Now we have different tools to edit GTLs but outer terrain is not just that.The outer world is defined by 3 very large files OutTaga.tag, OutTagb.tag and OutTagc.tagThese files contains geos and gtl information. To modify terrain classes and elevation on a permanent way and to extend the world to the north we need changes to the large .tag files and even one more covering Vancouver area.Now I build a new GeoTilesViewer for OT. The data structure is a bit different. With the new tool we can then modify elevation, flatten airports and extend regions.As a first result here are the class map of OutTaga, caution the picture is near 6MB !The terrain class map of outtagaYou can get the uncompressed tga files of level 0, 2 and 5 in a zip hereThe terrain class map of outtaga level 0, 2 and 5 as tga in a zip archivenext maps will follow later... :( Andre

Since megatiles aaax define the left /western margin of what can be done as hi-res terrain we will have to do with outer terrain for Vancouver island. Still, with good packages (scenery models / airports) this may be made to look a lot better than it does today. The major city of Victoria is a place to develop. There must be a proper real-life airport in the vicinity. From Victoria it's a short hop to Coupeville and Whidbey airport.Hans Petter

The outer terrain is defined by near 2300 tiles, no blank tiles so a lot are just uniform water squares.OuterTerrainViewer can read all class files inside geos and put it together to the lage maps.This is the outer world defined by 3 very large files OutTaga.tag, OutTagb.tag and OutTagc.tagThese files contains geos and gtl information. To modify terrain classes and elevation on a permanent way and to extend the world to the north we need changes to the large .tag files and even one more covering Vancouver area.Now I build a new GeoTilesViewer for OT. The data structure is a bit different. With the new tool we can then modify elevation, flatten airports and extend regions.As a first result here are the class map of OutTaga, caution the pictures are very large !The terrain class map of outtagbThe terrain class map of outtagcYou can get the uncompressed tga files of level 0, 2 and 5 in a zip hereThe terrain class map of outtagb level 0, 2 and 5 as tga in a zip archiveThe terrain class map of outtagc level 0, 2 and 5 as tga in a zip archivethe tool itself is under construction. :( Andre

Here is a first OT geos generated, scale is half of high resolution geos so coverage is 2x2 miles ( high resolution is 1x1 mile )The new quality using 3 arc NASA srtm v2 data are much better than the old USGS data, see the map example, top row of current OT area (Vancouver island) :( Andre

This is the first flight over the first new OT tile located in the outtagd.tag, now I need to complete the 160 needed tiles to finish the upper north area of Seattle region and testing the functionality of my new tool. :( Andre

Great news! As soon as you have a working outer terrain region north of the current one I'm very interested. As most of you know, the outer terrain seems to proceed northward but it's just a mirrored image of the accurate region below. Thus, you'll never find what you're looking if you keep going north -- while the islands look plausible they're not anything like the real world. With a correct (albeit basic) extension there are two option. One may use it "as is" and fly to an outer terrain Vancouver airport or use the OT extension as a reference for better hi-res textures.

Vancouver OT area is now generated as OutTagD.tag covering 4x12 tiles the remainder of 4x29 tiles in the north west corner are not generated and are kept as a flat forest area in file OutTagE.tag so you see we have 2 new tag files and FU3 can do the job :-) .I have modified the first water/forest tiles using the rules and then let FU3 generate the tiles. Now I have to modify and load the upgraded gtl into OutTagD this is much quicker than reading all the gtl files during the flight....and a good news, Vancouver airport is inside the square of the high resolution area.A view from the north of Vancouver in direction to Seattle, Vancouver airport is about in the center of this picture. :( Andre

The northern area is now checked and ready and will be uploaded soon, have to write the readme...The Vancouver area has been colored by FU3 Generate_Outer_megatiles and later imported into the 12x4 tiles file OutTagD.tag.the second area, north-east of 29x4 tiles are just a flat forest area using no elevation and no classification. It can be made but its a lot of work to make the near 120 tiles.Tools for doing this will be uploaded soon, so anyone can populate the OutTagE.tag file.Over VancouverEast of VancouverTop north mountains, Vancouver in the upper right cornerThe corner point of the 3 OutTag files B,D and E, E is the flat forest area endless to the east :( Andre

This is the full view on the new north west corner for FU3 Seattle OT region.

Great work Andr

Great work Andr

OTGeos and OuterTerrainViewer are now documented at my OT creation tutorialThe tools will be uploaded to AVSIM now :-)Andre

Andre,Thank you very much. This is great news. I will follow your tutorial very shortly. Already I had begun experimenting in the Riffe Lake area, but I wasn't able to determine what tile is n46w121 and N46w122; so I have retreated from there and will begin the new OT Vancouver expansion. Thank you again, jimb

Andre,Where are n48w127, n48w128? They are not on the SRTM web site for download? If I am following instructions correctly, I need to convert n48w127 and n48w128 to bsq and merge together. Then I convert n49w127 and n49w128 to bsq then merge. Then finally I need to merge n48w127w128 with n49w127w128.So far I have merged and ended up with the following 101mb bsq and verified 7201x with BSQ View:n48n49w122w121.BSQN48N49W124W123.BSQN48N49W126W125.BSQ

Andre,Where are n48w127, n48w128? They are not on the SRTM web site for download? If I am following instructions correctly, I need to convert n48w127 and n48w128 to bsq and merge together. Then I convert n49w127 and n49w128 to bsq then merge. Then finally I need to merge n48w127w128 with n49w127w128.So far I have merged and ended up with the following 101mb bsq and verified 7201x with BSQ View:n48n49w122w121.BSQN48N49W124W123.BSQN48N49W126W125.BSQ

Sorry for the late answer, n48w127, n48w128 they do not exist, there is just water in this area or there are no SRTM data for it.You can try to find a water area and then just rename it to the n48w127 before merge, the program checks just the name, as I remember there is no location internally in the bsq file so location is just by file name. You can't append tiles to the left (west) beyond the current left border defined by the tile aaaa or then you have to redo the full OT area.Tile name will then be changed also so all airports / models will be misplaced :-(What you can do is a smaller totally new OT area with a new origin, I did this for the center of Europe around my Switzerland region. :( Andre