Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Technology => Topic started by: ddenn on October 19, 2011, 10:08:15 am
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I thought I must post this info here https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/about/news_archive/monday_october_17_2011
May be it will be useful for Outerra terrain or for parts of it.
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Whoa, good news. I hope it will be much better than what version 1 provided.
Thanks for the notice.
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I saw this the other day and was hoping it meant good things for Outerra. You have to love all the data available on earth that wasn't intended for games, but Outerra will be able to take advantage of.
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What is this... "Earth" you speak of?
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Jonathan Ferranti reviewed the new dataset, and concluded that is was still 'research-grade' only - lots of the visually distracting worms/pits/spikes. Some areas noticeably 'improved' but the QA data attached suggests this is due to auxiliary sources rather than the GDEM data itself (eg SRTM V3 (with NGA inputs especially)/STRM V2).
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Just took the opportunity to download two cells for an area I know well (Purbeck) - well, it is horrid. Complete waste of bandwidth for low/flat areas - the entire height field is filled with noise +/-2 to 5m spikes and pits on almost every other cell.
Remember SRTM ver 0, before they did any pre-processing - and how the areas near water were unusable... this is like that, but everywhere (except where GDEM is unavailable and is void-filled with better data ::))
I'll stick with SRTM v2 or CGIAR SRTM (v4), and other free/easy to use DEM sources such as Panorama GB, rather than jump through hoops to obtain... what?
Not sure what the mention of (USGS) SRTM v3 means - apparently it is higher quality, using defence inputs, but what that means for 'free to use' is anyone's guess.
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Looks they will need several more scans to average and filter out the noise before it can become usable. Maybe it could be combined with SRTM, using that for flat/lowlands and ASTER for mountains, where one needs a better resolution anyway. Dunno if it's worth the effort though.
Thanks for testing it.