[Gdal-dev] Re: [GRASSLIST:1184] Re: creating a desktop GIS application using GRASS

[Hamish]

(sort of wide ranging, so cross-posted everywhere. pls cc me as I don't
read all these lists)

> Suggestion: link GRASS to FlightGear.  Use GRASS to create and analyse
> geographic data, then get FlightGear and *FLY* over your info.
> When I told this to some people who work in biogeography, that I
> wanted to fly over my fish distribution data, they went crazy, they
> want that. They want to have the ecosystems mapped in 3d and move fly
> around them. I tried (some on the list may remember) but was too
> difficult, and I have more pressing matters.  But I still want to do
> that.


Has anyone out there actually managed to get this to work?


http://www.terragear.org
  Automated Tools for 3D World Modeling and Mapping

http://www.terragear.org/docs/scenery-tutorial/fg-scenery-tutorial.html
  FlightGear Scenery Tutorial

It seems a bit clunky & daunting; GRASS (maybe d.m or d.dm) would make a
great front end for putting the scenery together. I don't see why most
of the TerraGear stuff couldn't be scripted given GRASS inputs.

First step is to get a GRASS raster into something TerraGear's
"raw2ascii" can read.

Can grass export to US 3arcsec DEMs ASCII format already?
  - is that SDTS tiled binary/ascii ?? sorry I'm a bit confused.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/tools/sdts/grass.shtml
 (nice page to look at in the context of the original thread, BTW.
  sadly most of the links are dead, but we have v.out.sdts already)
  This isn't DEM support though, it's "Topological Vector Profile".


In GRASS we can read in GTOPO30 DEM data with r.in.bin, but not write
with r.out.bin.

FGDC Raster Profile standard:
 http://mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/sdts/vendor.html
 http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/documents/standards/sdts_pt5/srpe0299.pdf


GDAL supports reading "USGS SDTS DEM (*CATD.DDF)" and "USGS ASCII
DEM (.dem)", but not creation.

Is it better to put the write support into GDAL and not GRASS?

Does that lock us into the x,y resolution of the USGS DEMS?

Maybe GMT grid format would be a good common ground for TerraGear?


A better solution would to be a module which creates flight gear
scenery files directly from a list of rasters, vectors, and sites 
within GRASS, of course.

This could really help out both (all) projects.


If anyone has already done this, some quick instructions/hints please?


sorry, more questions than answers,
Hamish


ps - this is all (theoretically:) possible because of free software.