I should have said that you'd probably be better off using these as texture
maps than as height fields. The only drawback with this method (if this is
suitable for your application) is that since the renderings are embossings
of the flattened planet surface, when you wrap it around a sphere the
surface features shadows are inconsistent with the way the lighting should
follow the curvature of the planet.

However, if by "door to door" you mean that you're developing a VR model,
then texture mapping won't give you the elevation data you're looking for.
Have you tried contacting Calvin J. Hamilton, the site author, to ask him
where the original topo data that he used to make his images can be
acquired?

BTW, here's another site that has some good planetary maps:
http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/

Hope this helps,
-- Dave

Simon de Vet wrote in message <35E41F6C.80D24035@istar.ca>...
>
>
>David Cook wrote:
>
>> It looks to me like these are not pure height fields, but rather, height
>> field renderings. If you look closely, you can see shadows around the
>> features, probably created by embossing the original height field data to
>> give this 3-D effect. If you try using these as height fields, you'll
>> probably be disappointed with the results.
>
>Still, they're a lot better than what I have right now.
>
>For the record, what I have right now is absolutely nothing.
>
>See what I mean? I'm not interested in making a topographical globe of
Venus
>to see door to door, I just want to play around with some heightfields
based
>on actual places, and these looked the most interesting....
>
>Simon
>http://home.istar.ca/~sdevet
>

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