First time ODM user. Big time flight simulator enthusiast (Digital Combat Simulator mainly).
Project Goal: Capture hi resolution photographs (like satellite) for use in more realistic mission planning. I play with a group of 40-60 people and a big part of missions is the lore and story telling. Figured creating geo-referenced imagery with real in-game scenery to locate key features at airbases. Also want to use it create a massive wall poster that is highly detailed.
Project Details:
- Wrote LUA script for Digital Combat simulator that moves the camera through a list of lat/lon in a grid like pattern. (Just like drone users on youtube using ODM)
- The script then positions the camera looking straight down. Every time the position updates, the script exports the game lat/lon/alt in GPS decimal format and embeds that in the most recent screenshot from the game. The script can capture a picture every 100 milliseconds, so covers ground quickly.
- The product is a folder with all the images + exif data.
- Then I loaded these into WebODM and let it do its magic!
Progress: Here is a small section of Nellis Airforce Base I have been practicing on. I am able to gather screenshots + GPS data very quickly as the script teleports the camera along the flight path of the “drone/satellite”. The challenge is waiting for Processing on the images as I am still new and learning by tweaking + trial and error.
Example of small ortho of Nellis Airforce Base from DCS
Example of imagery from the simulator:
