Help with Terrain Rendering

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 1:18 am

hi, everyone.

I am currently doing one HLA military simulation research project based on game engine to put HLA in 3D envirements. I want to find out which tools is useful for me so that I can create a huge amount of terrain data and show it in Irrlicht. Can anyone suggest to any tools for me? Thank you for looking at my Q.

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 3:53 am

Heh, I've used HLA, it stinks! Sorry you have to deal with it, was so much easier just using DIS.

We use an application at my work called SVS, written by a company called AIS. They have DIS and HLA support. Maybe look into that. Other than that, you would have to generate terrain data from whatever terrain data source you have!

What is it may I ask? CTDB, ESRI Shape Files, there's so many different formats out there. If I knew the specific format your terrain data is in, I might be able to help you more.

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 1:36 am

It is so nice that some one can help me with that. Thank you in advance. What I want to do is display some GIS data by using Irrlicht to show it.

By the way, can u explain to me why HLA stinks? it is based on RTI and HLA is a modeling architecture so far from my understanding. Correct me if I am wrong since I am just started to due with this project 1.5 month.

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:46 am

I used HLA/RTI about 3-4 years ago on some projects. It's just a very bad implementation, or rather it was. About a year to a year and half ago, DMSO gave it out to commerical companies, like Mak and others. SAIC, you developed the original RTI code ( BTW, HLA is the architechture design and RTI is the implementation of it ), did a very bad job with it.

Anyways, I'll look into GIS data and see what I can dig up about it.

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 1:30 am

Thank you for that. And I will try to write some code to load the height map and modeling first. I think I forgot to tell you that the GIS data part is one of the possible project goal. The point is to find out what is the fast way for me to gerenate the terrain data and load that in the prototype no matter what data format is. Because my project only last 3.5 months, I need to do it quite.

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 1:25 pm

Check here, with the GLOBE data ( which is in RAW 8bit format ) you could load as a heightmap and display a HUGE amount of world space ( actual Earth too ).

I think the terrain engine I have in my current game would work well tiling out this data, I'm gonna play with it a bit as well. If it's not what you're looking for, or you need some other kind of data, let me know and I'll find more for you.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/topo/topo.shtml

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 1:27 pm

BTW, I'm just curious, which version of RTI are you using? Haven't even looked at that stuff in a long time, wonder if it's gotten much better being a commercial product now!

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 11:13 pm

From the DMSO website, it has 4 vendors. So I went to those websites and download one trival version of RTI from http://www.pitch.se/prti1516/downloadle.asp
For this short project, trival version should be enough.
I will check GLOBE data out. By the way. what terrain engine are u using?
Thank you very much.

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 12:44 am

We use ESRI ArcMap Shape files, as well as DTED and CTDB version 8.

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:15 am

I had a look at those GLOBE data. I downloaded one of them and try to load it into my application which is just one model in it. The result is give me
Unhandled exception at 0x00401205 in FirstPrototype.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x00000000.

And my code is just like this :
IImage* iTerrain = driver->createImageFromFile("../media/fire.bmp");
IImage* iHeightMap = driver->createImageFromFil("../media/AU&NZMap");

IAnimatedMesh* iTerrainMesh = smgr->addTerrainMesh("iTerrainMesh", iTerrain,iHeightMap, core::dimension2d< f32 >(10.0f, 10.0f),1500.0f,dimension2d< s32 >(64, 64));

ISceneNode* iTerrainNode = smgr->addOctTreeSceneNode( iTerrainMesh->getMesh(0) );

This code loads fine with the others jpg, bmp files.

And I can not find any information about what defaultVertexBlockSize do in the addTerrainMesh method also.
Thank you

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 2:07 pm

The data you get from GLOBE is just the binary data, not a .BMP file. You would need to generate a .BMP file from the data or write a custom interpreter to parse the binary data. The GLOBE site talks about how the data is formed.

Come to think of it, I think they actually explain the process of how to convert the data to .BMP in Adobe Photoshop, let me see if I can't find the link to that....

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 11:49 pm

O......I donot have Adobe Photoshop. So I can not convert that to bmp from that file. However, I can use the other software to convert those image that they post online as form .gif to .bmp. and I can display them without the correct height. Please tell me whether the photoshop data works. And Is it possible to send me the bmp file?

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:07 am

Obtaining and Importing GLOBE Data -

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/topo/report/s11/s11G_.html

Importing into Adobe Photoshop -

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/topo/report/s11/s11Gx.html

I have Photoshop, so if you need me to convert a certain area to a .bmp for you, just let me know, or send me the data that you downloaded.

Mong · Post by **Mong** » Fri Dec 24, 2004 10:02 pm

Thank you for your help then. I just send you my mail box in teh private message.

Irrlicht Engine

Help with Terrain Rendering

Help with Terrain Rendering

Re: Help with Terrain Rendering