Featured TUTORIAL Race Track Builder - Inject elevation data and terrain texture

Don't have that option. Any plugin involved?

 

That's strange... I have a recent version on my home pc (2.18.4) and an older portable version and they both have it. What version are you using?

 

I don't have any plugins installed that I can remember

 

It's 2.18.14 I have actually. My menu looks like this

 

Damn! I had 2.18.11 before, now 2.18.15, but nothing changed.

 

That's weird... I can't find anything in the help about this either

 

I'm cautiously optimistic that I've got it working now. I seem to be getting good data finally,and the only change that I've made is in the Geoserver Layer page, where I added a Metadata link and a Data link, both the same, with the name of the workspace. I also added the SRS definition as you suggested, also in the Layer page, under Declared SRS

 

I should probably make a short video showing it working (except that I've never made one before) and demonstrate the various steps. For a single tile it's not too complicated, but I still need to figure out how to use multiple files tiled in a single layer.

But I was grinning like the cheshire cat last night watching the terrain moulding itself perfectly. I was subdividing as far as RTB allows and it was still improving the quality.

 

That's dope, man!

 

I’ve decided to make a short-ish loop based on the 50cm data for the North York Moors, to test out how good the surface is. I’ll set the track profile to conform to the terrain as much as possible and then post the result. Can’t promise when…

I'm writing up a set of instructions on setting up Geoserver, but I've been having problems today and I can't figure out why. Stuff that was working yesterday isn't today...

 

Why, when I copy and paste some test into this box, does it refuse to let me post it?

 

As far as setting up Geoserver goes, this is what seems to work for me:

First, grab your lidar data and combine it into a single file. (Tiling is another topic, but looking briefly into it, I notice a related app called GeoWebCache specifically designed for tiling datafiles. It is also available as a standalone app and might be useable for our needs by itself. I’ll get around to checking it out)

Install a Java Runtime Environment (version 8), then install Geoserver and try starting it up. As I said before, the default port setting didn’t work for me; I changed it and it works okay. Once it’s running you can access the Admin page (http://localhost:yourportnumber/geoserver), log in and set up access to the data.

First you need to create a workspace.
Click on Workspaces, and select Add new workspace
Give it a name
Set the URI to http://localhost:yourportnumber/workspacename and click Save

Then you need to create a datastore under the workspace that references your datafile.
Click on Stores, and select Add new store
Select the filetype of the lidar data you’ve got
Select the workspace you’ve just set up, and browse to the datafile
Save it and you’ll be directed to the New Layer chooser
Select Publish and set up some layer parameters
You need to insert a URL for the data (http://localhost:yourportnumber/workspacename). The same works for both Metadata and Data links

Not sure if it’s necessary to change the Declared SRS…
The bounding boxes should be okay as they are

(The only other thing I set was in the WMS settings. I set the interpolation method to bicubic. This calculates an elevation value based on the 16 surrounding boxes to get the best possible output, but there is a performance penalty. The default setting just gives the nearest value, which could lead to visible stepping. Bilinear is the compromise option. This needs testing to see if there’s a visible effect, and if the performance penalty Is noticeable. Now I think about it, this option may only be relevant to raster rendering, and not to plain text output, not sure about this)

Select Layer Preview and find the entry for your data. Click on the OpenLayer link and this will bring up a new tab showing a clickable display of the data. Clicking on it should show altitude values. The URL for this page is the one you need to copy into config.php (only up to ‘wms?’). Copy in the layer name as well.

Save the changes to config.php, start up Apache, and run RTB…

Once you start subdividing your terrain, open the log file in xampp/htdocs/maps/logs and check that you’re getting WMS elevation values rather than Google. If the Google values are shown rather than the WMS, copy the WMS URL into your browser and see if you get an error instead of ‘GRAY INDEX = elevationvalue’. If so, either I’ve not explained things correctly, or you’ve missed a bit somewhere…

Good luck!

Any problems, please ask. Occasionally I find a setup that was working yesterday refuses to cooperate. So far I haven’t found a way to fix this. In the end it’s easier to set up a new workspace etc. etc. as before

 

Progress on track building... Here's a screenshot of what the terrain looks like subdivided to the maximum that RTB allows



Same view from Google street view:



A little further down, there's an odd depression in the road surface. Turns out there's a cattle grid!

 

very nice indeed ! very interested to see how road laying operates on it. would you mind sharing a portion of terrain in rtb so I can see? bit lost with trying it myself at the moment, I have my limerock data I could try I guess. but from those images laying the road properly would tidy up all the anomolys.

 

I wonder what brendon thinks of this... he could make it so much easier I bet.

 

Oh yes, I wonder...

What can I give you to look at? An fbx, a zipped project?

 

rtb project if it not too big..

 

...184MB. I'm uploading it now.

Problem though, KSEditor won't load the fbx because the mesh has too many vertices. I should have thought of that...