Google Earth for reference material

[bigben]

Hi All

I know it's nothing novel, but I use Google Earth for some reference material. What I was wondering was if there were enough people who also used it to make it worthwhile providing Google Map/Google Earth overlays of my terrain sets.... e.g. http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/?p=1. Google map reference, with a link for the .kml file used to display the map.  The final version will have a low res images of the heightfields.

The overlays load with transparency in Google Earth and I figured people could at least explore the terrain first before deciding to start the hefty downloads, although I know it can be a bit of a pain for people on slower connections.

Still have a lot of design work to go, but I've sorted out most of the structure and functionality of my new site... don't bookmark anything other than the base URL http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/ until I fomrally announce the site as I have been known to wipe and restart a couple of times already 

[Harvey Birdman]

No idea about Google, but can't wait to see the finished version of the site!

[rcallicotte]

Nice tinkering.

What's the big purple box about?

[dhavalmistry]

it is taking forever to load the site....

[bigben]

Thanks for the feedback

Nice tinkering.

What's the big purple box about?

The coloured boxes will be replaced with images of the terrain files that will be available for upload so that you can see exactly which areas they cover. This will be a replacement for my terrain sets which were never formally published (but have been available) e.g. http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/terragen/terrains/grand_canyon/ Some of my terrain sets (like this example) will have multiple high resolution terrains, so if you had just a specific location in mind you could using Google Earth to preview the site and see which terrains you needed before downloading them.

it is taking forever to load the site....

Hmmm... If anyone's trying this page and it takes al ong time can you also check if Google Maps takes a long time to load? That way I know where the problem lies.

[bigben]

Another small step forward

<http://www.bigben.id.au/terragen/?p=8>
Starting with a brand new terrain set (Monument Valley)

Producing a kml file is now useful to me for checking the coverage of the padding terrains so it doesn't really matter what you think... I'll be posting them on my site anyway.   Each tile image will have a different hue, and the filename in the south east corner.

Progress was a little slow 'cos I'm still sorting out workflows with the new update of GlobalMapper which now nicely exports kml/kmz, although it's a bit awkward as I'm workng with UTM coordinates (metres) and the kml export is Geographic projection so I have to recalculate the corner coordinates for each tile.

These overlays will be particularly useful for this area where there will be adjacent terrain sets with considerable overlap (Goosenecks just to the north), and for planning larger terrains to be shared between them... e.g. Monument Valley and Goosenecks will have 10m (resolution) and 20m terrains, and then share common 50m and 100m terrains... eventually they will share a common terrain with the Grand Canyon terrain set to the east.

[Harvey Birdman]

...
Producing a kml file is now useful to me for checking the coverage of the padding terrains so it doesn't really matter what you think...

Oh, yeah? Well,  !

   

... Progress was a little slow 'cos I'm still sorting out workflows with the new update of GlobalMapper which now nicely exports kml/kmz, although it's a bit awkward as I'm workng with UTM coordinates (metres) and the kml export is Geographic projection so I have to recalculate the corner coordinates for each tile.

That sounds like fun.     You need to come up with a way to automate that!

[bigben]

Yeah... automate it.....  hmmm... well I'm using a database to calculate the UTM corner coordinates, but that's just basic math.  I'm converting these coordinates to ° ' " using an excel spreadsheet (not written by me) and at least the math is well documented... 

damn.... now you got me looking at scripting GlobalMapper.... another workflow review but hopefully the awkard bits will be offset by other time savings. 

[Harvey Birdman]

Just looking at the screen shot up above... all it needs is a grainy black-and-white of John Wayne leading a troop of cavalry pasted into the center...

   

[bigben]

Here's the reverse angle in TG2. A quick test showing the addition of progressively wider (lower resolution) terrains. Terrain resolutions are 10m, 20m and 50m respectively, and terrain sizes are all 4097x4097. (the last terrain is not ready yet as I have to get some more data for the extreme edges.

Much quicker testing this in Google Earth...