Railworks America

How long will it be before we can link Railworks to Google Earth, slap some track, roads and objects down where they are on the textures and Bob's you mother's brother? Or can we do this already?

There already is a tool called RW_Decal: http://www.rwdecal.co.uk/
You can easily insert Googel Earth imagery into your route with it. However, this should only be used for development purpose only.
You shouldn't use the GE imagery as texture of your route. Before releasing it, you must delete the decals.

Three reasons:
1. Many decals will negatively influence the performace.
2. The decals simply have a worser quality than real textures.
3. It might be unlawfully to distribute GE imagery as it's the property of Google.

micaelcorleone wrote:3. It might be unlawfully to distribute GE imagery as it's the property of Google.

Yes, it is unlawful under most circumstances to redistribute GE imagery. There are references to this in the documentation & tutorials for RW_decal

-barnez

Thanks for that. What I'm trying to attempt is this... If you have Google Earth, have a look at the Caldwell County Railway. It runs from Hickory, North Carolina to Lenoir. The terrain data in the area is extremely detailed. From what I can gather, this detail has probably come from the 10m resolution available from the North Carolina State University, but you have to be an affiliate to access it. If I can get my hands on it, and use RW decal, imagine what a route I could create. If you tour down the branchline from Hickory to Lenoir, you'll see what I mean.

I

NDORFN wrote:Thanks for that. What I'm trying to attempt is this... If you have Google Earth, have a look at the Caldwell County Railway. It runs from Hickory, North Carolina to Lenoir. The terrain data in the area is extremely detailed. From what I can gather, this detail has probably come from the 10m resolution available from the North Carolina State University, but you have to be an affiliate to access it. If I can get my hands on it, and use RW decal, imagine what a route I could create. If you tour down the branchline from Hickory to Lenoir, you'll see what I mean.

I'm a bit confused here: are you referring to the detail of the aerials in Google Earth, or the detail of the DEM data for the terrain?

-barnez

barnez wrote:I'm a bit confused here: are you referring to the detail of the aerials in Google Earth, or the detail of the DEM data for the terrain?

-barnez

The DEM data for the terrain. Google Earth is the 3d version of Google Map/Satellite. If you Google "Hickory NC" and click on the Google map, then click on the Google Earth tab (you might have to download the plugin), you'll see the whole area has terrain detail which looks like it must be 1/9 arc seconds.

I found this in the Google Earth help files:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/e ... 2db6&hl=en

You might want to search Google Earth help for export dem

NDORFN wrote:The DEM data for the terrain. Google Earth is the 3d version of Google Map/Satellite. If you Google "Hickory NC" and click on the Google map, then click on the Google Earth tab (you might have to download the plugin), you'll see the whole area has terrain detail which looks like it must be 1/9 arc seconds.

The reason I asked for the clarification is because you were making references to GE (decals), RW_decal (Decal maker) and terrain information (DEM data).

USGS has 1/9 arc DEM data for the entire State of North Carolina. You can use ReDem to quickly & easily import the data into RW3.

USGS website: http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm

-barnez

barnez wrote:
The reason I asked for the clarification is because you were making references to GE (decals), RW_decal (Decal maker) and terrain information (DEM data).

USGS has 1/9 arc DEM data for the entire State of North Carolina. You can use ReDem to quickly & easily import the data into RW3.

USGS website: http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm

-barnez

I've been struggling with the USGS viewer. It says down the bottom that I have a pop-up blocker that I need to disable. I've got AVG. Any idea how to disable it?

Found it. The pop-up blocker was a Windows feature. Still not seeing anything on that page though.

NDORFN wrote:Found it. The pop-up blocker was a Windows feature. Still not seeing anything on that page though.

Pop up blocker is usually an Internet Explorer or Firefox issue. You should just get a notification that lets you to allow or continue to block from that site.

Still couldn't get that map to work but I found some 1/3 arc of the area in .hgt. Problem is, in route editor it wont import them. They're all in the SRTM folder and I've tripple checked my co-ordinates. It was working with the 1 arc I had.

NDORFN wrote:Still couldn't get that map to work but I found some 1/3 arc of the area in .hgt. Problem is, in route editor it wont import them. They're all in the SRTM folder and I've tripple checked my co-ordinates. It was working with the 1 arc I had.

Myself, I use ReDem to import DEM data into RW3. I've never had an issue with it (other than operator error)

I believe it costs $8 or so (there is a free trial but that version only renders 1/2 tiles)

http://www.zugware.com/site/products/redem

The main reason I stick to ReDem is that it is able to use 1/9, 1/3 and 1 arc data, and is able to mix them together seamlessly. (The location I have been modeling is mostly 1/3 arc, but some 1/9 is available). According to USGS documentation, the entire State of North Carolina has 1/9 arc data available. You should be able to get BIL files that cover the entire route that you are modeling and load everything into RW3 without any trouble.

-barnez

I've downloaded ReDem but it requires route markers and I'm not about to map out the whole railroad in order to use terrain data when the whole point of the terrain data is so that I can just lay track down where the terrain indicates. Is there a way around having markers?

You make those markers in Google Earth and save it as a KML file. Then you need to convert that file using RW_Tools into a cvs file which is what you need for ReDem.