SRTM-30 Earth DEM test

[martins]

Currently playing around with the SRTM-30 elevation dataset (1-arcsec resolution = 30m). It does look quite nice close-up. However, sadly this is unlikely to ever make it into a download version. The amount of data is just too insane. For global coverage, I estimate that the Earth texture directory would clock in at not far shy of 1TB, and that's just not going to happen.

So feast your eyes, and be sad

 

[Zatnikitelman]

*eyes the price of 19 inch racks for the storage array he now needs*
Seriously though, this is amazing! I hope that at least it will be possible to have small high-res sections available, it would make spaceports in more mountainous areas (Vandenburg comes to mind) all that more interesting and realistic!

 

[MaverickSawyer]

I agree with Zatman... If this can be implemented on a local scale, for areas around spaceports, that would be awesome.

 

[Post much?]

The prospect of an upgraded Earth elevation dataset seems nice, storage space/bandwidth notwithstanding, but I recall even the void-filled finished product being full of gaps and holes unlike the CGIAR 90m product. Thus, I don't see it as a suitable upgrade on a global scale, but could, as Maverick pointed out, work for local areas e.g. KSC.

 

[Col_Klonk]

So feast your eyes, and be sad

Would it be possible to incorporate (or even select) regions of interest (ie: Bases or landing areas) in very hi res into Orbiter, which extracts the data off another hard drive (bought specifically for this purpose :lol. So that would mean something like 9 disks for the solar system.. :thumbup:

OR if one is playing on the web.. a distributed repository of hires planets.

In game one can select landing grid of interest, which the game then extracts from the extra disk, loading it by the time the ship arrives.

Just and idea..
:tiphat:

 

[Abloheet]

Yeah. From now on, new bases should include high res local google earth images for surface tiles and directly place in the correct subfolders in the textures directory. And also include local high res terrain.

---------- Post added at 08:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 PM ----------

Also, one question? Where were the high res surface tiles for the previous orbiter version obtained from? Cant those tiles be used for local high res surface tiles as a part of the earth surf textures folder? Is there any guide to doing this?

 

[SolarLiner]

Another way would be streaming data from servers, Outerra style... Or use a little bit of procedural generation.

 

[GLS]

I think eventually we'll get to that quality and more. We just have to wait for technology to move forward a bit more and you'll see that playing with TBs of info will be as easy as MBs are today. I'm thankful that the next Orbiter introduces surface elevation, which is a huge step forward, but I'm not expecting it to have super-duper quality right from the start.
Hopefully one day the quality will be high enough that each user is able to start the simulation with the DG parked at the end of his/her street. :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

I think a dynamic terrain quality system would be the best way, especially since even a 1800m resolution would look good enough in most places of the world.

I don't know what Orbiter uses right now as data structure in memory. Maybe a 2D k-d tree structure? Its O(log n) for finding the nearest neighbor to a point.

 

[kamaz]

There is a very good 3" / 1" free DEM product here: http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html

I have used it previously with Orulex: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=29475

My approach would be worldwide 3" data and 1" data in interesting areas, i.e. mountains and spaceports (say 10% of the land surface). If the global 1" product is 1TB, then global 3" product is 100GB, and selected 10% of the land surface at 1" is another 100GB, totalling 200GB. This is on the upper end, but still manageable I believe, and compression (even just zipping the files) should shrink it further.

 

[ZXS2000]

on this has there been any "standardized datum" inserted into the beta version of orbiter...only asking this as it would then make insertion of hi res local DEM's up to the individual end users requirements and capabilites, also leaving those with the money and processors to go "global" if required.

Im not much of a prgrammer and only casually get time on with Orbiter, I had only just got my VNC MFD's running on two 10" touchscreens and 2 7" screens ready for my simpit when I then started on the beta version....went oooooohhhh aaaahhhhh and thought well better wait till this gets stabilized and set the "capsule" up on the new version.