USGS Imagery: Looking for a programmer

1st Official Post

    Hi developers,

    besides FSET there is another source of aerial imagery, at least for the USA. USGS provides public domain images with 1m resolution, in specific areas even with higher resolution. The good thing: There are no restrictions to use and publish these images for flight simulators as long as this is freeware and give credit to the USGS.

    The image coordinates are provided in a XML file. To create a TFW we have to read some lines from the file and have to know the pixel size of the image.

    Is somebody capable to do this job? It is so exhausting to create let's say 30 TFW files manually.

    Rodeo

    Rodeo - have you come across grep? I used to (many many years) use it a lot to manipulate/extract from and process text files. I think it processes line by line, so not necessarily suitable. It uses regular expressions and is powerful at crunching data.

    I just did an area of about 30 USGS blocks around the Elmira/Corning area using USGS data. The images were kind of washed out so I did some editing on color and brightness. Turned out great I think. What amazed me the most was how well the auto gen trees fit onto the images. Almost perfect. I did it all by hand, but a tool of some sort to pull the data out, would make it much faster. I will see if there is something I can do.

    Hi MrRCSound,

    am I right we already had a talk some time ago in the aerofly RC forum?

    Actually only few users seem to be interested in the USGS data, probably because there is no automatic workflow like in FSET yet. But the big advantage is the public domain status.

    I use Irfanview batch mode to manipulate the images and often come up with saturation +30, gamma correction 0.9, contrast +10, sharpening +1.

    A TFW tool would be great.

    Rodeo

    • Official Post

    Hi Rodeo, I think that due to the limited higher resolutions of the imagery more users would look to FSET where you can obtain 0.25m scenery or better. In USGS you are lucky to find 1m scenery. But just an observation here...now back to work :)

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    I am sure we did. I have posted a few things. I was working on an ATC kind of thing using Voice Attack. Then my computer crashed and I lost most of it. Need to get back into it. I know some others did not like it, but I thought it was cool. LOL

    I just realized you said RC forums. Yes, I am sure. I am the owner of http://www.mrrcsound.com

    I am not real good at programming, however, I do a lot of stuff using macros in "mouse recorder premium" for my work. It has worked out very well, and saves me a lot of time and clicking. I am super busy this afternoon, but later tonight I might be able to give it a try.

    Yes, infranview. The auto adjustment of colors works very well, then I up the contrast and sharpening a bit, and am very happy with the results.

    Edited once, last by MrRCSound (November 20, 2017 at 3:24 PM).

    Quote from drhotwing1

    Hi Rodeo, I think that due to the limited higher resolutions of the imagery more users would look to FSET where you can obtain 0.25m scenery or better. In USGS you are lucky to find 1m scenery. But just an observation here...now back to work :)

    Jeff,

    USGS labels the images as 1 meter to 1 foot, which is a strange way of putting it. Checking the data, all the ones I have downloaded are 1m. .25m would be awesome! Huge though.

    I have looked all over for FSET, it seems the original download location no longer exists. That is why I decided to try the USGS images. Any idea where I can find FSET 1.3?

    • Official Post
    Quote from Simwerft

    Hey,

    do i need a xxx.aid and xxx.tmc file for every image or a xxx.aid file for every image and a xxx.tmc file for the area i want to convert?

    best simwerft

    You will need only one xxx.tmc file. You will need your image files and their associated xxx.inf files. The best thing to do is convert the xxx.inf files that you have to xxx.tfw by using the inf2tfw converter application. Once you have the image and .tfw files, and built your xxx.tmc you have what you need to begin the geoconvert process.

    Use this TUTORIAL to learn the steps.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

    Hey,

    i followes the example witch is descriped in the USGS tutorial and in the readme.txt of the geoconvert SDK with xxx.aid files.

    When i download the xx.jp2 files from USGS there is no xx.ini file. So i downloaded the xx.xml files.

    I can start the batch and it will finish green, but i can not find the converted files in the scenery/images folder.

    you can find my tm.log and a example for one xx. aid file here.

    I've been playing with X-plane a lot in the last few days, experimenting with USGS scenery, and in particular downloading areas covered currently by Aerofly. The images really are quite comparable......

    Enough so that I wish there was an easy conversion tool. I wouldn't mind being able to use some of these torrents in Aerofly..

    https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/fil…us-orthophotos/

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

    Simwerft,

    as Jeff stated, you need one TMC for your area to be covered.

    For each aerial image you'll additionally need either an INF, TFW or directly the AID.

    You are right to download the XML file, it contains the coordinate information. Also a mass download can be done, same as for the JP2 files.

    I use Irfanview batch conversion to create TIF and can even add some image operations like saturation etc.

    If you are interested to try programming a TFW file, you may contact me karlheinz.roeder at online.de

    Regards

    Rodeo