reefs, with some relief submerged and visible from above and waves rolling around ? I bet that such a sceney for the Great Coral Barrier would be an instant hit ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shipdriver Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 Are you running with Bathymetry on? I would say it is just a waste of CPU resources for a flight simulator, unless you are running a submarine or a ship on it. The best answer for pretty coral reefs, etc. is photo imagery. In fact, no imagery exists of the Great Barrier Reef without water on top of it, so layering a 3-dimensional volume of water on top of any imagery doesn't make any sense, since the photo-imagery already accounts for it. The Great Barrier Reef is huge and to cover it all would be a gigantic file. Not to mention the fact that, due to its sheer size, the imagery isn't consistent. There are a few sceneries which have small portions of the Reef. The beautiful thing about water photo-imagery is that is doesn't have to be super-high resolution like urban areas (where high-res imagery is absolutely essential) since the scattering from water means that it isn't very high res anyway. A blend mask would be very important though for that kind of scenery so that it blends in nicely, using natural boundaries, with whatever water textures are being used in surrounding waters. Because water is inherently "flat", such an area is far more suitable for photo-scenery than most land areas. I could see such a photo scenery product being pretty successful, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holger Sandmann Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 Hi there, that's a great summary of the current options and issues by Rob. I'd agree that aerial or satellite imagery is the best approach to capture the highly distinct arrangements of the coral reefs. In fact, our Cairns add-on includes more than a hundred miles of off-shore photoreal Great Barrier Reef coverage, which was a last-minute addition and thus not much publicized. Cheers, Holger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominique Posted March 11, 2015 Author Share Posted March 11, 2015 I am not a big fan of photo-imagery as I have yet to see a truly convincing one to render atolls (PacSim Marshall Is. is not bad but the sheer size of photoimageny made Graham give only a partial rendering of the islands). I will have a closer look at Cairns that I own. So, what you say is the addition of the 3rd dimension won't bring anything to render coral reefs ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shipdriver Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 I am not a big fan of photo-imagery as I have yet to see a truly convincing one to render atolls (PacSim Marshall Is. is not bad but the sheer size of photoimageny made Graham give only a partial rendering of the islands). I will have a closer look at Cairns that I own. So, what you say is the addition of the 3rd dimension won't bring anything to render coral reefs ? How would you even perceive the underwater topography? The only way the human eye can is with color variations which photo-imagery captures perfectly. The surface is still "flat" (in quotes because there are waves). If I am on a ship or craft in very shallow and very clear water, I may get a vague sense of three-dimensionality, but not really, (and nothing like being underwater) especially because one can not see very much bottom when right on the surface. From an airplane? No way- it is just colors on a "flat" surface. I am not a fan of photo-scenery in most environments, but a few- like shallow water, beaches, tidal flats and grassy fields- are best represented with photo-imagery, especially when paired with other types of scenery which are 3-D for other areas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lthendrix Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 darn Rob you are making a lot of sense and articulate your point well. however OP makes me think about the potential of p3d as hardware progresses Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jabloomf1230 Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 The bathymetry setting also affects wave heights, in case one is unhappy with seeing rolling breakers on inland rivers on a windy day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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