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Messages - Alan

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101
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 12, 2004, 12:09:40 PM »
Quote (sanewcomb @ Feb. 11 2004,3:12)
You might consider adding at least one additional DEM coordinate system to TF, the geographic one used by the seamless National Elevation Data set. It also involves a few conversions, but at least you can point to a map and get the whole area you are interested in one shot.


What are you using to convert the NED files to UTM?  In a few searches I came up with nothing.


Quote (sanewcomb @ Feb. 11 2004,3:12)
The problem with converting the geographic system to UTM is once the area is rotated and converted, adjacent areas no longer are seamless. It's ok if the area you're intersted can be downloaded in one chunk.


I'm not sure I understand this.  What adjacent areas?  If you use the USGS download thing to download two different chunks, the 'seamlessness' of it is reliant on your ability to draw rectangles.  What does it have to do with converting geographic to UTM?

Quote (sanewcomb @ Feb. 11 2004,3:12)
Biggest advantage to this server is the graphic interface and ability to grab the whole area at once with no knowledge of quad names.


True enough, though I don't much like that interface.

102
Beta Testing / "Shadow" GPS trail in 3d
« on: February 09, 2004, 11:41:34 PM »
Agreed.  We fully intend to add functionality to that effect.  The user interface might lag a little behind other developments for a little while though.

103
Beta Testing / Memory leak?
« on: February 09, 2004, 11:32:24 PM »
Hey, thanks for pointing that one out.  Some intermediate data used to create the texture was being left around.  It will be fixed in the next beta.

104
Beta Testing / Future sky color and blank tile texture
« on: February 08, 2004, 05:50:14 PM »
Quote (sanewcomb @ Feb. 06 2004,12:48)
One observation. The triangle mesh is very apparent and appears as diamond shaped crosses from the lighting reflecting off the faces. This is also noticable with maps on, but quite clear with the white texture. I think there is a way to minimize or even remove it. I know if you reduce the reflectivity and increase the emissivity, it will lessen it. VRML has a way of smoothing the edges between two polygons.


There is no reflectivity or emissivity being used here, only a diffuse component (the texture).  I'm calculating surface normals myself and handing them to OpenGL along with a light source for lighting.  What you're primarily seeing here is a model that's too simple.  The beta currently out uses a maximum of 20,000 vertices.  I left it low because there aren't any controls to change it (yet) and wanted it to run smoothly on slower computers.  By contrast, I'm currently running it with 130,000 vertices.

Additionally, I'm experimenting with different interpolation schemes that result in much smoother models at sub-DEM resolutions.

105
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 08, 2004, 05:43:57 PM »
Quote (ddunne @ Feb. 05 2004,11:58)
- as the number of dems files inreases, response decreases dramatically, (system mem goes up big time.)  The coolest part of this app is the way it caches locally, allowing rapid viewing cumulatively.  I'm stacking up dems data, but as i do, things are starting to really crawl. - some way to load/unload selectively?


There will be a cache similar to the tile cache in the next beta.

Quote (ddunne @ Feb. 05 2004,11:58)
-active display area in 3d rendered - would be nice to manually reduce/enlarge displayed area, (i.e. - my 128Mb graphics card cooks - i can hande ALOT, but my buddy's integrated 32Mb video is struggling...)


Steve's comment about the 'r' key is about the only thing I can suggest at this time.  The next beta will have user-selectable model complexity, but unfortunately the texture itself will still be limited to what is shown on your screen in 2d mode (no increased resolution), for now.

Quote (ddunne @ Feb. 05 2004,11:58)
- "would be nice" some kind of hard stop to rotation at the perceived horizon, (not very valuable to view topo data from "underground"


We could add an option for that.  It's useful for when your floating GPS track goes 'inside' the model.

106
Beta Testing / "Shadow" GPS trail in 3d
« on: February 08, 2004, 05:39:07 PM »
I'm not sure I understand.  Are you sure you would want control on a per track basis?  That is, to be able to select tracks by 'picking' at them in the 3d view and set them to one of the four options?  What if you're on 'display neither', there's nothing to select then.  If instead you meant 'per gpx file', then we would need to add something to show the display state information for each track (like the checkbox now).

Am I alone in thinking that this should option should apply to ALL tracks/files?

Also, the primary reason for displaying both the 'painted on' track and the floating one is to visualize the difference between them.  Here you can see the difference between using GPS elevation and using DEM elevation.  It's a bit of an illusion though because intuitively the DEM will seem "right" since it appears to be the basis.  I have found cases where this is not right though (where the floating track has the correct elevation and the DEM is clearly wrong).

I'll think about it some more.

107
Beta Testing / "Shadow" GPS trail in 3d
« on: February 08, 2004, 08:59:17 AM »
Quote (mcuma @ Feb. 08 2004,12:58)
I saw most of the problems that I noticed in bug reports already, so, just wanna mention, that most pressing is some kind of caching of the DEMs. I have about 250 MB of them now, and, things are starting to get a bit sluggish, plus, Windows starts to complain about low virtual memory, which I've not seen before (I have 512 MB RAM).
The way I am solving this now is to have multiple directories with DEMs from Utah, California,...


Indeed, a variable (user-controlled) DEM cache is high on the priority list.

Quote
The little problem I see is that the GPS track sometimes shows shadowing, probably it's plotted twice, once on the flat map and second time on the 3d? An example is at:
http://www.chpc.utah.edu/~mcuma/images/topo/shore.jpg


Yes, it's not clear to me how these options should be available to the user.  There are 4 options for viewing your track in 3d (painted on the texture, floating as given by the elevation in the track, neither, or both)  You can control this currently by turning on/off the tracks in 2d view, switching to 3d, then turning on/off the tracks in 3d.  We're open to suggestions for a good way to present these options to the user.  We don't really want to add a bunch of toolbar modes.

Quote
One more little thing, the screen capture does not work in 3D, but, that's not really a big deal.


Right, I'll have to come up with something to do exports in 3d mode.

108
Archived Support / Black Images
« on: February 07, 2004, 10:32:43 PM »
A little more work and I've found out that it was actually fixed (no wonder it works on all of our hardware) but that the fix DIDN'T make it into 1.52.  It will be in the next version though (and it is currently in the beta).

109
Archived Support / Black Images
« on: February 07, 2004, 01:42:17 PM »
So far it's been tough to track down.  We've tried a variety of Nvidia, ATI, and Matrox cards, but have never been able to reproduce the problem in any mode.  The people that have contacted us about it have either Nvidia or ATI cards.

110
Archived Support / Black Images
« on: February 07, 2004, 11:59:06 AM »
Also, what version of TopoFusion are you running? (the latest?)

111
Archived Support / Black Images
« on: February 07, 2004, 11:50:59 AM »
Could you tell us your brand/model of display adapter and the mode you're currently using (16/24/32)?

112
Archived Support / Black Images
« on: February 07, 2004, 11:49:48 AM »
It's a problem we're working on.  I'm going to venture a guess that your desktop is not in 32-bit mode.  TopoFusion is somehow not handling the color bits correctly for your video card.  We're having trouble fixing it because none of our test displays have this problem (in all our available modes).

113
Beta Testing / Bugs in Beta 1.54
« on: February 06, 2004, 04:59:10 PM »
Here's the program that I promised:

http://www.topofusion.com/demconvert.zip

It will do the same thing (roughly) that Dave's script does, but for windows.  

unzip it to a directory, then copy your .tar.gz files in there, run 'demconvert.exe' and it should give you the .dem files.

114
Beta Testing / Future sky color and blank tile texture
« on: February 06, 2004, 11:09:19 AM »
Quote
1. colored horizon, gradient if possible to simulate sky


Kind of cheesy in my opinion, but very easy to add.

Quote
2. uniform tile texture option so elevation can be looked at by itself. Similar to download check tile, but just a uniform color. I personally like grey, but could be any color.


You can do white right now, just turn off the map and then go to 3d mode.

115
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 05, 2004, 10:34:46 AM »
There aren't any limits on the size that I'm aware of.  You're right that it only accepts UTM ground reference systems.  I don't see a compelling reason to support others.

Why are you putting them together anyway?  TopoFusion deals with the boundaries between them quite well.

116
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 04, 2004, 06:16:28 PM »
Quote
However, I think TF is throwing away significant amounts of the 10m DEM info.


Right, much of the data is "thrown away".  It uses a fixed number of vertices in the mesh.  It's currently set to 20,000 vertices, which is way too low (at least for my hardware).  This is one of the first things that will be configurable.

The issue with how this should be set is more dependent on how fast you want to be able to switch to 3d mode than on how many FPS you want.  I kept it low to make switching very fast.  A much more advanced method would load a rough model very quickly and then increase the complexity in the background.  The biggest slow down initially is loading the DEMs into memory (has to be done no matter the complexity).

117
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 04, 2004, 12:55:45 PM »
I'll have to take a look at the code again.  Some other assumptions made by the program come to mind, particularly in the interpolation (I was only working with 30m data at the time).

118
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 03, 2004, 05:56:17 PM »
I take that back, it reduces the model so that the points are at least 10 meters apart, so it should be fine for 10m DEMs.

I've been playing with swapping a 10m and 30m of the same place and I too don't see much difference either, I guess that's just how it is.

119
Beta Testing / Bugs in Beta 1.54
« on: February 03, 2004, 04:58:40 PM »
Quote (Guest @ Feb. 03 2004,2:35)
Just a comment on the directions that went out with the beta.  If you download multiple tar/gzip's files and unzip them all at once, you will overwrite files from adjecent segments from time to time.  Examples include tortolita and reulas canyon.  So, the best fix for this is to iteratively unzip and run sdts2dem one archive at a time.


Some of the .ddf files have the same name from different quadrangles?


Quote (Guest @ Feb. 03 2004,2:35)
This process is rediculously tedious.  I don't think you guys can expect the average joe to do this.  Since the data is in the public domain, is there any way you can mass convert the data and republish it somewhere?  Also, it's fairly difficult in some cases to find the file that you want for the area you are looking at.


We'll do what we can to make it less tedious.  I've written, and will soon post, a simple program that will unzip/untar and convert the files for you.

Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to aqcuire the DEMs and make them available.  The USGS wants $1 per file, and you'll notice that no one else out there has the entire set available for easy download either.  We also don't have the hosting space (gigabytes) and bandwidth that would be required.

I agree that it's often a pain to figure out which quad you need, we'll see what we can do about that.  I know in the least there are some sites out there that tell you the names and let you pan around to find neighboring ones.

Quote (Guest @ Feb. 03 2004,2:35)
Last but not least, PRAISE!  These 3d views of the mountains are AMAZING!  I'm really glad you guys added this feature, as I was considering buying the national geographic software in order to create 3d maps.


Thanks!

120
Beta Testing / Other SDTS Sources
« on: February 02, 2004, 08:57:05 PM »
Thanks to Tom Harvey for the following link to tons of DEMs for states west of Kansas or thereabouts:

http://130.166.124.2/dems.html

121
Beta Testing / Texture Filtering is Point after 3d
« on: February 02, 2004, 08:55:03 PM »
I've just realized that switching back to 2d mode doesn't free up all the video memory used by the 3d stuff.  It's likely that the tilebuffer isn't fitting into video memory, so the stretch is pixellated because your video card doesn't get to do it (System->Video instead of Video->Video stretching).

Out of curiosity, how much RAM does your video card have?

122
Beta Testing / Bugs in Beta 1.54
« on: February 02, 2004, 08:51:07 PM »
Quote (sanewcomb @ Feb. 02 2004,2:30)
1. switching tiles set in 2d mode no longer changes tiles automatically. Must move location to see new tile set.

2. Pressing 'r' in 2d mode shows black screen. Pressing '3' after this puts you somewhere on the equator! Must restart.

3. Vertical Exaggeration is not saved between starts.

I put all of them in one post because this board limits users to 1 post per 25 minutes.

Steve

1.  I hadn't noticed that, will look into it, thanks for pointing it out.

2.  Sweet, yeah, I added 'r' at the last minute since I thought it would be useful.

3.  Yep, you're stuck with our defaults (but get the hack that 'o' and 'p' change it for the current session.)

123
Beta Testing / Beta released
« on: February 02, 2004, 01:55:59 PM »
So the answer is no, you can't view that additional level of detail (currently).  We'll have to work something out for 10 meter DEMs.

I should also mention a few other points.  First, this release should be considered more of an alpha than a beta.  There are still many things we need to add/fix before it would be up to beta.

For starters, when the program loads it enumerates all available DEM files.  When elevation data from one of them is needed, the DEM is loaded into memory.  At the present time, DEMs are never removed from memory, so you could potentially eat all your memory that way (I'm not sure how much each one takes up in memory, probably on the order of 1MB).  We will need to add a cache of some sort.

Secondly, as you'll notice, there's no configuration dialog for 3d!  For now, you're stuck with our defaults.  

Also, we will soon add further integration of DEM data into other parts of TopoFusion.  Some examples: 1) get the elevation at any given point on the screen (right now, you must be in 3d mode), 2) add DEM elevation to a track, 3) compare DEM and track profiles.

124
Archived - Feedback and Comments / settings
« on: January 15, 2004, 09:28:31 AM »
Do you mean when you're under 1/10 of a mile to have it display feet?  Or at all times?  Like: "5 miles, 253 feet"

I'm not sure I know what you mean about running the program through a DLL, could you give an example of such a program that runs this way?  I know people do overlays on the tiles by using TerraServer directly, that's probably easier.

125
Archived Support / Error downloading from TerraServer
« on: January 07, 2004, 03:24:19 PM »
This is strange.  It works with my basic (yellow) etrex, or at least it used to.  I will check it as soon as I get it back (it's loaned out to someone at the moment).  Does it give you an error message after some time?  Or does it just sit there forever?

126
Beta Testing / 3D coming soon....
« on: January 07, 2004, 12:38:44 PM »
Some more screen shots, now with texture mapping:

This ones from the Bighorn Crags in Idaho, the 3x vertical exaggeration is probably a bit too much here:



Here's Mt. Saint Helens, topo followed by aerial:





Coming Soon!

127
Archived Support / Error downloading from TerraServer
« on: January 07, 2004, 12:22:43 PM »
Your firewall could make a difference.  Do you use a proxy for web browsing?  If so, configure TopoFusion to use the HTTP proxy.  Go to Options->Preferences->Internet to find the proxy settings

128
Archived Support / weird startup crash
« on: January 02, 2004, 09:21:25 AM »
TopoFusion seems to be crashing while trying to initialize your maps files (mapIndex.dat, maps0.dat).  If they are small enough, could you please email them to support@topofusion.com?  If you don't mind losing the maps you've already downloaded, just delete them (or move them elsewhere for now).  We'd definitely like to fix the problem so if your files are small enough, please send them.

129
Archived Support / Known Issues - track color in 16/24 bit color
« on: December 22, 2003, 11:19:38 PM »
The problem you're having is a bit different.  Recently (possibly in 1.52), we added what you're seeing, the lines between tracksegs are drawn black.  With garmin etrex's you get breaks in the tracksegs where you lose satellite coverage, or when you turn the track or gps off and back on.  We added it so that the user would have some way of seeing it (I find it useful to see where I lost coverage).  In ExpertGPS I believe that no lines are drawn between points in different tracks.

It sounds like we are not downloading the track correctly from your Garmin 12XL, the points probably shouldn't be in their own trackseg.  We'll look into it.

130
Archived Support / Large utm file
« on: December 20, 2003, 09:39:53 PM »
I think there might currently be a hard limit on the number of possible selected points, I will check into it.  Thanks for reminding us about it (it should not be limited like this, and it certainly shouldn't crash).

131
Archived Support / Known Issues - track color in 16/24 bit color
« on: December 13, 2003, 10:30:31 PM »
Version 1.52 fixes GIF decoding in 16 and 24 bit color modes, but now track and point colors are all getting set to black.

If you are a registered user you may download a fixed GPSMaster.ocx file at:

http://www.topofusion.com/beta.php

Copy GPSMaster.ocx found in the zip file over your current one.

This fix will be incorporated in the next version.

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