[ldvger]

David-

This is totally and way OT, but I am wondering if you may be able to advise me about a new region I have started.

I may have mentioned previously that I had started the default San Francisco region that came with the game.  Well, once I realized the scale problems , I asked Eblem to make me a scale accurate region, which he did.  I know have a new SF region which is 10 large cities wide by 13 large cities tall that encompasses almost the entire SF Bay area.  It's a gorgeous region map and I love it, can't wait to start playing it.

Problem being, I have this button in my head that's really hard for me to turn off that tells me that if I am playing a REAL area, I need to recreate the REAL landscape before I start building.  It's a Taurus thing, I think.  So, to that end, I am downloading tons of USGS topo maps.  I don;t think I will attempt to recreate the Bay area per se in terms of towns and highways, etc., but I would like to have the natural landscae in place in terms of above sea level bodies of water.  Hence my painstaking downloading of the actual RL topo maps of the entire region (about 1/4 of the way done so far).

The maps I am downloading are all uniform in scale.  Each one comprises a 7.5 degree by 7.5 degree "snapshot".  I have graphic scales on each map that allow me to keep scale even if I reduce the images.  The images open originally in Adobe as PDF's but I have found I can open them in Photoshop without any significant lose of scale/clarity.  I can then save them as JPG's.
I played around with opening the JPG's in AutoCad today and found that I could and quite a bit of wiggle room in making changes to them, which surprised me.

What I want to do is this, and this is where I thoght you may be able to help me.  I want to take the scaled topos I am downloading and rescale them to match my game maps of the region.  My thought is to somehow overlay the RL topos over the game maps, so I can map out lakes, streams...all the above sea level water and so create natural watercourses. 

So my question to you is, have you any clue as to how to go about this, hahahahaha? 

Lora/LD

[Pat]

LoL Lora knowing David he might be able to pull something off!!! Well hopefully it can be done to what you have described...

[dedgren]

Traveling today- Helena, Montana to Austin, Texas- so my Internet time is limited.  I do have some SC4/3RR stuff loaded up on the 'puter to work with on the plane, though, so there's still hope for later today.

I will post the last of the pics from



our visit to Yellowstone National Park for those who enjoy a little "on the road" OT.

We made the trip to spend a few days away from the treatment facility where Josh has been for two years now.



Hard to believe he was only eight years old when we brought him to Montana.



He's grown up quite a bit during his stay, but he's still nowhere close to where he needs to be.  So we just enjoy the time we can spend with him, and try to make it as high quality as we can.

Apropos of the (US) Fourth of July, Yellowstone came complete with an eagle.



...that's shot hand held with a 300 focal length lens and a 2x teleconverter- sorry about the blur.  The bird wouldn't come any closer than a quarter-mile/400 meters, and across a river at that...

This is what our eagle mom was keeping an eye on.



For those of you keeping track, we saw the same nest, and probably the same mother eagle, last year during our last trip.

Eagle chow Shame on me!

Here's another shot of local Yellowstone fauna.



Nobody, of course, comes to the park to look at the chipmunks...



...not with all those geysers everywhere you turn.



And boiling pools.



And hot springs.



As if to reinforce how much of what is going on at Yellowstone is about water, there's the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River.



308 feet/about 93 meters into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.



Big scenery, no doubt.

Not to be outdone, there's beautiful mountain streams more or less everywhere you look.



Heck, I'll amend that to beauty everywhere you look



We wrapped up our day at what probably is my favorite place at Yellowstone- Mammoth Hot Springs.



The title pic was shot there, as well.  There's both a majesty and a special kind of serenity to watching the water bubble up out of the ground and run down the flowstone pools.

A particularly wonderful place in a world full of wonderful places.  It's great to have you folks to share it with.

* * *

Lora, the 3RR Answer Man has copied your post offline, and will respond after cogitating a while at 30,000 feet/9,000 meters.

Later.


David

343808

[Pat]

Ooooooooo David you -------- err ummm ----------- gaaaaaaaaaah OK I Know wonderful and stunning pics there wow!!!!  Man I am sooo jeoules of ya's getting to go back to Yellowstone!! BTW how many miles of I-90 is it?

[FrankU]

David,
Yellowstone looks great. I t reminds me of Iceland where I have been some six years ago.
Great nature, raw landscapes and natural forces. Makes me feel as I am a visitor on this planet, instead of the usual feeling of being the owner of it (together with all of you, of course).

[ldvger]

I went to Yellowstone once as young child and have little memory of it other than the pics my family took at the time.  It was 1959 and I was 5 years old.  My mom's dad lived in San Diego, CA at the time, where my uncle, my mom's brother, was stationed in the navy.  Our family made a huge pilgramage from Detroit to San Diego in 1959, I can't imagine what it cost at the time.  Me, my mom, and my little sister Charlotte flew cross country in a prop plane.  My dad drove out a week later and joined us at my grandpa's house in Del Mar.  We drove home, back to Michigan, taking the long way home and so ended up in Yellowstone at some point along the way.

I revisted Yellowstone as an adult sometime in the early 1990's, the same year the devestating fires erupted and burned so much of the park.  I had just bought a new Toyota 1/2 ton pick up and it was my birthday, May 4th.  It had been a hard winter and so only bits and pieces of the park were open, but I was able to sit in the freezing cold and take photos of Old Faithful.  It was a very grey day, spitting snow, and when my pics came back from developing, they wre almost this uniform grey.  A polar bear eating vanilla ice cream in a snowstorm.  While I sat in the freezing cold and waited for the geyser,  some marmots came out and tooled around me. 

I went back to my campsite and fired up a fire, cooked myself some dinner, while the sleet turned into a heavy snow.  I took pictures of my hamburgers cooking in my frying pan and covered with snow...it was snowing that hard and fast.  I had set my picnic table with plate and silverware, but had to dig through the snow to find them when my meal was finally prepared.  The only other folks in the campgrund was a big motor home about 500 feet away and just as I was sitting down to eat, a woman came out the door of the motorhome and yelled across to me, would you like to join us for a drink?  I yelled back yes, as soon as I finish my dinner and washing my dishes.  She yelled back, you're a woman?  And of course I yelled back, yes, because I am. 

I finished my dinner chores and spent a pleasant, warm evening with them, then returned to my little tent to sleep.  I had a dog back then and he and I crawled into the tent and zipped up for the night.  I had a rain fly over the tent but it was snowing hard and I worried about the snow collapsing the tent, so I woke up every now and then to bang the snow off the roof of the tent and rain fly. 

When I woke up in the morning it was because a park ranger was knocking on my tent telling me the park was being evacuated.  There was a big storm on the way, everybody had to get out.  I mumbled my assent and then unziped my tent flap only to have three feet of snow tunble into my tent.  All the snow I had thumped off the roof of the tent all night long had gathered in a drift around the perimeter of the tent.  Immediately, everything inside the tent was covered wth snow and wet. 

I packed up and kept my sleeping bag apart, knowing I would have to dry it before I could sleep in it again.  I was on the road soon after, heaters going and my sleeping bag being held up against the windshiled where the heat vents are, tyring to dry it out.  There are few roads into or out of Yellowstone and I needed to head west, so I ended up in a huge traffic jam in the middle of a severe snowstorm as me and everyone else in the park tried to get the heck out of there.  In the midle of this traffic jam, a bull buffalo escorting his harem decided to cross the road.  Stymied by the endless line of autos between him and the other side of the road, he lowered his head and began to maul the cars in his way.  I was in a BRAND NEW TRUCK (7-8 days old, 1200 miles) and he was attacking cars and smashing them just a few cars in front of me.  He smashed the car in front of me, breaking windows and denting the body, then he walked right by my truck and smashed the car behind me.  Traffic started moving again and I thanked the my lucky stars.  Every car around me had been badly damaged by this enraged Bull buffalo, but I and my truck had escaped harm.

That's pretty much the end of the story.  I drove all that day across Idaho, shifting areas of the sleeping bag over the heaters on my windshield, trying to dry it out.  Once out of the mountains, the weather got warm and dry.  That helped a lot.  My dog wasn't too happy ecause he was curling up on the sleeping bag piled up on the passenge seat, but as it turns out his body heat helped dry the bag.  Yeah the bag smeeled like dog until I got it home and washed it, but hey,it was dry when I camped that next night. 

As an aside to this story, I am an infamous pyromaniac.  I was arrested for arson at the age of 6.  It was a fake arrest meant to strike fear into the heart of a child who was evidencing some dangerous tendencies, but it didn;t teach me not to light fires, the arrest taught me not to get CAUGHT lighting fires. In my heart of hearts I am still an arsonist, but I channel my love of fire into legal avenues.  I am much in demand as a bonfire master...

But.  I was in Yellowstone in early May and the park erupted into majot flames in early June and continued to burn most of the summer.  My buddies all accused me of setting the fires, knowig of my pyro background. 

I didn't do it.  As a true pyro, I would take great pride in laying claim to that conflagration, especially given the month between when I was there and when the fires started.  But I didn't do it.  I only light fires now when asked to.

Just sharing my own Yellowstone memories...

Lora/LD

[io_bg]

Wonderful pictures, David! I wish I could went there...

EDIT:  And, my friend, I would love to visit the old cities and countryside of Bulgaria and other nations of Eastern Europe before they are completely Westernized.  You have treasures in your country that are just as much worth preserving as the ones we have here in the 'states. -DE

[Battlecat]

Beautiful!  Someday, I'll manage to get down to Yellowstone park, it looks like it's really worth the trip. 

[threestooges]

-Battlecat: It really is worth the trip. I went many years ago when I was a kid, and I still remember some of these areas as clear as the pictures above. I can only imagine what inspiration it would have for Adara.

-David: Great pictures and it's good to see you had a good time with Josh. A few of your pictures don't seem to be showing up right now, but I'm not sure if that's the picture or the host. I'll check back later though. Until then, hope the flight is smooth and the rest of the trip is relaxing.
-Matt

[Silur]

Hi, David ...
Excellent pictures, I'm crazy with this - THANK YOU !!! 

[dedgren]

Heh!  Denver International Airport, Day 2 - deja vu all over again.



Our flight in from Helena yesterday arrived too late to make the connection to Austin, so, no Matt (threestooges), things haven't been that smooth.  We had to overnight here (in a Comfort Inn just outside the airport located in an area where I used to ride my bicycle for endless hours along the Highline Canal when I lived in Aurora 25 years ago- there was nothing out here then, now it's all built up).  This morning we returned with several thousand of our closest Denver-area friends to catch an early afternoon flight.



I've transited DIA before, but have never been in the main terminal.  It's pretty amazing, with its fabric roof.



The immense scale of the place inside is hard to capture in a picture.



The absence of roof beams and other structure really gives the terminal a unique feel.

The gates are in three satellite buildings that you access by underground train.



We're waiting in the "B" Concourse, and can see the roof of the main terminal from where we're sitting.



It's just a big tent... pretty amazing.

The concourses are efficiently laid out- moving walkways are a must because of the distance from a gate at one end to a gate at the other.  Nice shops, free (after watching an ad) wi-fi.  The only complaint I have is that the lighting can only be described as "environmentally friendly dim."  You'd not quite need a flashlight, in other words, to find your way on a cloudy day.



So, that's our gate...



...still no plane, and United isn't making any promises.

We'll see.

* * *

Matt, the problem with the pics appears to be at ImageShack's end.  I don't see about half of them, and they were coming in fine earlier.  I'll repost them if this persists- sorry, everyone, for the inconvenience.


David

345177

[threestooges]

No worries about the pics David; it happens now and then. Sorry to hear about the flight difficulties, but at least the terminal seems nice... yeah, it'll seem nice once you're on your flight. Interesting that they used a fabric roof. I wouldn't think that would hold well in the long run against the weather up there, but it does look impressive.
-Matt

[thundercrack83]

Wow, the Denver Airport is pretty impressive indeed, David!

Sorry to hear that you're having some travel issues--those are never a good time. Good luck making it to Texas, and I look forward to hearing from you when you do!

Dustin

[Nardo69]

I do feel with you David. I made my experience mostly on international flights in Europe (haven't crossed The Bi Lake yet) inclöuding a six hour delay for athree hour flight ...

That's why I still stick with the ingame airports. I hate flying - the best about flying is leaving the destination airport - anything else s***s.   

Get home not too late healthy and as one piece!


Bernhard 

[threestooges]

The pics are up and looking good David. If you ever get out of the legal field, I think nature photography could be right up your alley.
-Matt

[dedgren]

David-

This is totally and way OT, but I am wondering if you may be able to advise me about a new region I have started.

I may have mentioned previously that I had started the default San Francisco region that came with the game.  Well, once I realized the scale problems , I asked Eblem to make me a scale accurate region, which he did.  I know have a new SF region which is 10 large cities wide by 13 large cities tall that encompasses almost the entire SF Bay area.  It's a gorgeous region map and I love it, can't wait to start playing it.

Problem being, I have this button in my head that's really hard for me to turn off that tells me that if I am playing a REAL area, I need to recreate the REAL landscape before I start building.  It's a Taurus thing, I think.  So, to that end, I am downloading tons of USGS topo maps.  I don;t think I will attempt to recreate the Bay area per se in terms of towns and highways, etc., but I would like to have the natural landscae in place in terms of above sea level bodies of water.  Hence my painstaking downloading of the actual RL topo maps of the entire region (about 1/4 of the way done so far).

The maps I am downloading are all uniform in scale.  Each one comprises a 7.5 degree by 7.5 degree "snapshot".  I have graphic scales on each map that allow me to keep scale even if I reduce the images.  The images open originally in Adobe as PDF's but I have found I can open them in Photoshop without any significant lose of scale/clarity.  I can then save them as JPG's.
I played around with opening the JPG's in AutoCad today and found that I could and quite a bit of wiggle room in making changes to them, which surprised me.

What I want to do is this, and this is where I thoght you may be able to help me.  I want to take the scaled topos I am downloading and rescale them to match my game maps of the region.  My thought is to somehow overlay the RL topos over the game maps, so I can map out lakes, streams...all the above sea level water and so create natural watercourses. 

So my question to you is, have you any clue as to how to go about this, hahahahaha? 

Lora/LD

First off, my friend, I think you are working with 7.5 minute by 7.5 minute topo maps.  A topo map that was 7.5 degrees on a side would cover from San Francisco inland to somewhere around Area 51 north of Las Vegas, Nevada and north to the southern outskirts of the Portland, Oregon metro area.  That's far too small a map scale to be useful from a terrain standpoint.

A degree of latitude is 60 nautical miles, or 69.04 statute miles. A minute of latitude is equal to one nautical mile, or 6076 feet; thus, a minute of latitude equals 1.15 miles/1.85 kilometers. For all practical purposes, latitude is the same no matter where you go on earth; however, in reality it varies from 69.41 statute miles per minute at the poles to 68.70 statute miles per minute at the equator due to the earth bulging slightly from its rotational spin.

Degrees of longitude vary in length according to the degree of latitude, as the earth is not just round but is a sphere (again, for all practical purposes).  San Francisco is at 37.75 degrees north latitude, so (take this on faith, but there are calculators out there that can do this) a degree of longitude across the San Francisco area is notionally 47.59 nautical miles, or 54.76 statute miles, meaning a minute of longitude there is 4,819 feet-.913 miles/1.47 kilometers.

So, a 7.5 minute map of the San Francisco area is 8.625 miles/13.88 kilometers north and south by 6.85 miles/11.025 kilometers east and west.  Taking a large SC4 quad (city) as being 2.5 miles/4 kilometers square, each 7.5 minute topo covers a region that is about 3.5 by 2.75 quads.  Your 13x10 quad region thus fits almost perfectly under about 16 7.5 minute topos arranged four on a side,

So, how would I register (line up) an individual quad to an individual 7.5 minute topo?   I dunno.  Match the shorelines, I guess.  Seriously, let me think about this some more.  There must be a reasonably straightforward way to accomplish this.  Anyone have any suggestions?


David

345384

[Ryan B.]

David, I'd talk to Troy (blade2k5) about the maps.  He's done a wonderful job.

[ldvger]

David-

My brain is a little foggy today due to celebrating my roomie's birthday with him yesterday and last night.  Many glasses of wine, several Bailey's and decafs, and one B52 shooter will do that to you.

Yeah, I knew it was minutes not degrees, mind mangle on my part, sorry.  I'm pretty good at math so I probably could have figured out the topo map sizes in terms of how they relate to SC4 large city tiles (or quads, as you like to call them) but thankfully the USGS provides that information on the boundaries of the maps. 

The maps are all slightly tilted about 1.25 degrees off vertical in a clockwise direction due to these maps being created in a polar projection, so to align the maps borders with each other, I need to rotate them just the littlest bit.  Each individual map is rotated just a teensy bit differently than it's neighbors, so each has to be counter-rotated. 

The USGS maps are PDFs as originally downloaded.  I am able to open them in Photoshop and then save them as JPGs.  Then I open AutoCAD and import the JPG as a raster image.  I am unable to modify the image itself other than to draw over it, resize it, move it, and rotate it. 

So, using CAD, I draw lines around the skwed borders of the maps, rotate those lines to vertical, draw another line along the skewed border of the map, then measure the angle between the vertical and skewed lines.  My first angle was 1.316 degrees.  So, then I go back to PS, rotate that jpg 1.316 degrees counter clockwise and presto, the map is now perfectly vertical (or at least close enough for me).  I then crop the map so all the data in the map margins goes away, save the JPG again, and close it.  Then I go back to CAD, delete the imported raster image and then re0import the now vertical/cropped version.  Cad now sees the image as being skewed by 3.16 degrees, so I have to rotate it again, this time 1.316 degrees clockwise.  Now I have an vertical/cropped image in CAD.  Sace and repeat this process for each topo map, butting each new vertical/cropped image to each other in CAD.  I tried doing this in PS with my Copper River maps and the file became too large for PS or else I did something really wrong, because after working for many hours, saving my work, and then later trying to open the file, it was blank.  The topos I married to each other showed up in the thumbnails but not otherwise, which is why I decided to use CAD this time around. 

So, the goal is to but all the SF topos to each other then draw the boundaries of my SF region as closely as possible over the resultant composite topo map.  Once I've done that, CAD has a super nifty feature called "array" that allow me to automatically divide a shape up into whatever units I want both vertical and horizontal.  My SF region is 10 wide x 13 tall, so CAD will automatically draw all my city tiles within the rectangular box.  In so doing, each city tile can now be divided up again into 256x256, the dimension of cells in a large city tile. 

So, using CAD I can create a perfectly scaled dimensionally accurate topo of my region, city tile by city tile, overlaid with the city grid.  My thought is to print each city tile out individually on 8 1/2x11 bond and use them as guides for plopping my above ground water.  It's a lot of work (and a lot of paper), but I think this method will work.  I haven't tried it yet, but will as soon as I have a couple of topos butted up against each other in CAD.  My biggest concern is that I may loose some detail in shrinking the individual USGS topos down from thier original paper size.

I am downloading more topos than I actually need, going one map further in all directions, so I'm currently about 7 maps in the east/west direction.  I plan to download the entire Bay Area from the far north of San Pablo bay to the far south of San Jose, then crop out in CAD what I don't need once I draw my region border over the composite map.  Lots of maps.  Still, I have very little else to do with my time these days, so what the heck.  Beats playing solitaire, any day of the week!

Lora/LD

EDIT:  Lora, it sounds like you have a pretty good handle on where you are headed with this.  Please plan to post some progress pics here as things begin to come together- I'm sure everyone is really wondering how this will turn out. -DE

[dedgren]

Just a peek behind the scenes at a few new pieces for the FAR-2 set proposed by Steve (z) a bit ago.





We're working on coming up with standard FAR components, and I will be revisiting the original FAR (now FAR-3) textures as we have greatly improved texturing techniques since then.

Did I hear anyone say open beta soon?

Later.


David

346887

[bob56]

very nice! I love the intersection areas where its 'darkened' by cars!

However, (sorry, but i'm paranoid about this type of stuff) But I was wondering why one of the darkened parts was there.
I did a short, brief, paint diagram (my artistic talant )


Its the green line that I'm wondering about for your first pic

Anyway, Great work as always

EDIT: sorry, This is probably the hundreth or so mistake i've made in the last couple days!  I need a nap...