New Tiles Available!

Hello again,

As i have mentioned in previous post, i have been testing application with SRTM 30 data. Since I have altered a demo of Cesium showcase, i have decided to publish important landmarks at that demo.

Those landmarks are Everest and Half Dome at Yosemite National Park. You can preview those tilesets from  Here

I hope you enjoy it and find time to compare both STK and TGS terrain sets at those landmarks. Our server has limited capacity for whole SRTM 30 detailed datasets so only these territories are available.

Everest

Half  Dome

So i was there...At the mountain of the spirits...

Hi to anyone reading here, Currently testing new datasources and generating new datasets. I have been playing around with SRTM 30 (30 meters resolution DEM data), in order to see what the algortihm is capable in harsh mountain areas. I have clipped data near Everest area. This includes Nepal, Manaslu territory as well. Interestingly, Manaslu means Mountain of Spirits in Sanskrit and is the highest 8th mountain on the world. As a result of a coincidence, i have generated Manaslu mountain area just randomly and realized something is off. At the right side of the mountain, there was some plain area shown and a very steep hill afterwards. So steep that even the texture mapping was off and stretched. I have decided to check it on Cesium STK terrain server and Google Earth. In both applications, there was no such anomal-ish terrain on sight. That made me think that there was something wrong with the algorithm itself. However, there was something else, i have to check out as well.

Generated Tile (13/12040/2796) 

STK Tile (13/12040/2796)

I have generated KML version of the corresponding terrain tile and put it on top of elevation data SRTM 30 which is downloaded directly from NASA servers. Also KML fit almost perfectly to the DEM which indicates sharp transitions on the mountain side

DEM and KML

I want to see mountains again

Hi to anyone reading this.

I have decided to write to this blog, and share the experience and hear about ideas.

First of all, i love mountains, the landscape whatever you wanna call it. At my old office, i was lucky enough to have that view right out my window. And sipped my tea while enjoying the view. Back in the old days, at my country house, i have realized that i find comforting this scenery and its nature. Clouds and fog curving around and down from the mountain tops. That is something worth viewing.

Nothing like home

With this enthusiasm, and my job, i wanted to view mountains on my screen. Not like a background picture but to shape them and in a way model them.

In my MS thesis, i have used some artificial height maps and rendered them in pure OpenGL. Sure other than this, there were other things to focus like 3D stereo projection or etc. But still it was nice to have some terrain included (Thesis).

Also at the office, we needed some terrain visualization and yet again i was dealing with mountains DEMs and DTEDs.

Now since i have came across CesiumJS library, and their super cool effort to make this data available on web, i wanted to have my data visible on that sphere as well. However, tool to create it was not publicly available and therefore i have decided to make one.


So after some effort, github has shaped and one thing to another lead to this blog.

(Git Repo)

This blog is about mountains, and how to generate them.

Like what Bilbo said:  "I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere i can rest. In peace and quiet..."