Terrain from real world locations
by Geoff \'Got Haggis?\' Rowland · in General Discussion · 07/30/2002 (12:15 pm) · 22 replies
Hey all,
I'm a huge Tribes and Tribes2 fan. I plan to eventually buy the Torque engine to screw around.
My background is computer science and geography. Anyway, after having come across that the Torque engine can import greyscale .png files for terraforming, I instantly realized from my geography background that it would be quite easy to import real world locations into the engine. Maybe this is common knowlegde, not sure.
Basically you have Digital Elevation Models or DEMs that contain height data. I use ArcView (a GIS program) to import these, convert them to greyscale, then export them back out to .PNG files. There are serveral freeware/shareware programs that will import DEMs and convert them to images as well.
There are a couple of problems, the main one being the "tiling" feature of terrian I suppose. Sort of cool though, I have a website with a few files up if anyone is interested in messing around with them
http://www.shaggusmachaggis.com/terrain.html
I'm a huge Tribes and Tribes2 fan. I plan to eventually buy the Torque engine to screw around.
My background is computer science and geography. Anyway, after having come across that the Torque engine can import greyscale .png files for terraforming, I instantly realized from my geography background that it would be quite easy to import real world locations into the engine. Maybe this is common knowlegde, not sure.
Basically you have Digital Elevation Models or DEMs that contain height data. I use ArcView (a GIS program) to import these, convert them to greyscale, then export them back out to .PNG files. There are serveral freeware/shareware programs that will import DEMs and convert them to images as well.
There are a couple of problems, the main one being the "tiling" feature of terrian I suppose. Sort of cool though, I have a website with a few files up if anyone is interested in messing around with them
http://www.shaggusmachaggis.com/terrain.html
#22
Well, I created this resource in 2004:
www.torquepowered.com/community/resources/authorID/37819
but it looks like the work we've done here in the Torque community has been overshadowed by the likes of Google Earth. Although the stuff in this thread and in my resource still work fine, I'm sure there are better ways to do it now.
07/17/2010 (10:06 pm)
Quote:Is there any news on this front? I know we all got this idear before Google earth, still any better alternatives, than them we listed?
Well, I created this resource in 2004:
www.torquepowered.com/community/resources/authorID/37819
but it looks like the work we've done here in the Torque community has been overshadowed by the likes of Google Earth. Although the stuff in this thread and in my resource still work fine, I'm sure there are better ways to do it now.
Torque Owner Danjal Johan Joensen