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Photoreal Sceneries DIY

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Photoreal Sceneries in PRE-Flight RC Simulator are pretty impressive but really professional-looking sceneries done from scratch are really difficult. I've done them and I can tell you they are a lot of effort to make perfectly. After spending a fortune on an expensive SLR camera and an even more expensive lens, plus tripod and special pano head, and expensive and hard to use software, I've developed enough expertise to produce them fairly easily. This still leaves you with a problem of the subject - the flying venue has to be interesting, not crowded with people, and the weather has to be perfect.

So it's a bit of an anti-climax when I discovered that one can just "data-mine" the internet for images which can be easily converted to Photoreal Sceneries for my favorite RC Flight Simulator!

For example, I've never been to Egypt, but I can "fly" my helicopters near the pyramids. I've never been to Paris, but I can fly right next to the Eiffel tower. Or in the middle of Times Square, or in front of Ayers Rock in Australia.

This Tutorial shows you how to convert a certain type of image called an Equirectangular Image - of which there are thousands in the internet - to a PRE-Flight photoreal Scenery. There are no tools, no software to buy, and the whole operation takes only a few minutes.

Equirectangular Images.

These images are usually in the .jpg or jpeg format. They range in sizes but ar always EXACTLY twice as wide as they are high. Another characteristic of equirectangulars are they are weirdly distorted close to the upper and lower edges.

Here's a sample Equirectangular image:

Its a bit too small to make a really nice photoreal scenery but will do nicely for an example.

How-to.

1) Firstly, create a new, empty folder in your hard disk.
2) Right click on the picture above and select Save image as...
3) Save it in your new folder as a .jpg file.

At this point you will need a free program called Pano2QTVR - see the links page. Install this program on your PC.

4) Run Pano2QTVR.
5) Create a new project and put this in your new folder.
6) Select the Equirectangular image to process by clicking on the "..." button on the right. Select the equirectangular pic you saved and click Open.
7) Click on the Convert to Cubic.
8) Set the tile format to JPEG
9) Set the Tile size to 1024.
10) Click OK.

You will now have 6 new jpg images in your new folder named "...cube_0.jpg" to "...cube_5.jpg". These will have to be converted to .bmp format to replace the 6 images in the PRE-Flight Scenery:

11) Locate the folder where PRE-Flight is installed. If you used the default install then the folder will be called something like:
C:\Program Files\Transcendental Technologies\PRE-Flight
12) Open the "scenes" folder and make a copy of the folder called "phfitzov". This is the folder containing the default photoreal scenery of PRE-Flight. We make a copy of this folder and name it appropriately to avoid upsetting PRE-Flight. This new copy is where we will install our new scenery.
13) Right-click and Edit the file "...cube_0.jpg". This will bring up Windows Paint. If not, start Windows Paint from the Start button (in Accessories).
14) Go Menu File, Save As...
15) Set the "Save as type" to "24-bit Bitmap"
16) Save in your new scenery folder and overwrite the panface0.bmp file.

Now repeat steps 13 to 16 for each of the 6 "cube" files, making sure you match the numbers from 0 to 5.

Finally, to install the new Scenery in PRE-Flight:

17) Run PRE-Flight.
18) Go Menu Scene, Load, then locate the "pano1.sce" file in your new scenes folder (the copy of the folder under the Scenes folder where you saved the .bmp files, remember?).

Congratulations! Your new photoreal scenery should pop up - ready to fly in!

As an added bonus, if you go back to step 10, after you finish creating the 6 images and before you exit Pano2QTVR, you can click the Create Movie button at the bottom and get a 360 degree panorama Quicktime file (.mov). This looks like a preview of your new Scenery file - you can open it and drag your mouse up and down on it to pan around and even zoom the view!

So where do you get all these Equirectangular Images? See the Links Page - I'm trying to compile a list of sites where you can get them. If you have any contributions or a "MetaLink" (a Google search for Image sites), please email me - see Contact page.

Important note: Please respect the copyright laws and only use the images you find personally (where indicated) - do not distribute the images unless they are described as "freely distributable" by the owners.