Project Orbiter Blue Marble

[Glider]

Just curious, how much space on hard drive would take L12 global textures ?

size of L12 = size of L11 level multiplied by 4 + size of L11 texture. so it will be about 1.6 Gb if texture has no water tiles. full L12 texture is about 3.4 Gb.

So this would be almost as detailed as the O2010 Florida coverage?! Like, wow!

No, L12 will be 4 times less detailed than L14 Florida.

And see that is the part that I've never understood. If Orbiter has level 14 textures for Earth already, why do the base level 14's look so much LESS detailed than these, level 11 ones?

Because these L11/L14 orbiter textures has only part of Florida covered by L14 textures (full L14 Earth texture would have size about 22 Gb), they are compressed by lossy DXT1 format (DXT1 compression reduces amount of necessary video memory and improves performance)and rendered with atmopshere fog.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

I'm working on obtaining a dataset with a resolution of 266,994 x 133,497, which fits very nicely into a level 13 texture at a size of 262,144 x 131,072.

That would be about 150 meters/pixel data. However honestly it wouldn't be too reasonable to cover the globe at this resolution, and the reason is simple. File size.
Level 13 texture would contain 34,359,738,368 pixels, at 3 bytes each, so you are looking at a global coverage file size of 103.07 gigabytes of data. If I was to exclude water tiles and cover only land, I could reduce that to about 30.12 gig before compression. If someone wouldn't mind converting that to the file size after DXT1 compression, I would be most obliged.

 

[Glider]

I'm working on obtaining a dataset with a resolution of 266,994 x 133,497, which fits very nicely into a level 13 texture at a size of 262,144 x 131,072.

Very interesting. Where have you found a dataset of that resolution ? :hmm: I thought that the True Marble has the highest available for free resolution.

That would be about 150 meters/pixel data. However honestly it wouldn't be too reasonable to cover the globe at this resolution, and the reason is simple. File size.
Level 13 texture would contain 34,359,738,368 pixels, at 3 bytes each, so you are looking at a global coverage file size of 103.07 gigabytes of data. If I was to exclude water tiles and cover only land, I could reduce that to about 30.12 gig before compression. If someone wouldn't mind converting that to the file size after DXT1 compression, I would be most obliged.

There's also a problem with file offsets. graphics clients (probably including the default DX7) use 32-bit offsets and fseek function to read the data, so filesize is limited by ~2 Gb. but it's not a problem for a graphics client - support of such big textures can be implemented more or less easily. Size of 30.12 Gb uncompressed or 5.02 Gb compressed, doesn't look too big, IMO.

If you don't want to make L13 texture because of the file size but have the data, Can you please share link to the data ? Or if you still want to make L13 texture I can convert anything you need. I'd be very interested in a L13 texture (and I can make necessary changes in the D3D11Client. filesize about few hundreds of Gbs is not a problem also). L13 will look so much better than existing L11/L14.

 

[Turbo]

Wow! This would be amazing! I would love to see this working in orbiter. It would be worth the extra drive space for sure! I will be keeping an eye on this for sure. Great work developers

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

...I thought that the True Marble has the highest available for free resolution....

You are correct. I'm looking into purchasing the dataset, so if it ends up being reasonable I'll go ahead and pay for it myself. Of course once it's released, donations to reimburse would gladly be accepted.

 

[jangofett287]

you NEED to check that the licencing terms for the data set allow you to release it to us like that, or things could get real messy.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

you NEED to check that the licencing terms for the data set allow you to release it to us like that, or things could get real messy.

Absolutely. This was going to be one of the first things that I mentioned in discussions with them. Since Orbiter is not a "game" and is well known as an educational tool, I am going to run the idea passed them that they might both allow our use of it, and give a reduced price, in return for the free recognition, advertisement and PR that they would get from providing us with the data.

 

[EndeavourCmdr]

I am now in conversations with the supplier, and we are working out a price quote for planetary level 13 imagery. I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

[Felix24]

I'm really excited about this- it's one thing Orbiter has been missing, along with the high-resolution clouds I've been dreaming about. You're doing a great job, and I can't wait to download every last bit and play in LEO once again. It will be well-worth the extra gigabytes of space.

Have you considered using the NASA Blue Marble Next Generation imagery? As far as I can tell, it is the same imagery, but with separate imagery sets for all twelve months. There's even versions with and without bathymetry and topography, and stand-alone bathymetry, topography, and high-res cloud maps. Plus, being directly from NASA, it should be automatically free to use.

Here's the link :http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_cat.php?categoryID=1484

It would be cool to have all twelve months on the hard drive, with some script running every month to swap out the active imagery. Every month the snow would recede or advance and the foliage would change color as it does naturally throughout the year.