Fickleshole Site for Phoenix

[shanemarsh28 11]

Hi guys,

 

I'm curious. Having searched the forum it appears the idea of a custom site for Ficklehole is not a new one and a lot of work had already been put in to make it a reality.

 

The latest download I could find was v0.2, which I downloaded from here:https://code.google.com/p/camfc-phoenix/

 

I loaded it into Phoenix today and it runs OK apart from not being able to hit a single tree!! Although when I come to think of it, maybe that's a good thing!

 

Does anyone still have the project files for it? (Arun? Dave?) .. Now that I'm not at work and have experience in this kind of graphics, I thought I might have a little "play" - see if I could further improve it.

 

Many Thanks,

Shane

 

PS: Phoenix has an upgrade .. version N is now available.

[arun 0]

Not sure I still have them ... But I think the bigger problem is that the pano was taken from slightly the wrong (too low) position which makes it hard to accurately put objects into the scene.

 

What's your graphics background? You'd be surprised how many of us are programmers and graphics engineers

[shanemarsh28 11]

Ahh that's OK .. I managed to pull apart the 6 images from one of the folders .dds files I think. I converted them to .jpeg to see what was what and built a new project to get started.

 

I just wanted to have a play but I'm already seeing the difficulties The tools are somewhat "sensitive" and I think there's a knack to using them .. I'll battle with it till it does what I want! I think the images need a little cleaning up in Photoshop as they're a tad dark.

 

I've dabbled in a bit of everything. At college I trained in A level Electronics and a Vocational IT course then worked in a school as an IT technician. I rebuilt the schools intranet and from there started building my own e-commerce websites in my own time. I became part of a project called The Cabbage Club, I built the whole site/system/setup from the ground up .. the Forum (PHPBB based like this one), websites and servers & scripts to get everything setup. Websites sometimes need a lot of intricate graphics so I learned Flash animation and got to know Fireworks and Photoshop to a very high level .. not much use now though as I work in telesales but the interest is still there ..

 

So yeah .. a bit of scenery building seems like a little challenge and I've got the time at the moment because I got make redundant last week. Might help with training too

 

It's good to know there are some engineers among us .. Once an engineer - Always an engineer!

 

Shane

[Trevor 25]

Shane,

It would be great if you could complete the Fickleshole field. I am sure it would inspire some trainees to practice on the simulator some more and would also advertise the club. I too was an (Electrical) engineer until I moved into IT about 38 years ago, been developing and supporting CAD systems and databases mostly.

[Bravedan 106]

Shane,

 

Sorry to hear the work news.

 

Way back I was a Beta Tester for Phoenix. I have also done a lot of work on non-RC Sims, particularly with 3D modelling.

 

As it stands currently I have about 150 flying sites, many done by me from CC Panos out there.

 

There are a number of problems with the base CAMFC graphics set, as Arun says, the base height is too low, the lighting poor, and the lack of a fully optic head has created some distortions to the scene which affects relative distances, the calculated plane distance travelled not matching the visual. It was a brave attempt by Arun to do what he could with what he had.

 

Sadly "Creator" is far from an easy product to use, and this is the biggest bugbear. Skyline settings and object placement are particularly poor, especially with a non-flat plane (floor), and all of CMFC slopes! We were promised an complete rewrite but it has not happened.

 

Have a go though!!

 

No time to write more now, I'm planning to be going to an "all day" Indoor!!

[arun 0]

As Dave says, this wasn't done with a proper pano gear. I basically just put my SLR on a tripod (hence the too low angle) and systematically shot the sky in sections. I then stitched it into a distorted pano using software called Hugin. At best was experimental when I had too much spare time (oh, those days!) - I probably wouldn't waste too much time on it ... need to get proper gear, wait for right day in terms on lighting an do it properly from scratch.

[Trevor 25]

Would a decent compact digital camera capable of taking 180 degree panorama shots be good enough or does it require specialized gear?

[shanemarsh28 11]

It would be great if you could complete the Fickleshole field.

See, the Fickleshole site in Phoenix still seems to be something that people still want.

 

Sadly "Creator" is far from an easy product to use, and this is the biggest bugbear. Skyline settings and object placement are particularly poor, especially with a non-flat plane (floor), and all of CMFC slopes!

 

I agree. Creator is a awkward program to work with, although I have worked with worse! The plane floor does go in wrong on the left hand side of the runway you can see that its raised. Although I did find a tool that seems to level the ground floor using brushes - I've not tried it yet, maybe that would help?? I'm finding that breaking the skyline up into bits helps a lot. I started with the Oak Tree, but I found that judging the distances is a real pain - requires a lot of testing.

 

What I think what Ill do is have a go learning all the tools & the program with the existing graphics set, see if I can get a site that's usable, all be it optically incorrect and go from there .. I may have a bash at re-taking the base scenery photos sometime - although not an easy job.

 

Ill post the flying site on this thread when it's complete, along with the project files so you can see what I've done.

 

Shane

[shanemarsh28 11]

Would a decent compact digital camera capable of taking 180 degree panorama shots be good enough or does it require specialized gear?

 

In theory yes .. but you don't get the resolution from that kind of setup. The exposures and focus's will generally be different on every panoramic shot which will make it look inconsistent. Also the creator only accepts a cubic 360 based on 6 photos - up, down, left, right, top and bottom. I believe most cameras create a spherical type panorama??? -

 

Really to do it properly you need a decent SLR mounted on a tripod about 8 feet in the air, then you slowly take tens sometimes hundreds of photos in all directions from that tripod base to get as many anchor points as possible - then you have to stitch them together to create it getting each photo to overlap as much as possible. It's not easy and I think Arun did very very well.

 

Shane

[Bravedan 106]

Would a decent compact digital camera capable of taking 180 degree panorama shots be good enough or does it require specialized gear?

 

http://phoenix-sim-szenerien.de.tl/Create-panoramic.htm

[Bravedan 106]

I did find a tool that seems to level the ground floor using brushes - I've not tried it yet, maybe that would help??

Shane

 

Its not just a help, its essential, but the "brush" you speak of is very very difficult to use when you need a smooth curved slope like from the runway end to the road, its a simple basically round area and while size adjustable, its near impossible to get to work accurately. Then as you say placing objects like skylines and so on becomes a nightmare as distance is very difficult to gauge.

 

I'm in communication with a couple of guys who do manage to get a decent result, but I have not asked for their help with getting the 3D modelling right as the base photos are just not good enough to warrant the hours needed..

 

It's not an easy matter, look how many even of the provided fields have poor lighting with a mostly silhouetted model plane with top only lighting, far from pleasant to use.

[shanemarsh28 11]

I did find a tool that seems to level the ground floor using brushes - I've not tried it yet, maybe that would help??

Shane

 

Its not just a help, its essential, but the "brush" you speak of is very very difficult to use when you need a smooth curved slope like from the runway end to the road....

 

I have seen the problem - most of the tools are quite unfriendly to use at the best of times! You go click on a tool and it either doesn't work or it appears on the opposite side of the page you clicked - half my time was spent "slewing" around trying to find the object I just created

 

Well I thought I'd show you how far I have got.....

These are the Site files http://db.tt/1IxxEBhf

These are the project files: http://db.tt/zemzSKWK

 

Just unzip in the usual places and you'll see what I've achieved (learned) so far.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For thoes of you reading this who would like to have a look, download the Site Files only and unzip the entire contents to:

C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\My Documents\PhoenixRC\Flying sites

Then open Phoenix and the CAMFC site should appear at the bottom of the list under "User-Created"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I think is a usable site, a little "crude" perhaps in terms of proper 3D modeling but I spent most of it creating all the Collision models .. a time consuming job. All the main elements are there - I also increased the exposure of base scenery images to try and improve the lighting but the model does silhouette a tad on the underside.

 

Let me know what you think!

Shane

[shanemarsh28 11]

I'm in communication with a couple of guys who do manage to get a decent result, but I have not asked for their help with getting the 3D modelling right as the base photos are just not good enough to warrant the hours needed..

 

It does seem to take a lot of time to do it properly - any changes to the skyline takes ages as you have to drag and re-adjust every point you create. So maybe if at some point We/I can take some high quality shots of the field there are some people around who could do a proper job of it .. encouraging to know.

 

I noticed that creator is still in Beta testing .. I'm assuming there are no plans in place to further improve the programme???

 

Shane

[Gerard 10]

Thanks for all your efforts Shane.

 

I'll have a look in the near future and download the files. It would be great to have a go at flying on our field within Phoenix.

 

[Bravedan 106]

Hi Shane,

 

Cheers, I'll get to it as soon as poss................

[shanemarsh28 11]

Hi Shane,

 

Cheers, I'll get to it as soon as poss................

 

Cool - I'll be interested to know your opinion of my little bit of modeling.

 

Thanks for all your efforts Shane.

 

I'll have a look in the near future and download the files. It would be great to have a go at flying on our field within Phoenix.

 

 

I'm overall quite pleased with it - It's not optically correct throughout the entire scene but I think its good enough for what most people would want it for.

 

Shane

[Bravedan 106]

Hi Shane,

 

Have just spent an hour plus on your file set.

 

Sorry to sound like a complete downer, but despite your hard work you have come up against the same issues that dogged all my attempts, in that the distancing is a fairly long way off reality. (and I spent many hours on it!!)

 

To see this look from the default start position with say the 3dMax, check its size relative to the landscape, and then taxi square cross patch, keeping in mind how a plane that size at CAMFC would look. See how before the plane gets to the patch edge the plane gets way too small for the distance travelled relative to the known distance and real world appearance?

 

I never issued what I had because in my opinion "mind training" to an inaccurate perspective would only create the conditions for greater distance perception issues when at site. This issue affects quite a lot of add on Phoenix sites, even a few of the commercial releases, but since you will never go there in reality is does not matter quite as much. My view is that when its a site you WILL visit and rely on depth perception at, especially CAMFC with its very restricted site, it needs to be spot on or it likely would be counter productive.

 

There may yet be a way to overcome this, but if there is so far I have missed it. I do know of a couple of guys (in other countries) who have got to the stage where they not only have distancing accurate, its at a level where when you hit a tree the plane penetrates it a little before the stop like entering real foliage!

 

They have also managed object masking on top of that distance accuracy to the point where trees visually have an accurate shape against items passing behind them, and even have active "holes" and edges that show the plane passing behind as per real world.

 

If you go to RCGroups and look there at Phoenix Sim threads you'll see their work. If you have the time they may be able to help resolve the issues that you and I have bumped into. I have never had that time, nor felt that the graphic set was quite up to the task, particularly with that ultra low viewpoint.

 

Finally for now, I repeat, I really do appreciate your efforts, and if you'd like to discuss what might be possible, you have my phone numbers.

 

Regards,

 

Dave

[shanemarsh28 11]

Thank you for your post .. Its given me an idea and I believe i know how some of the effects your talking about are done, like the plane penetrating the tree before crashing. There is only one way that can be achieved.

 

I would like to have a chat with you about it, see what's possible. I did have your number but for some reason i can't seem to find it. Can you PM it to me and ill call you.

 

Shane

[Gerard 10]

Thanks Arun and Shane.

 

I downloaded the files. It is great to be able to fly around our own field in the simulator even if the scene brightness and distance orientation are not perfect. It will still be very useful for anyone practicing their controls co-ordination and landing approaches with different weather settings.

 

Try the Hangar 9 The Beast on a gusty day weather setting

 

[Peter Royall 47]

Struggling!

[Trevor 25]

Hi Shane,

I still think it would be great to have this site available if it could be made better.

 

A couple of points I noted and I hope they are useful. If you crash into The Oak Tree, the bits of plane fall onto the end of the runway; a distance issue here. Also, if you fly into the fir tree at the other end, the plane flies right through it. Not sure if these can be corrected but thanks anyway for what you have done so far.

[shanemarsh28 11]

Hey, my apologies for a late reply ...

 

If you crash into The Oak Tree, the bits of plane fall onto the end of the runway; a distance issue here. Also, if you fly into the fir tree at the other end, the plane flies right through it.

 

There are several problems with this version, the same issues which also plagued previous versions. I built this version as an example so that I could learn the tools and the program so when it comes to future releases I know what I'm doing.

 

One of the main issues is that its optically wrong as you say and I believe that's due to two reasons. When the background was taken, the camera was far too close to the ground as if it's from a child's perspective so when Phoenix tries to simulate a model all the distances are completely out. The phoenix creator software is: well lets say challenging to work with at the best of times and very time consuming for even the most basic tasks. There is no easy way to correct this; I'm not even sure if it's possible on that particular photo set - many have tried - but because its never going to be 100% accurate with the existing photos, were reluctant to spend too much more time on it.

 

Happily however, I am planning to re-take the photos of Fickleshole and build a new Phoenix Scene at the earliest opportunity. There are some highly experienced developers and 3D modelers in the club I'm very confident that in time we will have a proper 'dogs kahooners' simulation for everyone to use.

 

I will have a look at why you can fly through the fir tree, you should have crashed! I also need to make a couple of further changes - problems that I spotted, as an example there is no windsock, then I will update it.

 

Shane

[Trevor 25]

Excellent, thanks Shane. I look forward to the new version with fresh images with great anticipation.

[shanemarsh28 11]

Excellent, thanks Shane. I look forward to the new version with fresh images with great anticipation.

 

So do I .. It's going to be a huge amount of work but I think It's worth it!

 

I have updated the flying site and created a build thread, just download it and extract it on top of the old version - I hope you will see a massive improvement!

 

Shane

[arun 0]

Great work Shane! I just tested out the latest version and it seems you have really mastered the tools to shape the environment - I loved flying behind the fir tree! I think this mastery is key as to be quite honest the tools are sub-standard even compared to a modern but low-budget 3D graphics tool chain used for games (Phoenix is really just a very simple game with physics from programming perspective), I'm surprised the developers put up with them to be honest!. With better images and your new found skill I see no reason why this can't be a first class flying site. A+