[Opensim-dev] terraingen

[Diva Canto]

Hello devs and users,

I made a utility called terraingen that takes USGS DEM files and 
produces r32 terrains.
Here's a picture of a terrain generated with terraingen, from Ihaca, NY:
http://tagide.com/misc/Snapshot_003.JPG

The utility and its source can be found here:
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~lopes/terraingen/
The package includes test DEM files of San Francisco.

I tested it on the DEM files I need to handle right now, and it works 
ok, but it's likely that it will have hiccups on other DEM files out 
there. Very concretely, I'm not handling Arc Secs. I didn't test this 
exhaustively. Also, I looked only at the USGS DEM specs, and not other 
variations.

Probably not worth including this in the core OpenSim code, since this 
produces a terrain file that can then be used not just for loading into 
a grid but also for further processing by other peripheral tools. But if 
anyone wants to merge this, or some of it, please go ahead.

Comments, patches, etc. welcome. This is just a first draft of this 
utility. If anyone wants to help improve it, that'd be great!

In the process of doing this, I found another useful tool for 
visualizing and handling topographic data, DEM and R32 files included; I 
thought I'd pass it along:
http://www.visualizationsoftware.com/3dem.html
It's freeware but not open source, as far as I could see. There isn't an 
easy way of specifying size in terms of OpenSim regions. But as 
visualization goes, and input formats, it's pretty good. Too bad the 
source is not open.

Crista / Diva