Highest-res earth textures?

[timcrews]

Hello:

Now that Virtual Textures are available, I have been trying to collect all of the highest-resolution textures that I can find for Earth.

I have found 32K textures for the surface and night lights. I have a 16K virtual texture for specular, although I'm not sure it has rivers and lakes implemented. (This is discussed in the "case for 32K specular map" thread.) I have a 32K VT overlay texture for political boundaries, and Fridger's huge new locations file.

But the highest-res normal map I have found is 8K. This is making hash out of my beautiful 32K surface texture. Does anyone know of a higher-resolution normal map or bump map?

Thanks,

Tim Crews

[jestr]

Theres a 10k x 5k bump map available here
http://www.space-graphics.com/earthphoto.htm
but when you scale it down for Celestia it is still only 8k.
You need a good quality bump map to make a big normal map.I havent found any bigger than the one above,cheers Jestr

[Buzz]

Hi Timcrews,

The 16k spec has rivers, check for example the Mississippi and the Amazon. Of course rivers only show up if they are wide enough to cover a pixel.

[JackHiggins]

Buzz

Previously when I downloaded a fairly big specmap, it turned out to be kinda bad, with all areas below sea level being specularised (Caspian sea, holland etc). Before I start to download this one, i'd just like to be sure the same isn't true here again?!

(I don't remember whose specmap had the problem last time btw)

[Buzz]

Jack

This one reflects where there is surface water, not on every spot below sea level. I would not like that, being from the low countries myself
By the way, the current version is rather small because it in png format.

[JackHiggins]

Buzz, that's great! Thanks!

[sombrehombre]

til somebody in the Celestia community gets ahold of these:

Global (on continents), cloudless, true color (using bands R:1, G:4, B:3)
coverage of the earth at 500m/pixel (twice that of Blue Marble). Updated,
with archives, every 32 days (so you could have seasonal coverage

Each of 5 'continents' is a 650 MB download (if you include all 3 bands, so
it would be 3.5 G or so for the full set.


http://glcfapp.umiacs.umd.edu:8080/esdi/index.jsp

Would require this tool to reproject from homolosine projection to simple cylindrical projection:

http://lpdaac2.usgs.gov/landdaac/tools/modis/index.asp

I'll leave these pointers to somewone with a faster connection and better scripting skills than myself.

Darryl Roy
(who seems to be logged in, finally)