Satellite Imagery - Sentinel 2 Data and The Caribbean

  • Hi,

    I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the data from the European Satellite Mission: Sentinel 2. This satellite imagery is sure at low resolution compared to Google data or bing -> only 10m/pixel, but it has several advantages:

    - First, not least is that these data are clearly free to access and use (Creative Commons).

    - Second, these data are very homogeneous in color and at good quality.

    - Third, all data are represented and therefore the sea is not cut to the bottom of the odds and all the shallow waters are visible even very off the coast.

    - Finally, the last advantage that I I discovered later that thanks to their redundancy (about 1 pass every 5 days) it is possible to clean the clouds quite efficiently. The principle in summary consists in superimposing different pass as layer in photoshop, which allows to clear cloud on a layer and missing part will be replaced by the layer of the bottom, etc. in the end, if you spend a little time, except in a very cloudy region you can get an almost cloudless picture. Later, I discovered that there were also utilities with algorithm to do the work alone but most of the time it is less precise work and it feels a lot in the final rendering. so reserve it therefore only to treat very large areas.

    In order to try to the use of these sentinel 2 data, I decided to treat some of the Caribbean, the goal was to connect Florida to my scene in Martinique to allow a pleasant transit to the eye between two area ;)

    After a lot of tests and manual work I am rather satisfied with the result. I completed the Elevation part with the ALOS World 3D 30m data also in open-data (https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/aw3d30/index.htm)

    Attached are some animated gif with comparative in game screenshot :

    Basic Photo Cover / Base Mesh <-> Cover Photo Sentinel 2 / Mesh ALOS


    If it interests some, I would to try to pack all this and put it available on flight-sim.org :/

    To improve all this it would be interesting to know if it is not possible to use these basic data (resolution 10m) and to couple them with higher resolution aerial data (1 or 2 meter / p) in order to be able to take advantage of the color homogeneity of sentinel2 data and the accuracy of the high-resolution aerial data ... I know that there is this type of processing for satellite data in order to couple satellite low resolution colorimetric data with a panchromatic band which stores only high resolution data this is called pansharpening but after some tests I have not yet managed to transpose this for sentinel data 2. To be continued ...

  • That's really interesting. Not being an expert, a couple of questions come to my mind:

    - Are Sentinal data available all over the world?

    - How did you process them? As far as I understand, AeroScenery does not permit them as input at present.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • ...

    Kind regards, Michael

    Quote

    - Are Sentinal data available all over the world?

    Yes, of course have a look here:

    informations here: https://scihub.copernicus.eu/

    data server like USGS: https://scihub.copernicus.eu/dhus/#/home

    an dedicated Imagery server: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/sentinel-playground/

    a special cloudless server: https://s2maps.eu/

    Quote

    - How did you process them?

    hummmmm.... may be a bit long to explain but to summarize I proceeded in two different ways:

    1- Manual method, I take the example of Saint Lucia, I downloaded the same tile Level2A True color (copericnus server: search for Mission Sentinel 2, Product Type: S2MSI2A --> for each tiles clic on "eyes" and Download TCI) which covers the islands on 3 different dates (by choosing dates of the same season with as little cloud as possible). I converted them to Tiff and reprojected them. Then in photoshop I loaded them into a layer each. Then, I erase each cloud by hand, hoping that on the image below there was no cloud ... And after that is the usual treatment to end with geoconverter.

    2- Method nag, for the island of Cuba for example, I downloaded directly the data of EOX cloudless server + usual treatment and geoconverter.

    Quote

    As far as I understand, AeroScenery does not permit them as input at present.

    Yes true :( unfortunately, the method remains complicated ... But maybe Nico's could add the EOX Cloudless server in a future version... But I'm not sure that so many people are interested to those low res data :/

    Edited once, last by vogel69 (October 19, 2019 at 2:05 AM).

  • vogel69 October 19, 2019 at 2:01 AM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Satelite Imagery - Sentinel 2 Data and The Carribean” to “Satellite Imagery - Sentinel 2 Data and The Carribean”.
  • Yes true :( unfortunately, the method remains complicated ... But maybe Nico's could add the EOX Cloudless server in a future version... But I'm not sure that so many people are interested to those low res data :/

    Maybe some find cloudless and color-consistent better than higher resolution. I would at least try it if it were available via AeroScenery. Color-edges are the main obstacles hindering me to do any ground scenery. I know it can be done, but I lack the time (and honestly patience) to do it. Schnuffelduffel in another thread just gave a time-estimate on his Italy scenery which certainly isn't overestimated.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • vogel69 October 19, 2019 at 3:11 AM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Satellite Imagery - Sentinel 2 Data and The Carribean” to “Satellite Imagery - Sentinel 2 Data and The Caribbean”.
  • Fantastic realization !!!:love:

    A huge job! Thank you very much Kevin for sharing it with the community!:thumbup:

    Indeed, these DVD boxes are great!;)

    Cheers,

    Pascal

    Best wishes 😉

    Pascal

    AFS2 / FS4 / MSFS / - Intel(R) Core i7 -12800HX 4.80 GHz - DDR5 4800MHz 32 Go - NVIDIA GeForce RTX™ 3070 Ti 8 GB GDDR6X - 2x 2 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4

  • Thanks for sharing, just downloading and I'll certainly try it.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • I had mentioned this before in other venues. My friends at Outerra are making heavy use of the sentinel 2 data, as well as its worldwide tree coverage information.

    I had not mentioned it here, because I honestly cannot tell what might or might not be deleted for mentioning another sim, no matter how pertinent.

    However somebody might want to look into the other types of Sentinel data.

    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

  • Flyover scenery should be high demand soon after ATC is introduced for FS2.


    download in progress. . .


    vogel69,

    Beautiful flying area. Looks great even at lower altitudes (1 km). This is a very large coverage area. The DVD box is a sleek addition. Thanks. 8o


    http://www.fscloudport.com/ The airports are found by Country (sometime Mother Country) so you just have to use the large map to isolate some of the smaller islands and groups of islands. Most airports are just basic runways with a few buildings but, occasionally you will find a diamond.


  • Installation was just about as straight forward and simple as could be. I use the steam edition so I just copied the unzipped Caribbean folder to my addon folder and started FS2. Can't get any easier that that. Thanks.

    If you moved NW you could make a large flyover area that is centered on Atlanta (busiest airport in the USA) 8o

  • Does anyone know why I only see one airport (MTPP) in FSCloudPort? Zooming in doesn't help.

    Thanks and kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64