Computer Generated Mountains. |
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| Most people will have seen Google Earth and many will have seen NASA's WorldWind. What you will find here is not real time but looks better (I hope). I use similar data to these applications but render them out with various bits of software to give animations and stills to illustrate the treks I have been on in many of the worlds mountainous areas. So far I have completed the areas in the menu below. I will be adding other treks soon. | |
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The menu on the left will take you to the areas so far covered, or use the main menu above. Details of these renderings are given below. There are the usual photo comparisons and animations with lots of QTVR's, some linked with hot spots.
The later additions have flash panoramas instead of Quick Time. I am in the process of updating all the panoramas to flash and re rendering them in more detail. There are no photo comparisons in the Ladakh and Nanda Devi sections. Nanda Devi has no photos at all just animations and panoramas. I hope to visit soon and bring back many photos. |
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The generated landscapes are derived from DEM's. These are Distance Elevation Models. Basically this means that for each point on the ground the altitude is given and the landscape can be constructed. The critical factor is the spacing of the points. The whole world is covered by a spacing of 1 Km but the 90 metre spacing has gaps. Even where the files are available, they tend to have holes where there was cloud at the time the measurements were made. High mountainous areas are even worse and all the high peaks seem to be missing. This is partly due to the high slope values that do not reflect the radar back to the receiver. I have patched these holes with the 1Km data but things get smoothed out and there is not the detail. Fortunately this problem has been overcome by Jonathan de Ferranti who has patched all the high mountain areas very accurately. |
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He has made his work freely available at the link bellow. The four pictures on this page were done with his data and World Construction Set 6 (WCS6) and overlaid with Landsat photos. The Paine, Zanskar and Everest stuff has generated textures instead of the Landsat overlay. |
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All the data used to make these pictures is available on the internet free of charge. Finding DEM's and getting them in the right format can be tricky.
Use the menu above to view these sections, or click on the pictures. The animations are Windows Media. I have found that they don't always run properly in Firefox, in which case links are provided to download them. The panoramas are QTVR or, latterly, flash, so you will need the correct plug in to view them. The photo comparisons just use Java rollovers. |
| Clicking the big button to the right will take you to the animations and photo comparisons of the southern Tian Shan area. This is the area in Kyrgyzstan with the highest peaks of Pobedy and Khan Tengri. We flew in by helicopter and did day walks from the main base camp so there are no trek flyovers here but there are many panoramas and flights round these mountains and glaciers. For a video of the actual flight click here.
The methods used here are the same as the other areas covered by this page and in a similar format. |
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Useful links are listed below.World Construction Set This is the 3D Nature site and shows what can be done with WCS and its big brother VNS.www.viewfinderpanoramas.org This is the site of Jonathan de Ferranti. Here you can download the patched DEM's of high mountain regions as well as read about how he does it. www.planetside.co.uk The home of Terragen a free terrain visualization programme. www.terrainmap.com Here you will find info on DEM's and related subjects as well as the Blackart programme for patching holes in DEM's. |
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