TransDEM Forum

Roland,

If you are still gathering "wish list" items for a future version of TransDEM, may I respectfully submit mine?

1) If it doesn't negate too much the original purpose of TransDEM, have the ability to create routes, UTM tiles and track splines on a completely flat surface and ignore the elevation of the area. Everything is at ground zero. This would be useful for those route creators who may be fascinated by the track/road/building layout of an area, but do not want to deal with elevation issues or may want to design their own topography for the area in Surveyor. (One could always just create 2D UTM tiles and then flatten the route in Surveyor, but with a large route this might be time consuming.) For low end computers, not having to download and process the huge DEM would be a plus.

2) Ability to rotate a DEM area by a given degree amount. As a simplified example: For track that may be southwest to northeast in real life, being able to rotate that area 45 degrees to either west to east or south to north would overcome some of the limitations in Surveyor. Making a cutting or embankment in the terrain in Surveyor always looks better when it can be done along the 4 compass directions. The same can be said about painting baseboard textures - diagonal (to me) looks hatched or jagged.

3) I haven't taken the time to try this out myself yet, but the more I think about it, I believe it can already be done in the current version of TransDEM - the ability to create different UTM tiles from different sources of the same area. Say I wanted to see ortho imagery from Google, yet at the same time wanted to also have topo raster map imagery to compare with it. I could run the UTM creator twice and put the resulting tiles in different named layers in the route. I could then turn the layers on and off to see them appropriately. I think TransDEM would create separate personal kuid numbers for both, but they might be named the same being in the same coordinates with each other.

Thank you for your consideration.

Andrew

G'day Sharknose,

...I have to admit, Andrew, that your "wish list" is an interesting 'set' of possibilities to which, I am sure, Roland will give some serious thought (whether we ever get to see them is a totally different matter, all together, though). However, I do really feel that I need to take you to task over your second suggestion. Despite it being an "elegant solution" to the problem, surely, the responsibility to overcome that issue lies with the game's programmers and their ability (read "preparedness") to make better use of the 'limitations' of the 3d engine to properly smooth out the compass 'nonconforming' cuttings and embankments to make the "game experience" all that much better (and in the process, to improve the quality of the product and it's subsequent desirability)?...

...and I have probably opened a huge can of worms by stating the obvious...

Jerker {:)}

Hi, Jerker!

I do agree with your assessment about our Trainz hosts improving the baseboard behavior being a better solution, but I don't see that happening in the near (or middle) future with all of the other projects they are working on. As I give "wish" #2 more thought, the less feasible it seems to me. In addition to rotating the DEM, one would also need to similarly rotate any raster maps, simple route lines, images from the tile servers, etc. to match.

Andrew

SharkNose wrote:have the ability to create routes, UTM tiles and track splines on a completely flat surface and ignore the elevation of the area.

That's already possible. Don't load any DEM in TransDEM, just the georeferenced map clipping(s). Then click the "New DEM" command. It will produce a flat DEM for the area defined by the bounding box of the map clippings loaded. TransDEM always needs a DEM to generate a Trainz gnd file, but this DEM can be at sea level throughout, as created by the "New DEM" function.

SharkNose wrote:Ability to rotate a DEM area by a given degree amount.

That's quite complicated. By design, the DEM in TransDEM is the defining geo data source. Theoretically and with the help of manual georeferencing, you can rotate maps, but not DEMs. We could think of a transformation matrix as some form of post-processing, before generating a Trainz route, but that would break seamless merging feature.

SharkNose wrote: I could run the UTM creator twice and put the resulting tiles in different named layers in the route.

I have added this as a nice-to-have feature to my todo list. Unfortunately, TransDEM currently ignores the layer when checking for existing UTM tiles. And since only one UTM tile is allowed at a particular position, a second one, even in a different layer, will not be created. But I think this could be changed.

Thanks, Roland! I learned something new on that first request. Now I can go back to my favorite rail yard and create it on a nice flat surface!

Andrew