TerraGear: Difference between revisions

'''TerraGear''' is a collection of open-source tools and rendering libraries which can transform publically available GIS data in 3D representations (i.e. 3D models or 3D maps) of the earth for use in real time rendering projects. Terragear can import 3D data sets such as DEM terrain grids, 2D polygon data sets such as coastlines, city outlines, lake outlines, and 2D raster data sets such as the 1 km NAOO land use/land cover data. It also has tools for generating realistic [[airport]]s, runways, and lighting based on available FAA data.  

For a variety of reasons you might want to build terrain yourself, rather than downloading it from the available Scenery on FlightGear. For instance, if you use [[TaxiDraw]] to create or modify an airport layout, you might wish to see how that modified airport would look in the Scenery before deciding you're happy with the results. And normally, to see and use the airport in the Scenery, it's necessary to submit the modifications to the FlighGear Scenery staff and then wait untill the next update of the Scenery of that area is available via [[TerraSync]] or in the [http://www.flightgear.org/Downloads/scenery.html official FlightGear Scenery] build. If you can build terrain yourself, you can start using it right away. <BR>

Maybe the official Scenery is too detailed for your slow machine, and you'd like to build terrain using a digital elevation model (DEM) with poorer resolution, to decrease the number of polygons and thus improve your framerates. Or maybe you've got a fantastically fast machine, and you want to build your own terrain using higher resultion vector data (vmap1, Tiger) to get better roads/rivers. For all these reasons learning how to use TerraGear is a good idea.