Re: Photo

 
> 
> I would suggest that if you are using satellite photos for scenery,
> you probably want to get rid of the GSHHS coastlines entirely.  Just
> let the imagery do it's thing.  In this case you really just want an
> image drapped over terrain, and you probably want to ignore *all* the
> 2d polygon stuff in terragear.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Curt.

Thanks Curt,

What is the point of the coastline data ? Is it as if the height data
is a bumpy piece of pastry, that is roughly the right shape and the
coastline data is like a pastry cutter that makes it the right shape.
Like one of those Gingerbread man pastry cutters! (do you have these in the states)
Does the coastline data cut the height data. 
I'll give this a go (would need a bit more explanation)
but what I have noticed when placing photo scenery manually is that if
a piece of the coastline mesh sticks out into the sea further than the photo scenery
draped over it you get the effect of a sea and beach image draped half
way up a cliff. So my initial thought was to actually create custom
coastline from the image and then use this to cut the height data back
(if this is the way it is done). This would at least prevent sea appearing up
cliffs, although you would still get sand if it was included in your
coastline image. I don't know if anyone has already done this, but you
can generate vector coastline data in the gimp extremely quickly and
for a large area using the gimp and the frontline/autotrace program (which is also a convenient gimp plugin)

http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/frontline/

Autotrace will export .dxf amongst many formats A couple of clicks in
ac3d will then remove loose pieces and also can be used to reduce
vertices on curves in a couple of clicks. I have a feeling someone is
going to tell me that I still have too many vertices , in which case I
will need a slightly more elegant method of reducing vertices to keep a
good shape. I have put a screenshot of the results in ac3d here:

http://freespace.virgin.net/mamaloucos.circus/Flightgearweb/index.html

I thought that if I created an initial file from the photo image with
three points with known lat long I could open the .ac,.dxf etc file in
a text editor, work out the equation needed to convert each  X Y vertex
into the relavent correct lat long ( i assume no height is needed) then create a full vector for
my coastline  as above and then using the equation I've worked out process al the other 
vertices into lat long format, chop it up into tile shapes and create my own custom coastlines.

Is this feasible ? as you can see I am still trying to guess my way around how much of this works.

Any help greatly appreciated

Regards


Mat