Distant Mountains

[peacockg]

I am trying to generate Distant Mountain tiles for my route, but I am not having a lot of success.
The tiles are generated and are 24 files are saved in the LO-Tiles folder, but they are totally flat, so they have not used the geodata.

Standard terrain generates successfully and does use the geodata, so it is present.
I have these lines in settings.txt

# geo data
geoPath = E:/1MSTS/Routes/Zurich/Height

but nothing that says Lo-Tiles.

I also do not understand the 2 buttons -- Generate tiles using MKR -- and TDB.

What I really want to do is get an exact copy of my standard terrain, height and Terrtex, but in the Lo-Tiles folder.

Any help please Garry

[slipperman]

Hi Garry,
I'm sure Goku (or others!) will put me right, if necessary, but I don't think TSRE5 currently supports/creates Distant Mountains.

Cheers,
Ged

[peacockg]

Hi Ged
I have done a search and found this post from Goku dated 22 Jan 2018
http://www.elvastower.com/forums/ind...page__st__1890
He is talking about version 0.6951 -- - "edit distant terrain - works good only with TSRE DM"

Just downloaded this version and will look at it tomorrow.
Garry

[Hannes44]

Hi,

I think it does with "Settings" - "Terrain Editing" -"Distant Terrain".

[peacockg]

Ok I have worked out what I was doing wrong, or more correctly what I was not doing.
I expected the distant mountain tiles to generate in the same way that Auto Tile Generate works for standard tiles when both the Create selectors are ticked. This creates a new tile and brings in the height data at the same time.
With Distant Terrain I was generating new tiles but totally flat at zero metres altitude.

THEN you have to click the Load Height button and select one of the new tiles. A new window opens (totally black), click the Load button across the top, and the height data is imported.
Garry

NOTE to VINCE. I see that you have some additions in the TSRE Guide. If you like I will write this up in Word and submit it to you. You can have full editorial control to change things before adding it to the Guide.

[jefffarq]

Garry,

Can you please post some info on where (and how) you got your geodata? I've been looking all over the forums trying to figure out how to do this nowadays.

Thanks,

[peacockg]

Hi Jeff
My height data is in the form of hgt files, (eg N46E006.hgt) and I keep these in a separate "Height" folder within my main Route folder.
This is called up in the settings.txt file of TSRE by the line -- geoPath = E:/1MSTS/Routes/Zurich/Height

As to where I got these .hgt files, I cannot remember as I have had them so long. But a search for "DEM data" (from Michael Vone's guide) gave many results, and another for ".hgt files" led me to this page, which is a map of the world divided up into squares.

http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/Coverage%20map%20viewfinderpanoramas_org3.htm

I clicked on one square, 4 minutes later I had downloaded a 30MB zip file, which unzipped into 24 .hgt files each covering 1 degree square.
Garry

[jefffarq]

Thanks; I'll check this site out.

One more question; will TSRE5 create the DM tiles, or do I still need to to that in the RGE first?

[ebnertra000]

Jeff,

You should be able to create DM tiles right in TSRE (note that I have yet to try). In the settings drop-down menu you can switch from editing Near to DM terrain. You should be ableto create DM tiles with DEM data right off the bat, too. I know it can be done with regular Near tiles, as I've started a couple routes that way

[jefffarq]

Correct; it can be done. After a few fits and starts, and I'm not sure whether I clicked on the buttons in the right sequence, DM tiles did appear, complete with distant mountains. Using data from the site recommended by Garry above (mine was dated 2012), there were a few holes and flat spots here and there, but using the editor I was able to fix the ones that were visible.

Thanks, Garry and Josh!

[jefffarq]

Is it just me, or is there something weird about the DM terrain generated and populated with elevation data in TSRE5?

After successfully putting in distant mountains in my route (using the procedures in this post above), I find that the terrain isn't the quality I got from using Demex:

There are numerous pockets of terrain that don't match the surrounding terrain; large areas that are flat, big holes, etc. Not a big deal, easy to fix in TSRE5...

When driving the route the distant mountains coming in or out of view are very rough and angular, even loading looking something like the Sidney Opera House. Demex DM did not do that. May have something to do with the level of accuracy in the downloaded elevation data...

The DM terrain is visible in MSTS RE - Demex DM isn't (at least not on the routes I've used it for).

Opening the route in Mosaic and trying to look at DM terrain relief makes Mosaic crash (on two different computers/installations). I would like to apply textures based on the terrain (mountains/sea/coast) but can't because Mosaic crashes.

It's as though the terrain generated by TSRE5 lies somewhere between DM and standard terrain...

Anybody else having this problem? Any ideas as to how to fix it?

Thanks,

[oliver2]

Hi Jeff,
I'm not sure whether we have the same problem, but I also had big-hole-problems when I downloaded elevation data from the website that Goku mentions on his website. After that I tried another source: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
There are no .hgt files, just an other file format which have to be converted to .hgt. Complicated way, but the solution seems to be correct, with no holes and flat areas.
Greetings: Peter

[jefffarq]

Thanks, Peter. I'll take a look. What did you use to convert the files from this site to .hgt?

I didn't have a lot of problems with holes and flat spots, like I said - easy to correct, but this data appears to give Mosaic fits. I use Mosaic a lot!