Whats your take on this one Marc?, SRTM vs 1/3 ARC Options

[maxim]

Marc, i was wondering if you had some insight on this one. I have just created a step by step route building tutorial for TS2012. This is a tutorial i wish to upload on various sites, to help people get into route building, with terrain, markers and decals. Its a, press here and there, follow along with pictures kinda tutorial.

Anyways, ive been using the following terrain data, two different ones ,

http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm NED 1/3 Arc Second ( no 1/9 was available for the area of the tutorial )

and

http://dds.cr.usgs.gov/srtm/version2_1/SRTM3/North_America/ SRTM V2_1

What terrain would you go for in a route ? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

Just want to make sure i havent missed some"new, undiscovered" terrain data before uploading.

[Hack]

Those are the two major ones for RW. You covered ReDem, correct?

Cheers!
Marc

[maxim]

Thanks Marc,

I havent covered REDEM, i have never used it. In fact, for my horseshoe curve route, the one i started last year, i did the seamless NED 1/9 arc terrain with great results.

Too bad NED 1/9 doesnt have more of the US covered

I hope others in the community will help with Redem as i know nothing about it. If you will, i can upload the document to you, its written in wordpad that comes with Windows 7 64bit, quite a big file with all the pictures.

Im working on it right now actually, trying to finish it. I know there are many who want to create a prototypical / semi prototypical route, but the time to actually sit down and go through it all is a chore, it was for me :-)

Im hoping the tutorial will enable more users to take the plunge into route building, with terrain, makes it so much better. :-)

[Hack]

If you didn't use ReDem, then how did you do your terrain? If you converted the 1/9 arc second data to HGT format, I believe the files get resampled to closer to 1/3 arc second - basically no better than SRTM, except the files are seamless and the lat/lon regions are more accurately grouped.

Cheers!
Marc

[Hack]

An interesting side note - I attended the MS Simulation '07 in Seattle, and the MS guys demonstrated the ill-fated Train Simulator 2. One of the TS2 features is that it had the capability of supporting 1m terrain resolution, but MS only had 3m LIDAR data to available as an example. In other words, their technology far surpassed JPL's available data. Makes you wonder where we'll all be in 10 more years with the state of the art. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Cheers!
Marc

[maxim]

" 1m terrain resolution ", now theres some serious terrain (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif) Too bad TS2 never became a reality.

Im still awaiting Cascade Game Foundry`s next move, i wonder what they are up to, any clue Marc ?

Regarding how i do my terrain, i download BIL files, NED 1/3 Arc, i then convert the BIL files to HGT files. Same terrain as i did with my own HSC, looked fantastic ! Mind you, when i started my own HSC route last year, i downloaded NED 1/9 files as i was lucky enough to see that Pennsylvania was covered with 1/9... I did the same back then, downloaded NED 1/9 in BIL format and converted them to HGT files.

[Hack]

I haven't a clue as to what CGF might be up to.

I mentioned above that BIL is resampled down to 1/3 arc second - I meant "1 arc second (30m). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif) I'm fairly certain that the BIL files you converted to HGT were resampled to the 1 arc second supported by HGT files.

Cheers!
Marc