TerraLand 3 - Streaming Huge Real-World & Custom Terrains For Open-World Environments

The output in Photoshop seems ok and no need to change its values via histogram or any other filters. The low range in values is obviously because the heights in that area are not much different and it is normalized based on the copped region.

In TL, I think the default byte order format is Windows as mentioned earlier and it should create terrains just fine.

 

Always make sure cropped heightmap's resolution is a "Power of 2 + 1" value (e.g. 4097) so that it could be imported in Photoshop for testing or Unity and then TL for creating terrain.

 

thank you for the quick response.

this is a progress. how do you suggest to treat those "walls" ?

 

After a few more attempts - the terrain comes out messed up. it would greatly help if you can explain the process of getting the RAW elevation data from some external software (preferably QGIS / SAS.PLANET/ Global Mapper) which can be than used with TL.
thank you.

 

Please send us the original heightmap in any format and we try to export it in Global Mapper in a proper way so that you can follow the steps too.

 

I've managed to export single files, my problem is exporting an area, with multiple tiles (for the server structure), I get some tiles which are partially white because the dimensions I define can't be devided properly so that they fit exactly square elevation tiles.
Is there a way to contact you by email so that I can explain the problem in more detail?
Thank you

 

This is an editor feature, I need a runtime solution to load the external elevation files + imagery without any UNITY editor operations. How can I achieve this?

 

the RAW files are ok, i've updated the INFO.TLPS file to match the LAT LON of the terrain (or the area), there is a problem with the elevation scale? ELEVATION EXAGGERATION is set to 1....

 

I can't go further if you don't send me sample original data file need to be imported in Global Mapper. if you want to contact us by email here is the email address: info@terraunity.com

 

It has nothing to do with loading tiles from server and it already streams tiles in runtime. What this processor does is that if you have mismatched edges between data tiles, it will correct them by fitting the edge values of data together in order to be stitched properly.

 

Loading all 4 tiles adjacently in Photoshop, here is the picture of the entire heightmap surface:




Seems like you have overlaid 2 sets of dataset for the region and since there are harsh black areas at the overlaid edges with high contrast so there will be huge valleys and peaks in the generated surface where a black pixel meets a white pixel.

Regarding the ELEVATION EXAGGERATION, TerraLand suppose that normalized values are between -421 meters (Dead Sea) and 8848 meters (Everest Peak), so if your settings before exporting .raw files are different than this range you may end up with overly exaggerated or shallowed heights. However you can always increase or decrease the Elevation Exaggeration value to match it with your setup.

 

I've just downloaded my ZIP file and that's the result from the composite image in MAC endianness in photoshop.

 

Hi.
I bought TerraWorld, now I'm looking at TerraLand 3, I'm going to the same question I asked before:
With TerraWorld, I create maps using the editor, so far, fine, great, but with TerraLand:
- Can I read external files and generate maps, considering rivers etc, as well as TerraWorld?
- If yes, can I break/separate/cut these maps in smaller terrain? (ALOS 30 has huge files, I would like to break it down to 128x128 mts)

Edit: purchased

 

No, TerraLand does not have built-in landcover generation from geo-referenced data but you can always add any other details such as generated rivers in your case on top of generated or streaming tiles in TerraLand scenes.

TerraLand is a multi-tile terrain generator system whether in the edit time generated scenes or runtime streaming levels, so you define number of tiles grid to slice terrains in the area. You can also use processors available in the "TerraLand Terrain" component from the Tools menu in Unity and use Data processors sections to slice data files into tiles.

 

TerraLand 3.5 comes with Bathymetry data included for under-water heights:






This is with "Bathymetry" checkbox turned off:





And this is with "Bathymetry" checkbox turned on:




Enjoy

 

Hello ,I Cannot download Elevation data。
System.Net.WebException: WebResponseKnownError
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.ReadResponse (System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapClientMessage message, System.Net.WebResponse response, System.IO.Stream responseStream, System.Boolean asyncCall) [0x00042] in <504ea94927c24fee9774aabfb4d61f05>:0
at System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object[] parameters) [0x0005a] in <504ea94927c24fee9774aabfb4d61f05>:0
at WorldElevation.Terrain_ImageServer.ExportImage (WorldElevation.GeoImageDescription ImageDescription, WorldElevation.ImageType ImageType) [0x00001] in D:\WorkSpace\Unity\Unity Projects\Terraland3\Assets\TerraLand\TerraLand Core\WebServer\App_Code\WorldElevation_MapService.asmx.cs:1769
at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) WorldElevation.Terrain_ImageServer.ExportImage(WorldElevation.GeoImageDescription,WorldElevation.ImageType)
at TerrainGenerator.ElevationDownload () [0x00256] in D:\WorkSpace\Unity\Unity Projects\Terraland3\Assets\TerraLand\TerraLand Core\Editor\TerrainGenerator.cs:5390
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
TerrainGenerator:ElevationDownload() (at Assets/TerraLand/TerraLand Core/Editor/TerrainGenerator.cs:5419)
<>c__DisplayClass453_0:<ServerConnectHeightmap>b__0() (at Assets/TerraLand/TerraLand Core/Editor/TerrainGenerator.cs:5204)
TerrainGenerator:RunAction(Object) (at Assets/TerraLand/TerraLand Core/Editor/TerrainGenerator.cs:9577)
System.Threading._ThreadPoolWaitCallbackerformWaitCallback()

 

And i want to know how to usa My own data to generate Terrain by TerraLAND .My own data Include ELEVATION DATA(.asc) and Satellite Images (jpg) .Thank U very much.

 

@songkai Seems like you have issues connecting to our servers or generally internet from within Unity engine due to blocked IPs, firewalls, anti virus, proxy and VPNs, inbound/outbound limits, router settings, ISP...

However, this could be temporary and will be resolved if you retry. Also make sure you are using the latest version since Unity's Package Manager has bugs with version controlling and downloads previous versions instead of the latest version if you search online for the matter.

To consume your own custom elevation/imagery data from external sources, watch this tutorial which uses "TerraLand Terrain" component to load the custom tiles and create terrains from them in Unity scenes:

 

Wow, what a great improvements. Thanks a lot for all your hard work.

 

Thank you so much, energy boosted

 

TerraLand 3 is on 50% sale now

 

Hi, this is very slick, I like the ease of use of the Downloader, but I have a problem: The realworld area that I'm recreating with TL3 Downloader has an elevation range of about 1200m, but the heightmaps that TL3 generates have a height of over 8000m. How do I change that so it's only the actual topographical variation in this selected area? (I disabled Bathymetry already.)

Also, I get errors with any of the tools in MapsMaker, for example this when I try to remove shadows. EDIT: Never mind, I was using a PNG but apparently it requires JPG. Would be cool if it showed that in an alert...or mention it in the docs.



thx
Dave

 

Hi, thanks. The Y size in terrain settings for generated tiles is always set at 8848 (Mount Everest) for consistency between all generated tiles from the Earth but the generated heights in scene is always accurate based on real-world location, so if you put a gameobject on terrain surface on a place which you know the real-world height of it (e.g. placing a sphere on a mount peak) and see its Y position, you will notice that it exactly matches with the real-world heights for that point.

Also enabling Bathymetry option will not affect this behavior and generated heights are based off of real-world location

Read here for more info on this topic: https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-5#post-2910354

Yes, MapsMaker was in Beta and did not have a chance to be developed further since we have ported and updated all codes for TerraWorld, but please let us know if you need help using this component in TerraLand.

 

@TerraUnity

Is there a "Unity2LatLon.cs" type script available? For use with the created terrains.

Many thanks in advance

 

Yes, there are 2 scripts of "LatLon2UnityMercator" and "LatLon2Unity" in project which is showcased in "LatLon2UnityWorldSpace" demo scene. Following is the ReadMe for this demo scene:

Here is the demo scene which shows how you can do Geo-location & Geo-referencing operations on created terrains in
TerraLand without leaving Unity.

The scene contains 2 layers of terrains, one covering a 12km2 area and the other one a 500km2 area. This is to show
the precision of Geo_location algorithms used to set position of the transforms.

Note that these 2 layers of terrains have been placed and positioned automatically by TerraLand Downloader and the
expression "Automatically Centered" in their names suggest that they are properly offset to maintain the world center
and sync with each other no matter how large the area is. To read further on how the implementation took place see
here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...world-environments.532304/page-5#post-4133215

Also the precision of Geo-Location algorithm is being shown in 2 different approaches (LatLon2UnityMercator & LatLon2Unity)
to compare the produced errors. LatLon2UnityMercator uses the precise Geo-Location algorithm for objects in Unity based on
Mercator projection. To read further on how the implementation took place see here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...world-environments.532304/page-5#post-4123141


For more information on the implementation, refer to the following links:

Video:

http://terraunity.com/geo-location-geo-referencing-in-terraland/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-6#post-3084315​

 

Hi, I'm not sure I made it clear. Once I've created a terrain, using LatLon2UnityMercator I can place an object at the exact location on the terrain as per the Lat Long, but, I'm looking for the method to retrieve a Lat Long from a position on the created terrain, ie a Vector3 position to LatLng. Hope this makes it clearer. Many thanks

 

Ok, so you want the opposite operation. You can do this by reversing the code calculations and for the start you can use the "LatLon2Unity" functions since it is simpler and gives you good precision. So you just need to use Mathf.InverseLerp function to solve the equation, in other words, you have world bounds (e.g. 8x8km) and current world position in these bounds (e.g. x: 2500, z: -1200) so using InverseLerp you would get a normalized value throughout the bounds; on the other hand, you have the world bounds in Lat/Lon coords (Top, Left, Bottom & Right) which you just need to find the normalized value within this range.

 

Forgot to say that TerraLand has a script named "RuntimeLatLon" which does exactly what you are looking for based on created terrains by TerraLand which gives you an idea for any future adoptions.

 

Thank you so much for the prompt reply, I did reverse the code of LatLon2Unity but seems to be 50 to 100m out... But will look at "RuntimeLatLon" today. Again, thankyou so much for the prompt reply

 

You are welcome. What is your world dimensions, because 50~100 meters is way off! A good point on better precision is to keep all the calculations in double precision instead of floats (Mathf.InverseLerp should be changed to double coords too) and then revert it back to world position or vice versa for the best results.

 

Hi,

Unfortunately "RuntimeLatLon" is also quite far out... Also about 50-100m

areaTop = 51.4486909902203
areaLeft = -2.26272428387012
areaBottom = 50.9995333481605
areaRight = -1.54553601779626
width = 50000
height = 50000

values taken from Terraland3.

Knowing the "LatLon2UnityMercator" is very accurate, I will attempt to reverse its equation but I feel my head will hurt quite a bit...
Any pointers would be appreciated. Thanks

 

Hi,


So from the screen-cap above you can see that the Lat Lng taken from google maps is perfectly placed on the created terrain using "LatLon2UnityMercator".


From the above screen-cap you can see that using the code from "RuntimeLatLon" produces a Lat Lng which is off. Putting this Lat Lng back into Unity using "LatLon2UnityMercator" you can see that the placement is to the South East approx 70m. This isn't a consistent offset as I've tested around the terrain with similar results.

I hope that this makes what I'm saying clear. Again, thanks for your help.

 

Thanks for the shots. First thing we need to check is if terrain tile(s) are not offset in xz position since latest TerraLand versions offset tiles a bit in z axis to avoid Mercator distortion and precise geo-referencing (If you look at tiles parent gameobject, you will see that z position is not 0 and has been internally calculated). So if you need to use the simpler equation to convert coords, tiles parent should be placed exactly at world origin at 0,0,0 position.

However, the above fix won't resolve the offset completely, did you succeed on reversing the Mercator codes?

 

Hi, In a matter of speaking yes I've created the method to retrieve a sub <1cm Lat and <10cm Lng coordinate from the Terraland3 terrain as per the same google maps coordinate.

 

Mind if you share the codes so that we can improve it?

 

Yes sure, I'll PM you them.

 

@rodtuckwell_unity Thank you so much for the contribution!

 

TerraLand will be part of AssetStore's Lightning Deal starting in 5 days.

We will have 20 licenses available at 70% off, followed by 20 at 60% off, and then a variable number of licenses available at 50% off.

Don't miss the chance dude ​

 

The asset store page says TerraLand is 2019 and newer. The TerraLand ReadMe says set the .net api compatibility to 4.x. This option isn't available in newer versions of Unity.

The options I have under api compatibility are:

• .NET Framework
• .Net Standard 2.1

These are the errors I get for .NET Standard 2.1:

• error CS0006: Metadata file 'System.Configuration.dll' could not be found
• error CS0006: Metadata file 'System.Web.Services.dll' could not be found

These are the errors I get for .NET Framework:

• Script updater for Library\Bee\artifacts\1900b0aE.dag\Assembly-CSharp.dll failed to produce updates.txt file
• Assets\TerraLand\TerraLand Runtime API\Scripts\Offline Streaming\TerraLandRuntimeOffline.cs(2,32): error CS0234: The type or namespace name 'TerrainAPI' does not exist in the namespace 'UnityEngine.Experimental' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Is there a particular version that TerraLand currently only works up to, or am I doing something wrong. Also, the up and running tutorial on your youtube isn't helpful, it's from 2018.

 

All of our products are compatible with LTS versions, so never use Beta or Alpha versions of Unity in production level!

But we have tested the package in latest Alpha and as you mentioned there are no options to change .Net version since it is always set to .Net 4 by default. So choose .NET Framework as the backend.

Regarding TerrainAPI error, simply remove the line:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine.Experimental.TerrainAPI;

from the second line of the TerraLandRuntimeOffline script in project and save to compile as no need to reference this anymore.

To remove the other potential errors, find the file "csc.rsp" under Assets folder in project, right click on it and select "Reimport" to recompile latest changes and all errors will be gone.

The TerraLand launcher window will pop up, Accept it and restart Unity to finish installation.

All TerraLand tutorials on our Youtube channel are valid but few minor UX changes may be there for a more user-friendly experience, but if you have specific questions while using TerraLand, please share them here or ask from our online support and community members via Discord here: https://discord.gg/9J6Jk7B

Thanks for the reports.

 

Sorry, I should have mentioned I was on 2021.2.10f, so not alpha or beta. Thanks, I'll try what you mentioned.

 

Thanks for the confirmation, please get back to us with the results on installation.

 

TerraLand In Plain Language

 

Below I direct you to some of the information you may need to run your scenes in TerraLand.

In TL3, it is possible to select any place in the world and start exploring around in runtime. The sample scenes for streaming take a starting point and loads surrounding terrains at the level start and keeps them updating as the player travels around, so you can customize the codes to change the starting location at any time in the runtime. But please read through the given information at the end of this email to get familiar with the streaming system in TL.

As you continue reading further on Streaming in TL, you'll find that you can also create your own server out of your pre-downloaded terrain data tiles and let TL connect to this custom local/online cached server without the need of server queries to ESRI or even without need of internet connection if its path is local.

Runtime Streaming of terrain data in TerraLand comes in 2 modes, Online and Offline Streaming.

In Online mode, you set a starting point on Earth and when you go to play mode, all surrounding terrains will be generated around player on-demand acquiring data from ESRI servers using internet.

When you are in Offline mode, you select a big region (can be a country-sized area) and start capturing data tiles for the area so that you can stream in runtime from this cached server without needing internet connection on your hard drive or local/remote server location. In offline mode where you already captured data tiles, you can select starting point in the area at level start but you can implement to query this operation at any time during runtime; read through this post to get started:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...world-environments.532304/page-7#post-4433686

TerraLand comes with plenty of demo scenes to get you started in any of the available world creation modes.

TerraLand is flexible through its various settings to setup proper resolutions and parameters based on user's target platform so you can define all the settings for yourself and gain practical performance. For large worlds in a streaming environment take a look at the following video where we have background mountains in the scene to hide new terrain popping:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...world-environments.532304/page-2#post-3568995


Online streaming terrains using internet connection in real-time to feed data:

Offline streaming terrains out of cached servers generated by TerraLand Downloader:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmwMbIuFq5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67QVGLkwmyY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXFjf9MQkvM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Xltnzl6Ow


The Downloader component in TerraLand has built-in support for ESRI's world elevation & imagery data. TerraLand also contains various processors and components to generate terrains out of your own custom high-resolution elevation or imagery data files as the only solution for this kind of purpose in gaming engines.

TerraLand 3 has also support for streaming terrains out of unlimited data in your custom local/online servers. Please read the following to get a more technical overview of TerraLand's capabilities along with showcase & tutorial videos on our YouTube channel.

Regarding own custom Elevation & Imagery data files for terrain generation, read below information:

The power of TerraLand lies within the fact of flexibility and customization, so what you need is definitely doable in despite of lack of support for such implementations in any other assets out there. It can load custom elevation/imagery data files and generate terrains out of them and split them into tiles. Also, the maximum resolution allowed in TerraLand is 8192 so you can go beyond the 4k res in heightmaps, but higher resolutions than 4k may become impractical for real-time usage. There is a built-in solution for custom elevation/imagery terrain manipulation in TerraLand. TerraLand contains a component called "TerraLand Terrain" which takes users' custom data files and creates terrain(s) out of them.

Take a look at the following links to get started:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-2#post-2599837
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-3#post-2700657
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-5#post-2971528
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5zfio-42ZM

More on this: TerraLand Terrain loads any available elevation data in 3 formats of Arc ASCII Grid (asc), RAW (.raw) & TIFF (.tif) whether downloaded by TerraLand or not and apply it to new or existing terrains regardless of the resolution of the data itself or terrain resolution(s) and also regardless of terrains count. The data loader is flexible in any forms of resolution and size and re-samples data to any given condition and properly generate terrains from the inserted elevation data. Even if your own custom GIS data is not available in the 3 above-mentioned formats, you can use external GIS software such as Global Mapper to edit and convert the data to desired usable format and export it to any resolution to finally load it into TerraLand Terrain in Unity and generate terrain(s) from it.

The Moon tutorial here uses Photoshop to load large Jpeg 2000 (.jp2) elevation data, crop desired area, and resolution and finally convert it to RAW (.raw) format to be usable in TerraLand Terrain in Unity in order to generate terrain(s) out of it.

Dynamic Scenes TerraLand already comes with Online Streaming terrains to generate environments in runtime

https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-5#post-2864110

And the Offline Streaming feature in TerraLand 3:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-8#post-3295192
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-8#post-3339237
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-8#post-3361187
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-8#post-3383823
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-8#post-3388627
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-8#post-3396451
https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...eal-world-gis-data.377858/page-9#post-3414593


Refer to the following links to get started about TerraLand:

TerraLand 3 Official Discussion Thread:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...-terrains-for-open-world-environments.532304/

TerraLand 2 Official Discussion Thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/te...tic-terrains-from-real-world-gis-data.377858/

TerraLand Tournament Official Discussion Thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/te...ic-graphics-and-gameplay-free-to-play.392020/

TerraLand product page:
http://terraunity.com/product/terraland-3/

TerraLand Tournament page:
http://terraunity.com/terraland-tournament/

TerraLand Feature Request:
http://terraunity.com/terraland/

 

Hello - I have a large custom map that I have cut into chunks. I want the player to be able to move across it infinitely. By that I mean if he flies off the right side he will come in on the left side. I want the engine to stream in the chunks like that. Does TerraLand do this? If so can you point me to the settings or docs where it is handled?

Thanks!

 

First of all, TerraLand is a real-world scene generator and its streaming system does not have any definition of infinite worlds if that makes sense. But you can read through the previous answer to learn about the streaming system and how you can tweak it if you are an advanced user!

You can not directly connect any servers to TerraLand as it obtains its data for elevation and imagery from ESRI only but you can obtain your own data from any sources and use TL to create terrains in static scene or streaming servers to load/unload tiles in runtime.

Static scene generation out of external terrain data sources:

This video shows how you can use any high resolution renders from external terrain generators (e.g. World Machine, Geoglyph, World Creator, Houdini & ...) in this case World Machine and generate streaming terrains out of them:

This tutorial shows how you can create static or dynamic streaming scenes in Unity using TerraLand 3:

This post refers to the streaming server structure in TerraLand so that you can customize it to your own logic: https://forum.unity.com/threads/ter...world-environments.532304/page-9#post-5323725

So that you can alter data tiles in the server if you need to change them to your own, edit them externally or delete them if you don't need.

 

Hello TerraLand thanks again for the great product. The WWW request API for Runtime is out of date, please update and fix . In addition, I need the TerraLand Tournament project. But I only buy land and World products on unity Store, is there any other way to provide TerraLand Tournament download? Thanks

 

Hi, glad you found interest in TerraLand! Please copy/paste the whole error log from the console if you receive any errors using TerraLand and we'll track it down. Usually these kinds of logs considered warnings and can be ignored due to Unity's API changes as new versions come out. Please note that all of our products constantly being tested on latest Unity LTS versions which is recommended version for your projects.

Regarding TerraLand Tournament project, it has been deprecated years ago but some of our users updated this project on Unity 2019. Let me know if you still need that project and we'll send you the package. Contact us through Discord for this at here: https://discord.gg/9J6Jk7B

 

Hello
I am interested in your product but the flight simulation requires very large terrain and also the presence of ground infrastructure such as airports, is there a way to do this?