Introducing the new 3d Terrain Viewer

Boyd

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I'll re-process my whole elevation dataset (around 300gb / 6 million tiles IIRC)

I was wrong on both counts, it's actually about 9 million tiles but "only" 169 gb. :) But it involved re-processing 1.7 terabytes of uncompressed source data and when you count all the intermediate files that were created it would amount to about 3x that much data.

Here's another little update, the icon is now blue! :dance: Makes it stand out as a special function and is also in keeping with the way that 3d maps are shown in blue on the menu. Also, it's easier to say "click the blue button" instead of giving a long description.

Screen Shot 2023-07-02 at 2.10.31 PM.png
 
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Boyd

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Have just completed two major bug fixes for the app. It turned out that when you changed the brightness of the "sun" and linked to your map, your custom brightness setting was discarded and replaced with a default value. I put that update online last night. But today I finally figured out what was causing a very major bug in the color shaders. You may have noticed something similar, flat geometric areas of solid colors. This was pretty rare, but it was repeatable and it had me stumped. The old version is shown on the left below and the updated version on the right.

bug.png


Turned out to be a stupid error at the beginning of my shader code that caused the highest elevations on the map to have the wrong colors. The exact effect varied depending on the exact mix of elevations in the map and the shader. Most of the time, it wasn't really noticeable but in extreme cases it generated illegal RGB values, causing this kind of error.

But this bug affected the coloring of the whole map in a more subtle way, making the high elevations appear to be even higher than they really were. If you've saved any images or links with the color shaders, have another look at them. They are going to look a bit different now, but they will accurately represent the color scale and gradients of the shader.

This update just went live around noon today. As usual, the browser cache might prevent you from seeing the new version, which can be fixed by clearing your cache.
 

Boyd

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Well, there ought to be a law against having a big blue area in the middle of a hill. The screenshot above is exhibit #1. :siren: But now there's new sheriff in town and those lawless days are over! :clint:
 
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Boyd

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Boyd

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Jul 31, 2004
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Ben's Branch, Stephen Creek
here's a view of Washington where the full range of elevations is only 40 feet

Was just noticing, all the gravel pits (?) on the highest part of that map (~80 ft) are interesting. Maybe some of them are actually cellar holes? They fit perfectly within the light blue area

https://boydsmaps.com/terra/#39.686...96/0/2000/479/-2000/100/1/2d/shader40/0/0/z17

Screen Shot 2023-07-10 at 9.58.00 AM.png


[edit]Probably just gravel pits, can't find any record of buildings, geology is "Upland Gravel, Lower Phase (late Pliocene-middle Pleistocene)"

https://boydsmaps.com/pines/#17/39.686955/-74.598047/midatlidar/0/0/
 
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Spung-Man

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Was just noticing, all the gravel pits (?) on the highest part of that map (~80 ft) are interesting. Maybe some of them are actually cellar holes? They fit perfectly within the light blue area
Hi Boyd,

Thank you again for all the wonderful improvements you continue to make through BoydsMaps! The highest raised land appears to be relict plateau, which is often underlain by gravel, ironstone, and/or dense soil such as fragipan. The pits seem to cultural artifacts, but they don't look like cellar holes like the ones at Mount just west of your site of interest.
 
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Boyd

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Thanks Mark!

Here's a general terrain viewer note for everyone, especially for using 2d view in flat terrain like the Pines. The initial instinct will be to crank up the vertical exaggeration setting because it's easy and the shadows bring out detail. But you are adding distortion by stretching the terrain (which may or may not be an issue). Look at the two examples below. On the left, I used the default sun position and only changed the vertical exaggeration and brightness.

But on the right, I was able to get the same effect with no vertical exaggeration. Notice that I moved the "sun" all the way Northeast (sliders at 2000 and -2000). I also set the brightness at maximum (100%) and then lowered the height until it brought out the most detail. So, extreme lighting angles can often be as effective as vertical exaggeration.

vx.png
 
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