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JPEG2000 compression isn't that much better than JPEG. In some cases it actually looks worse than JPEG at the same file size. See e.g. http://vterrain.org/Imagery/JP...
No point in going to the trouble of deploying a new standard image format everywhere if you don't get huge gains.

Also JPEG2000 only aimed to be royalty-free for "Part 1", the core codec. The patent status of the other 13 parts of the standard is murky.

No, sadly it's not even that nice. The State Plane Coordinate System uses "feet" and by feet I mean either the "International Foot" which is defined as .3048 meters or the "U.S. Survey Foot" which is 1200/3937 meters. Sadly both are still in use today.

http://vterrain.org/Projection...

The general consensus as I understand it is that the <iostream> wing of the C++ standard library is hairy, convoluted, time inefficient, and space inefficient in implementation. What's the better solution? <cstdio>? Is Boost.Format, as shutdown -p now suggested, any good?

check out virtual terrain project http://www.vterrain.org/ or for GIS alternatives to SAGA, OSGeo foundation: http://www.osgeo.org/ GRASS / QGIS worth checking out

That's a lot more reply than my post deserved!

Perhaps you could look at some sites like...

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp? forum_id=12
(good place to ask questions about graphics programming)

http://www.vterrain.org/
(very interesting stuff here, lots of theory in the rendering section)

I hope you get some better answers than I can give. My own terrain engine is much simpler in scope, although possibly wider (rendering planet-sized maps for an RPG in real-time) and I'm yet to come to this problem. When I get there, maybe I'll read how you solved it!

As an aside, after reviewing ROAM and all sorts of CLOD algorithms, I've decided to go for a completely GPU-based approach. Split my world map (about 5000km squared at 1m resolution) into chunks of 1025m squared, which can be low-res (33x33 vertices, good for distant scenery) or high-res (1025x1025 vertices, with a low-res version as well). Each high-res chunk is then split into patches of 33x33 vertices. I keep nearly all of my patches and low-res chunks on the GPU, and create a list of ones I want to render using the CPU (frustrum cull, simple horizon occlusion). I then just step through the remaining patches and render each.

CPU load is as close to zero as makes no difference, leaving more time for AI and world management. The GPU needs a good bit of memory, but rendering is very fast using VBOs and static geometry. Also, every patch and low-res chunk shares the same triangle design, so I re-use the vertex index list, saving some memory.

It's early stages yet, but it's looking good.

Again - best of luck with your efforts.

that's why I suggested they upgrade the engine. Rather than build an incompatible engine from scratch, which costs more, then charge an amount affordable only to a tiny percentage of interested parties.

Upgrading the engine is not easy. If it's not designed with this kind of thing in mind, it's more trouble than it's worth.

Furthermore, there are already lots and lots of engines for precisely this application.

There are many approaches. A big problem has been avoiding "popping", when an area suddenly is rendered with more detail.

Again, this is well understood. It just takes plenty of computer power to drive it.

Microsoft seems to be paving the way for game developers to use their specialized hardware. When the PS2 first came out, the development tools were weak, and it took about two years for developers to get the tools in place to use it effectively. The original XBox is basically a PC; you can develop, test, and debug on Win2K, then rebuild for the XBox target. The new XBox won't be like that; the target is drastically different from the development environment. So Microsoft has to do and promote more middleware development.

Considering this is what I do for a living.

I won't be able to give you much advice for doing this on Linux, or with Open Source software, since I'm actually not aware of anything that meets both those criteria. I know you didn't stipulate those criteria, but this is Slashdot.

The first issue you face is converting bitmapped contour data into a heightfield. This is not the same as converting greyscale to heightfields, which is a trivial matter. Most of the links proposed already cover using a greyscale image.

A helpful site for you will be http://terrainmap.com/. He has an application (Windows, $free) called Blackart that tries to extract meaning from scanned topo map contours and build a DEM/heightfield out of it. A commercial app (Windows, $1500) that does the same thing is R2V. I've not used either so I can't comment on what you get for your $1500.

Once you have a DEM, you can probably find a way to convert it into a file format that Blender can use as a 3D object and apply texturing to.

The next step is, what kind of texturing? If you just want to be able to slap some pretty-looking colors or natural-looking dirt/rock/grass/snow effects onto it, you can probably do that in Blender. If Blender can't do everything you want, you might try Terragen (Windows/Mac, $free), which is a little more landscape-oriented. I would not recommend VistaPro at this point, it's pretty outdated. TG is at least still being developed, although it's going commercial.

If you need to be able to place real-world image information onto the terrain (airphoto or satellite images, GIS databases, other scanned maps, etc) then Blender is really becoming a poor choice for your needs. (What were your criteria for choosing Blender anyway? It's not known for its landscape capabilities.) The trouble becomes that data like these are usually stored in a different Coordinate System (read the whole VTP site while you're there, Ben's got GREAT info). This means that lining up the position, size and rotation of the two pieces of data is difficult if your software doesn't know how to do it for you. Even most low-end landscape software (Terragen, VistaPro, more free here) can't do this. This is the realm of typically fairly expensive commercial 3D landscape software with a GIS tie-in, such as ESRI's 3D Analyst (Windows, $3500) read info on commercial page above) and my company's Visual Nature Studio (Windows/Mac, $2500).

I won't pretend that my company's product meets your needs, but I have to mention it. I suspect that you'll be able to meet your requirements using some of the tools I outlined first. If however, you find yourself doing this sort of stuff a lot, that's where the polish, integration, support and other frills of commercial software like mine may start to become valuable to you.

Hope you find what you're looking for. If you (or anybody else) have more questions about this, I'd be happy to answer them privately or publicly. As you can see from the above, despite selling my software, I try to be objective and don't always tell you my product is what you need. ;)

Considering this is what I do for a living.

I won't be able to give you much advice for doing this on Linux, or with Open Source software, since I'm actually not aware of anything that meets both those criteria. I know you didn't stipulate those criteria, but this is Slashdot.

The first issue you face is converting bitmapped contour data into a heightfield. This is not the same as converting greyscale to heightfields, which is a trivial matter. Most of the links proposed already cover using a greyscale image.

A helpful site for you will be http://terrainmap.com/. He has an application (Windows, $free) called Blackart that tries to extract meaning from scanned topo map contours and build a DEM/heightfield out of it. A commercial app (Windows, $1500) that does the same thing is R2V. I've not used either so I can't comment on what you get for your $1500.

Once you have a DEM, you can probably find a way to convert it into a file format that Blender can use as a 3D object and apply texturing to.

The next step is, what kind of texturing? If you just want to be able to slap some pretty-looking colors or natural-looking dirt/rock/grass/snow effects onto it, you can probably do that in Blender. If Blender can't do everything you want, you might try Terragen (Windows/Mac, $free), which is a little more landscape-oriented. I would not recommend VistaPro at this point, it's pretty outdated. TG is at least still being developed, although it's going commercial.

If you need to be able to place real-world image information onto the terrain (airphoto or satellite images, GIS databases, other scanned maps, etc) then Blender is really becoming a poor choice for your needs. (What were your criteria for choosing Blender anyway? It's not known for its landscape capabilities.) The trouble becomes that data like these are usually stored in a different Coordinate System (read the whole VTP site while you're there, Ben's got GREAT info). This means that lining up the position, size and rotation of the two pieces of data is difficult if your software doesn't know how to do it for you. Even most low-end landscape software (Terragen, VistaPro, more free here) can't do this. This is the realm of typically fairly expensive commercial 3D landscape software with a GIS tie-in, such as ESRI's 3D Analyst (Windows, $3500) read info on commercial page above) and my company's Visual Nature Studio (Windows/Mac, $2500).

I won't pretend that my company's product meets your needs, but I have to mention it. I suspect that you'll be able to meet your requirements using some of the tools I outlined first. If however, you find yourself doing this sort of stuff a lot, that's where the polish, integration, support and other frills of commercial software like mine may start to become valuable to you.

Hope you find what you're looking for. If you (or anybody else) have more questions about this, I'd be happy to answer them privately or publicly. As you can see from the above, despite selling my software, I try to be objective and don't always tell you my product is what you need. ;)

Considering this is what I do for a living.

I won't be able to give you much advice for doing this on Linux, or with Open Source software, since I'm actually not aware of anything that meets both those criteria. I know you didn't stipulate those criteria, but this is Slashdot.

The first issue you face is converting bitmapped contour data into a heightfield. This is not the same as converting greyscale to heightfields, which is a trivial matter. Most of the links proposed already cover using a greyscale image.

A helpful site for you will be http://terrainmap.com/. He has an application (Windows, $free) called Blackart that tries to extract meaning from scanned topo map contours and build a DEM/heightfield out of it. A commercial app (Windows, $1500) that does the same thing is R2V. I've not used either so I can't comment on what you get for your $1500.

Once you have a DEM, you can probably find a way to convert it into a file format that Blender can use as a 3D object and apply texturing to.

The next step is, what kind of texturing? If you just want to be able to slap some pretty-looking colors or natural-looking dirt/rock/grass/snow effects onto it, you can probably do that in Blender. If Blender can't do everything you want, you might try Terragen (Windows/Mac, $free), which is a little more landscape-oriented. I would not recommend VistaPro at this point, it's pretty outdated. TG is at least still being developed, although it's going commercial.

If you need to be able to place real-world image information onto the terrain (airphoto or satellite images, GIS databases, other scanned maps, etc) then Blender is really becoming a poor choice for your needs. (What were your criteria for choosing Blender anyway? It's not known for its landscape capabilities.) The trouble becomes that data like these are usually stored in a different Coordinate System (read the whole VTP site while you're there, Ben's got GREAT info). This means that lining up the position, size and rotation of the two pieces of data is difficult if your software doesn't know how to do it for you. Even most low-end landscape software (Terragen, VistaPro, more free here) can't do this. This is the realm of typically fairly expensive commercial 3D landscape software with a GIS tie-in, such as ESRI's 3D Analyst (Windows, $3500) read info on commercial page above) and my company's Visual Nature Studio (Windows/Mac, $2500).

I won't pretend that my company's product meets your needs, but I have to mention it. I suspect that you'll be able to meet your requirements using some of the tools I outlined first. If however, you find yourself doing this sort of stuff a lot, that's where the polish, integration, support and other frills of commercial software like mine may start to become valuable to you.

Hope you find what you're looking for. If you (or anybody else) have more questions about this, I'd be happy to answer them privately or publicly. As you can see from the above, despite selling my software, I try to be objective and don't always tell you my product is what you need. ;)

Considering this is what I do for a living.

I won't be able to give you much advice for doing this on Linux, or with Open Source software, since I'm actually not aware of anything that meets both those criteria. I know you didn't stipulate those criteria, but this is Slashdot.

The first issue you face is converting bitmapped contour data into a heightfield. This is not the same as converting greyscale to heightfields, which is a trivial matter. Most of the links proposed already cover using a greyscale image.

A helpful site for you will be http://terrainmap.com/. He has an application (Windows, $free) called Blackart that tries to extract meaning from scanned topo map contours and build a DEM/heightfield out of it. A commercial app (Windows, $1500) that does the same thing is R2V. I've not used either so I can't comment on what you get for your $1500.

Once you have a DEM, you can probably find a way to convert it into a file format that Blender can use as a 3D object and apply texturing to.

The next step is, what kind of texturing? If you just want to be able to slap some pretty-looking colors or natural-looking dirt/rock/grass/snow effects onto it, you can probably do that in Blender. If Blender can't do everything you want, you might try Terragen (Windows/Mac, $free), which is a little more landscape-oriented. I would not recommend VistaPro at this point, it's pretty outdated. TG is at least still being developed, although it's going commercial.

If you need to be able to place real-world image information onto the terrain (airphoto or satellite images, GIS databases, other scanned maps, etc) then Blender is really becoming a poor choice for your needs. (What were your criteria for choosing Blender anyway? It's not known for its landscape capabilities.) The trouble becomes that data like these are usually stored in a different Coordinate System (read the whole VTP site while you're there, Ben's got GREAT info). This means that lining up the position, size and rotation of the two pieces of data is difficult if your software doesn't know how to do it for you. Even most low-end landscape software (Terragen, VistaPro, more free here) can't do this. This is the realm of typically fairly expensive commercial 3D landscape software with a GIS tie-in, such as ESRI's 3D Analyst (Windows, $3500) read info on commercial page above) and my company's Visual Nature Studio (Windows/Mac, $2500).

I won't pretend that my company's product meets your needs, but I have to mention it. I suspect that you'll be able to meet your requirements using some of the tools I outlined first. If however, you find yourself doing this sort of stuff a lot, that's where the polish, integration, support and other frills of commercial software like mine may start to become valuable to you.

Hope you find what you're looking for. If you (or anybody else) have more questions about this, I'd be happy to answer them privately or publicly. As you can see from the above, despite selling my software, I try to be objective and don't always tell you my product is what you need. ;)

What is the purpose of creating 3d terrain maps? What type of textures or data do you want to overlay? Is there any economic value to your project? Do you want to be able to do a virtual walkthrough, or just generate static images?

If you are trying to program a flight simulator, your needs are totally different than if you were trying to do mapping or GIS analysis. Also, you could just be trying to make a pretty picture.

Pretty picture:
Use terragen (as mentioned by previous poster)

Mapping/GIS analysis of geospatial data:
ArcView (not cheap)

Architectural rendering:
Lightwave (not cheap) or RapidSite 3d (not sure if they are still making this one)

Goofing around with flight sim:
some game engine

You might want to take a look at this site:
Vterrain is a pretty cool place to get started. The community is pretty helpful - some French dude who programs flight sims gave me some pointers in developing a commercial 3d mapping application.

Finally, if you need a source for terrain maps, check out the USGS's National Elevation Dataset (NED). This is the best thing since sliced bread in the GIS community.

Good luck...

Thanks for the plug, Alexandre. As a not-for-profit in the public interest, TOPP/VTP needs all the help it can get.

This news about millions of dollars going to There.com is both good, and disappointing. It's good in that any increase in the funding and attention for modelling the earth is, in general, a good thing.

It's disappointing in that There.com is a highly secretive, closed, proprietary environment, which guarantees that none of these millions of taxpayer dollars will actually bring the public closer to having a model of the earth.

-Ben Discoe, Project Manager, VTP

Open source 3D for GIS : vterrain.org

See also openscenegraph.org

Both can use Remote Sensing data.

Well, you are very welcome to write one [Free Software FPS game]and donate it to the comunity.

You may find some of these projects useful:

OpenSceneGraph -- the standard rendering platform for game graphics. Runs faster than commercial systems.
The virtual terrain project -- terrain modelling resources
HFTools -- landscape generation tools (admittedly level-design in blender is more likely for FPS)
Audio library -- most important bit of a game is the music!

vterrain

Naturally, this includes links to the NASA Blue Marble site and the SRTM project and many others.
My own viewer isn't due for some time yet :-)

It's no secret where their data comes from. The details of who Keyhole licensed imagery from (Space Image, AirPhoto USA etc.) can all be found by digging around on their site.

As for elevation, you're correct that SRTM isn't usable yet. Keyhole simply doesn't have better than the usual free 1km elevation data outside the USA. And 1km looks as bad as you might think.

For those who care, see the review of EarthViewer 3D that i wrote last year. I don't believe much has changed except the price dropping in desperation.

It's a nice piece of work, but it solves a problem that nobody needed solved.

I'm glad you don't have a problem with calculating and drawing all visible polygons in a 50 000 poly-based world as quickly as possible. Some of us do.

Ogre is a "high-level scene graph engine". This is a level above a standard 3D rendering API, like OpenGL, but a level below a general-purpose game engine. Unfortunately, while high level scene graph engines seem plausible, they're not very useful.

I'm not sure what you mean by plausible - since Scene Graphs are not just theoretical: they work extremely well for their purpose. They are very useful, probably the fastest general purpose method for drawing large scenes available today.

There are quite a few of these things. SGI Inventor was the first major one. Apple had one in Quicktime 3D. Direct-X has one, but Direct-X is mostly used as a low-level drawing API. One was announced for OpenGL (it was called Farenheit) when SGI and Microsoft lost interest, it didn't really bother anybody.

Meanwhile in the year 2002, there are quite a few scene graphs available for many platforms. One of the best is Open Scene Graph, an LGPLed library which is used for games, demos and high-end visualisation systems. Not to mention Ogre itself which looks very sweet indeed.

You need a low-level graphics API to abstract different types of hardware. That's the real job of OpenGL and Direct-X.

Direct-3D I think you mean.

You might want a full game engine if you're building a game, and you can get those from a number of vendors.

You might also want to consider what 95% of game writers do and that is to select the best tools for the job and assemble them yourself. Graphics and rendering tends to be 10% of the typical code base for a commercial game - the bulk is AI, gameplay logic, resource management, menus, and supporting tools.

But mid-level APIs just aren't all that useful. You have to do things their way, but they don't do enough of the job to justify the trouble.

I suppose if you're looking for a game engine which does everything for you while wiping your nose and holding your hand, then a mid-level API won't be very useful. For a game writer looking to solve the one big problem of overdraw, a mid level API like Ogre or OSG is an excellent solution. Plug it in and it does the clipping, culling and drawing work for you. I know from personal experience that OSG is superb at this job - adapting equally well to visualisation, flight simulation and terrain rendering. Ogre's screenshots tell a similar story. Want a Quake 3 level? Load it and Ogre adds it to the graph and takes care of the rest.

National Weather Service AWIPS Map Database Catalog
http://isl715.nws.noaa.gov/mapdata/newcat/
All Sorts of U.S. ditigal map data in Shapefile format.

GOES Imagery On-line at NASA-GSFC
http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/text/0readme.html
http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/
http://www1.etl.noaa.gov/climsat/realtime.html
Your basic weather satellite data - get the latest imagery.

Virtual Terrain Project
http://vterrain.org/index.html
Another interesting open source project ...

DGPS corrections over the Internet
http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/gps/dgps-ip.html
Of interest to GPS users. Neat!

DEMster? Yes, well, here are the possibilities: Global Data Sharing/Referencing

Actually Napster would a great analogy to follow, most of the terrain data in the world is proprietary and expensive, tightly controlled by the governments and big companies that produce it. Not that i'm suggesting anything , but P2P would be interesting way around that situation. The data only has to leak once for the genie to get out of the bottle..

-Ben>

Please don't use direct links into the VTP site!

Use the proper page to request a VTP distribution.

Thanks,
Ben Discoe
Project Manager, VTP

VTP looks really cool.

Source Download Is Here

I'll tell you if I can build it. :)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.