Welcome to lidar.boydsmaps.com!

[Boyd]

The lights are still on, so the new tiles are now online. Here's an updated coverage map - total of 175 tiles so far, which means 700 individual maps - and I'm only getting started! This is as far East as I can go, since no data is available for Ocean County.

Here's a view of South Park
https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x099y039/shader/-805/428/-277/-419/-3/-101/-200/250/-900/50/2.5/3d

Chatsworth Lake
https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x103y039/shader/0/1368/0/0/0/0/941/294/157/55/2.5/2d

Hard to believe this is even the same place.
https://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.822818&lng=-74.549407&z=16&type=lidar&gpx=

 

[bobpbx]

I never realized there was a gun range behind the Bordentown Gun club. And it's neat that the trail runs from there to Apple Pie hill and it looks like a mountain range in that view.

 

[Boyd]

18 new tiles have just been uploaded, this time I'm expanding farther South with coverage from the Tulpehocken to Oswego Lake.

Tulpehocken Creek
https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x100y050/shader/0/1440/0/0/0/0/1020/314/-1451/100/2/2d

NJPB LIDAR map, for comparison: https://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.721394&lng=-74.585409&z=16&type=lidar&gpx=


Stormy Hill
https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x103y049/ortho/711/275/-59/431/-9/36/-863/314/1176/100/2.5/3d

 

[bobpbx]

What do you think is up with that cross-hatch pattern? Kind of like somebody laid a big screen over the land in places and pressed it down. Is that digital generation going on when the lidar is confused? Look at Stormy Hill in 2D mode. It's more pronounced.

 

[Boyd]

Yeah, it's an artifact of some kind, you can see it in many places. I don't think it was "confused", we are just seeing the individual pixels.

 

[bicycle tim]

Boyd, What's your best guess on how long it should take the new maps to open (windows 10, i5 chip, comcast@200+mbps).
Thanks, Tim

 

[Boyd]

The basemap opens in one or two seconds on all my computers, I have 150mbit FIOS

https://lidar.boydsmaps.com

Opening a topo is also very fast for me (the topo map doesn't have a 3d surface).

https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x104y045/topo/-151/719/-216/-150/1/-216/-200/250/-900/50/2.5/2d

It's the creation of the 3d surface that takes a lot of number-crunching. So, when I click the "shader" button from that map, it takes ~10 seconds. This could certainly vary, though. My computers are all pretty old - I do all my software all my software development on a 2012 Mac Mini, for example. So your system is probably newer than mine and probably has a better graphics chip.

How much memory does your computer have? Do you know what kind of graphics chip/card? If you don't know, see this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/03/...ics-card-specifications-on-your-computer.html

If you have an integrated graphics chip (which is typical, unless you have a high performance system), then it uses part of your main memory. If you are short on memory, that will affect performance. The graphics properties should show the total available graphics memory. On my old Windows 7 computer, I have the Intel HD 4600 chip and it uses 1696 MB of system memory (my computer has a total of 8gb). This works fine for the lidar site. If you only have 4gb of memory, that might be a problem though.

Your display resolution could also be a factor. I am using 1920 x 1080 monitors. If you have a 4k screen, that might take a lot longer since there are 4x as many pixels. But newer graphics chips are also better at this. Does the site not work at all on your computer? Or is it just slow?

 

[Boyd]

Wanted to do a little better test for this, so I tried opening the Tulpehocken link posted above on my PC. The web browser cache can speed up loading on a system that has opened a link before, and I have never opened that one before on my Windows computer. This is the link

https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x100y050/shader/0/1440/0/0/0/0/1020/314/-1451/100/2/2d

It took exactly 10 seconds for the map to appear using the Microsoft Edge, Chrome and Opera web browsers. But it took 13 seconds to open with Firefox. That surprised me, as I always though Firefox was fast. Would be interested in load times that others are seeing for that link. Bob has a new Windows system with an i7 CPU and 16gb RAM IIRC (although he didn't say what graphics card it had and how many cores the CPU has). Guy has an iMac that is newer than any of my Macs, with a better graphics card although I think it's a 5k screen, which requires a lot more processing power than a regular HD screen.

For reference, the computer used for my test is a 2012 HP ProDesk 400 with 3.4gh dual-core i5 CPU, 8gb RAM and Intel HD 4600 integrated graphics, running Windows 7 Professional. It has a "Windows Experience" of 5.3 (whatever that means). My impression is that this is sort of a medium rating for a Windows 7 system of this age.

 

[bobpbx]

I go from topo to shader or solid in 3 to 3.5 seconds.

I see the map using the link in post 28 in 4.5 seconds.

I have windows 10 Pro Intel UHD graphics 630

 

[Boyd]

Wow.... more incentive to upgrade my POS Windows 7 computer!

The browser cache might have something to do with this, since you have opened that map before. Next time I post new tiles (tonight or tomorrow) you could see if they take longer. However, as I said, the "heavy lifting" part is creating the 3d mesh and the cache shouldn't have any effect on that. So your newer graphics chip coupled with plenty of memory is probably the reason. Things have come a long way since the days of the HD4xxx chips in my old computers.

 

[Boyd]

I see you updated your post with some details, cool. Odd that they don't say how many CPU cores, guessing it is either 4 or 6? The UHD630 is a pretty common integrated graphics chip for current generation computers and should be more than adequate for the kind of 3d my site uses. Although a dedicated graphics card with its own memory is better, not sure if it would make much difference in this case. A fast CPU is also probably a factor, since an array of 4 million elevation samples is first converted to a format that the graphics chip needs.

If you have a system that is slow, for starters I would do a full shutdown and restart, then open just one tab in your web browser and don't run any other programs. That should ensure that nothing else is "competing" with the site. Now see how long it takes to open a topo map, like the link I posted above. Let's say that takes 2 seconds. Now click the "shader" button and see how long that takes. Let's say that is 12 seconds. The only difference between the topo and the shader is the 3d surface, so in this hypothetical example it took the computer 10 seconds to create the surface. A faster computer and graphics chip should improve that (maybe a lot, based on Bob's post).

Now if you usually have a lot of tabs open in your browser, or if you have a bunch of programs running at the same time, that can definitely slow things down. That's where extra memory will help, and a fast SSD instead of a hard drive could also make a difference.

 

[Boyd]

I see the map using the link in post 28 in 4.5 seconds.

It makes sense that this takes longer than just clicking the shader button. When you click on a link, that causes all the code for the program to be loaded and all the data structures to be initialized, which takes a little while. When a topo map is already open, clicking the shader button just loads the map data and creates the surface.

 

[bobpbx]

Odd that they don't say how many CPU cores, guessing it is either 4 or 6?

I looked up how to check, and it's easy. It's the performance tab under task manager. My 256 gb solid state drive must help too.

 

[Boyd]

That's a very nice system Bob!

Just uploaded another block of 16 new tiles starting where I left off yesterday, South of Lake Oswego and going East to Ocean County where the data ends. But most of this area is either private or part of the bombing range.

https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x114y049/shader/0/1440/0/0/0/0/-863/353/941/63/2.5/2d

 

[bobpbx]

I find it odd that the elevated land at the southeast corner of Sim Place looks like a depression no matter how it's shaded.

 

[Boyd]

It can be like an optical illusion at times. But I don't really notice it here. For starters, the red shading means that it's higher and that's what I lock onto first. But the lightning also makes it clear - look at the pit in the NE corner of your circled area. The shadow is on the South wall of the pit. But the shadow is on the North side of the hill.

Of course, just switching to 3d mode will quickly resolve any confusion. But this can be a confusing thing when I'm debugging new tiles. Last night I uploaded all that stuff and thought I was done until I noticed that the shading didn't quite make sense on one tile. After checking, the elevation file was wrong - it was from an adjacent tile. But that had me going for awhile.

 

[bobpbx]

If this is just an illusion tricking my own eyes, it's a good one. Look at these, taken at the same coordinates. To my eyes, one is a deep trough and one is a mound.

 

[Boyd]

Posting a link would help. You are making an assumption that the lighting is the same in both of those unrelated screenshots. And it's not. In the top screenshot, the "sun" is located in the Southeast, which casts a shadow on the Northwest side of the hill. In the bottom screen shot, the "sun" is in the North, casting a shadow on the South side of the hill.

If you play with the controls, you should be able to match the lighting in the top screenshot. The bottom screenshot is from LIDAR in the Pines HD, and IIRC, the light source was due North, and about 45 degrees high. Don't really have time to spend on this right now, but settings something like this should be similar to LIDAR in the Pines HD lighting. If not, a little tweaking should make them match. You definitely need to set vertical exaggeration to the max, I probably used a value even higher than 4x for that map.

 

[bobpbx]

Yeah, it's just me. I'll get used to the controls after awhile.

 

[Boyd]

Here's a pretty close approximation of the LIDAR in the Pines lighting, you could tweak it further to your liking. The maps will never be quite the same, because I wrote the code for the new site from scratch and created my own map projection that is based on the State Plane.

https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x114y050/solid/475/749/-326/474/1/-326/667/510/-1137/30/4/2d

https://online.boydsmaps.com/#17/39.72409/-74.41265/lidarHD

But it's hard to beat 3d mode if you really want to study landforms.

https://lidar.boydsmaps.com/#x114y050/solid/183/227/-87/498/0/-355/667/392/-1137/54/3/3d