Hello,

I've read the documentation, FAQs, and gone through the Tutorial, but
haven't yet figured out the solution to my newbie problem.

I have a GPS receiver and an accurate altimeter, and wish to create a
simple, realistic 3D terrain model of about 300x300 meter land area by
walking around the area, while recording the X, Y, and Z (height)
coordinates.

GPS receivers typically produce WGS84 (geographic, lat/lon) coordinates, but
I have configured mine to provide Finnish KKJ (rectangular, XYZ)
coordinates, to make them compatible with POV-Ray's (rectangular)
coordinate system. The recorded "field data" files look like this:

<start of file>
6679290, 3385285, 30
6679296, 3385273, 26
6679275, 3385267, 42
....
<eof>

Each row describes a single measurement, where the first column is the north
coordinate ("X") in meters, second is the east coordinate ("Y") in meters,
and the last is height ("Z") from the sea level in meters.

Since there can be thousands of measurement points, I assume I should first
create a Java, Perl, etc. macro that automatically creates the .pov code
from the field data file. To make the .pov code generating as simple as
possible, I'd like to ask what is the simplest/best-suited POV-Ray's
"Terrain Object" to create this kind of realistic terrain in .pov syntax?
(Note: The field data is not necessarily in consequent order to easily
create "triangle mesh" by merging every 3 rows. Should it be to make .pov
generating easier?)

My goal is to produce something that looks like the Height Field Object's
example at http://www.povray.org/documentation/images/pvhfield.png - just
little more realistic :).

Thank you!

Lare Lekman
Finland

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