Irrlicht Engine

Hi,

im very interested in geography and programming. I know the basics in graphics programming and c++ in a professional way.
So, what i wanted to ask you and maybe you can help me, can i create with the Irrrlich engine a map of europe, are there techniques making that possible? Of course not in proportion 1:1, maybe 1:5 or 1:10 ?
I very like the heightmap tutorial by irrlicht, thought it would be possible to combinate just some heightmaps, place the other heightmaps to ram and show the heightmap of actual coordinates or smth like that?
It shouldnt look like a street map, just like a simple map like the heightmap in the tutorial and i would like to place some buildings on locations where actually towns are.
If the irrlicht engine cant do that, is there another engine out there?

thank you and sry for mi bad english

Theres a commercial product called SimUrban that does that sort of thing. They use satellite photos, heightmap data, etc. and create really accurate models of cities and towns. It's mainly used by urban planning groups and councils that need to put up new buildings. They make the building virtually and then allow you to swap out the old and new buildings and see things like shadows from the building, how it will affect other buildings, etc.

As for making Europe, I don't know if this is the type of product you're after, but it could be a starting point.

You can certainly do this, you just need to provide the heightmap data really... Then you could use something like arras' tiled terrain scene node which will only display a small part of the heightmap around you and update as you move so you can effectively render a huge heightmap very efficiently.

You wanna do like google earth, don't you? The answer is yes, but it may be harder prepare accurate geography model than using engine.

There is an opensouce application working somewhat similar to googleearth called earth3d. That might be a good startingpoint to find out how to do something like that. The author of that application also wrote a nice diploma thesis about that topic which goes into a lot more detail, but it's not online so you have to ask him for it.

whow thank you guys for these infos. The only thing i couldnt check out is www.simurban.com, the website wont load.
the terrain in arras' tiled terrain scene node demo looks like i am searching for. Is it possible to draw animations like grass, trees etc. within terrain rendering via heightmap or is it just a static map?
Do you know the feel like having the chinese wall in front of you and you want start building a copy of it, thats what i feel at the time, same as i start learning c++. Is there any starting entry/book or whatever to start with or is it ok for a c++ programmer to start learning graphics programming by a lib like Irrlicht?
the earth3d looks pretty nice too, thank you for that information.

cu Chris

Check out this site: http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/Index.asp . Using Google Earth and one of two KMZ files hosted there you can get all the data you need. Then you just have to make an image out of it.

the terrain in arras' tiled terrain scene node demo looks like i am searching for. Is it possible to draw animations like grass, trees etc. within terrain rendering via heightmap or is it just a static map?

It is only terrain node, for trees or grass you have to use other scene nodes. Terrain is not static however, it can be modified dynamically in real time.

sample