But in opposition to an image, this can be moved around, and zoomed. But you 
are right - POV-Ray images are much better..!

Sven

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Christian,

that sounds very promising! I mean the image size. And I would like to thank 
you for even publishing the scene code - you are helping many others with 
it.

I am visiting now your website and will check it out. By the way, which kind 
of computer do you use (specs)?

Best greetings,

Sven

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Dan P wrote:
> Awesome!!
> 
> Another way to view the earth is earth.google.com too. It's a 3D sphere with
> raised terrain that you can fly around.

Note in many ways the images you can generate with Google Earth are not 
comparable to mine.  I don't know its size limits for geometry and 
output image but for sure they are not sufficient to generate detailed 
views much larger than screen size.  All Google Earth images i saw until 
now suffer from the following further problems:

- the geometry is cut off in the background so there is no realistic 
horizon.
- the surface coloring is often quite wrong and inconsistent where two 
different image sources meet.
- extremely crude shading and lighting (1990s computer games quality, no 
shadows).

The main purpose of Google Earth is to impress computer graphics 
newbies, being an 'informative computer game'.  The Views of the Earth 
are meant to generate detailed and realistic images.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 01 Jun. 2006)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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Sven Littkowski wrote:
> 
> I am visiting now your website and will check it out. By the way, which kind 
> of computer do you use (specs)?

That's covered in the FAQ:

http://earth.imagico.de/faq.html

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 01 Jun. 2006)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> I have started a new project as part of the 'Views of the Earth' site
> rendering a large view (96000x54000 pixel) to demonstrate the
> possibilities of creating very detailed renderings with the used
>  system. The details can be found on:
>
> http://earth.imagico.de/5gp/

Very impressive project. It looks very impressive too, at least in Firefox. 
In Internet Explorer it just looks sad, which is what most people will see.

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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Rune wrote:
> 
> Very impressive project. It looks very impressive too, at least in Firefox. 
> In Internet Explorer it just looks sad, which is what most people will see.

Should be better now.  The tile view page contained indeed an error but 
most troubles are due to IE bugs.  And you are wrong about 'most people' 
- the majority of visitors don't use IE. ;-)

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 01 Jun. 2006)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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Christoph Hormann spake:

> Rune wrote:
>> 
>> Very impressive project. It looks very impressive too, at least in
>> Firefox. In Internet Explorer it just looks sad, which is what most
>> people will see.
> 
> Should be better now.  The tile view page contained indeed an error but
> most troubles are due to IE bugs.  And you are wrong about 'most people'
> - the majority of visitors don't use IE. ;-)

For your imagico site? Interesting... Most of the sites we work on have
98.5% IE visits (not that busy most of them - busiest about 10 000 hits in
24 hours) - what's your number 1 browser? Firefox?

-- 
Stefan Viljoen
Software Support Technician / Programmer
Polar Design Solutions

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Stefan Viljoen <spamnot@ wrote:
> 
> For your imagico site? 

Yes (for all subdomains together - i don't get separate stats for them).

> Interesting... Most of the sites we work on have
> 98.5% IE visits (not that busy most of them - busiest about 10 000 hits in
> 24 hours) - what's your number 1 browser? Firefox?

The most common single Browser is either IE6 of Firefox (varies) but 
still all IE versions together mostly stay below 50%.  This is based on 
hit counts so visitors viewing a lot of pages count more.

As a side note IE percentage has raised significantly since i started 
Views of the Earth (probably since it attracts more non-technical visitors).

But my site is surely not representative and all numbers are subject to 
errors due to faked browser identities (which at least Opera and 
Konqueror can do).

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 01 Jun. 2006)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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Hello,
thanks for the example file ! It is very interesting. I have quite a stupid
question to ask though. For the elevation data, you use a "pgm" file. Do
you generate it "by hand" from the elevation data you get from the given
datasource (USGS, NASA, etc...) ? Are there any utilities to manipulate the
..hgt, .dem ... files and convert them to pgm files ?
Thank you for your answer and thanks for your GREAT web site
Sylvain

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Sylvain wrote:
> Hello,
> thanks for the example file ! It is very interesting. I have quite a stupid
> question to ask though. For the elevation data, you use a "pgm" file.

The ETOPO2 data set used in the example can be easily converted to PGM 
by adding an appropriate header:

P5
10800 5400
65535

or using Imagemagick.  A lot of formats can also be converted using the 
GDAL tools.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Landscape of the week:
http://www.imagico.de/ (Last updated 01 Jun. 2006)
MegaPOV with mechanics simulation: http://megapov.inetart.net/

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