Aerial cubemap for aircraft

Olli.

Ive been trying and trying but i just cant find any aerial cubemaps to use for rendering a flying plane.

ive even tried creating one myself from google earth but its not really working since the FOV is fixed and the camera keeps moving..

does anyone have any idea how i could make one or where i could find one?

James Ordner

Could you set up an aerial scene in your 3d package and render out a cubemap based on that?

Eric Chadwick

We have some ideas here, and some links to sky cubemaps/panos
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentSkies

Xoliul

I don't see how these will be so different from a regular ground level cubemap?
Sure you wouldn't want to use something with an obstructed horizons and buildings, but there's plenty of cubemaps around that have nice skies and clear unobstructed horizons. Once you're using the cubemap for reflections, the slightly higher horizon from a ground level map will be barely noticeable.
There's a simple sky cubemap (evermotion HDR converted) that comes with my shader, 3 actually. Then you also just grab one of the nice HDR's from Dosch and convert that to a cubemap.

Eric Chadwick

I think Olli wants one with a view of the ground from up in the clouds. Something akin to this maybe?



http://www.philohome.com/kitephoto/kapp.htm

SHEPEIRO

edit_BEATEN TO IT

i can see the point of having far away ground reflected in your chrome etc, important if you want a closeup of some details facing downwards it could be fairly important

i would get a regular sperical map for the sky applied to a dome and build a very simple ground plane from satalite images, rolling feilds, desert etc, then if you want to swap out the gorund OR sky would be a simple texture swap and re-render

marks

Orrrr ... you could get creative and go skydiving

Olli.

marks wrote: »

Orrrr ... you could get creative and go skydiving

would if i could

thanks guys, ive decided to compile one using a sky cubemap and a fisheye photo like the one Eric posted.

hopefully ill get some decent results

Xoliul

I'm still not sure if you'd need a special one. Things like this are probably achievable with ground level ones:

arrangemonk

http://robotrising.org/2013/01/operation-stratosphere-conclusion/
Look at this!

Ace-Angel

Why not render your own?

-Create generic level
-Apply generic ground texture
-Create generic dome
-Apply generic sky texture
-Put your proxy cube
-Cubemap bake

Voila, done. You have sky-cubemap without having to pay single dime.

Xoliul

Interesting to see on arrangemonk's link is that although the horizon is free from obstructions, it isn't any lower on the image than something at ground level, even at that altitude!
I'm pretty sure you could just use a clean ground-level cubemap and it would look the same.

Eric Chadwick

I think the OP wants a background instead of a reflection, but I could be wrong there.

Making a good-looking aerial scene from scratch is certainly do-able, but it is not a trivial thing.

RobotCaleb

Xoliul wrote: »

Interesting to see on arrangemonk's link is that although the horizon is free from obstructions, it isn't any lower on the image than something at ground level, even at that altitude!

Nearly, anyway. The horizon is actually lower than the halfway mark on the image, just not by much.

If anyone wants to use the images I generated by that project for cubemaps, feel free. Just shoot me an email at robotrising@gmail.com if you do, or if you want me to help find some other view that I didn't represent in that post.

Cheers

Caleb