Celestia Forums

So, after some (organisatorical) effort I'm glad to present you a hires topographic map of the earth (incl. oceans).

It was derived from a original 2 min grid data from NOAA. Have a look at http://www.ngdc.nooa.gov/mgg/image/images.html.
It's original size is 10.5k which was stretched to 16k for the VT version. There are versions with 4k, 8k and 16k available.

The coloring ranges from dark blue (deepest) over green, yellow, red to light gray (highest). There was only preshaded data available, so it can't be used well with normal maps. You may also see some artifacts due to adjacent tiles with different resolution levels. This may be caused by a subsequent refinement process on additional satellite data, showing different states of it at different locations.

The texture also shows the remarakably high aeras on greenland and antarctica. Because of the up to 2km thickness of the ice cover there they're real highlands.

Ok, here some pictures now (please keep in mind that the original is much sharper):

1. Colorful topographic earth
2. The Rockies
3. The Himalaya








have fun,

maxim

Wow, I have the same virtual texture on my site, but it is only a 8k jpg one with 1k tiles so I'll post links to pages that have addons, including yours, sometimes. And I can now take that texture off of my site to make room for any addons I may make.

Brendan

Ah, I didn't know this texture was already on the web. I wondered why nobody did it, because it was so obviously laying around, so I did.
(Althougt it was some effort with the dds as it's quite badly compressible.)

maxim

Today I can offer you two new topographic textures. They are for venus this time. You can download it from my weppage.

The first is a topographic surface with standard rainbow coloring key:



The second is a base elevation map with grouped coloring. This one
is - according to restrictions of the source data - for noncommercial use only:



have fun

maxim

A bumpmap prepared from those venus topo data would be very useful, too. Any chance of such a thing?

Grant

Wow! Maxim...these are just great. I'm sure Frank will have a lot of fun with these!
Excellent cartography!

Regards...bh.

granthutchison wrote:A bumpmap prepared from those venus topo data would be very useful, too. Any chance of such a thing?

The first one is (as most topography maps) preshaded.
The second one is displayed with VenusNormals on. I've got these from another forum members page (and don't remember who). Would you like me to provide these too on my page?

maxim

maxim wrote:The first one is (as most topography maps) preshaded.

Tut. I was hoping you'd prepared it yourself from topo data, and perhaps already had a bumpmap underlying it to provide the shading.

maxim wrote:The second one is displayed with VenusNormals on. I've got these from another forum members page (and don't remember who). Would you like me to provide these too on my page?

Perhaps from John's Celestia Page? I'm not sure, but John's normal and bumpmaps look to me as if they've been prepared by image manipulation, rather than from real topographic data.

Grant

maxim wrote:Today I can offer you two new topographic textures. They are for venus this time. The first is a topographic surface with standard rainbow coloring key:The second is a base elevation map with grouped coloring. have fun maxim

Good Stuff, Maxim,
I have just two little comments:
1/ Don't forget to explain that the clouds Must be desabled to see them
2/ Seems to me that your .ssc file doesn't refer to the same name of the .jpg texture for the second

"venus_base_elevation_2k.*"

in the .ssc, and

"venus base elevation_2k.jpg"

for the .jpg ...so: blank planet!
Corrected, good look
If it can help, Jeam

Jeam Tag wrote:I have just two little comments...

Thanx Jeam,
I've corrected that, and will load it up as soon as possible.

granthutchison wrote:I'm not sure, but John's normal and bumpmaps look to me as if they've been prepared by image manipulation, rather than from real topographic data.

Yes, the look a little like edge embossing - but it's a 'better than nothing'.
I will investigate in this bumpmap issue. Stay tuned.

maxim

maxim wrote:Thanx Jeam,
I've corrected that, and will load it up as soon as possible.

Nice ...I add some of your works in my catalogu, in the new chapter: 'Cartographies' http://jeam.tag.free.fr/CELESTIAhtml/CelestiaAddons-Cartographies3 (Only 3 actives pages for the moment) Jeam

I've decided to add the normals textures that could be used with the topographic venus maps. They are adapted (rotated and shifted) from that ones provided on Johns Celestia Page: http://johnscelestiapage.no-ip.com/.

maxim

Maxim:

Stop it, you're killing me! It was bad enough that I've integrated Celestia into my teaching of Astronomy so much that I've had to rewrite most of my lesson plans, but now you're going to have me doing it for Geology and Oceanography, which I also teach. Your maps are great and I am now going to have to incorporate ALL of them into both my class lectures, and as a set of computer lab lessons

My wife is going to kill me. She is already a Celestia widow.

Thanks for the great stuff.

Frank

So you will be glad to hear that there are several more addons in preparation - with different timelines

maxim

There`s a better normal map for venus now available. It`s not the best one possible, but it`s ways better than the previous one (and it takes much less space). So have fun.

maxim