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The easiest way to get a free landscape heightmap outside the USA?

MartirillaMartirilla Posts: 178
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

In 2020 what is the simplest free way to grab and download a landscape heightmap from an area outside the USA, and also get  the corresponding sattelite photography to lay over the top of its 3D extrusion? It's apparently easy in the USA where the terrain data is abundant and free, but not so easy in other places such as the UK. Let's say I want an area of 10 miles by 10 miles, from the UK.

I'm asking this here because I'm guessing that the answer could be fairly technical.  A free tool would be best, but I'm also open to low-cost sub $15 plugins that can do this, perhaps via a simple selection on Google Maps or Open StreetMap.

Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,049
    edited December 2020

    http://terrain.party/

    yeah not sure if you can use the Google Earth Satelite imagery though

    but there is OpenStreetmap too and OSM2world

    https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/-34.8403/138.8020

    http://osm2world.org/

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • MartirillaMartirilla Posts: 178
    edited December 2020

    Thanks. Terrain Party knows nothing about even very central parts of the UK apparently. "No heightmap data was available."

    Your suggestion of OSM 2 World was a good one, thanks, and led me to the live demo at http://maps.osm2world.org/. At first sight the default location looks great, in terms of its default tiled isometric view. But the demo gives "Timeout" errors whenever a search for any different location is made. It's also incredibly slow, if one moves away from the default location or zooms out. As such it appears to be un-usable until its speed/availabilty improves. 

    OSM 2 World does also have the standalone OSM 2 World Java utility you linked to, that links into Open Street View and seems to do the same thing as the demo. But it's command-line and Java - neither of which is ideal.  I'm also uncertain if it's just a viewer, or could actually save out a heightmap as a PNG.  A little search confirms my doubts. From an OSM forum in 2019: "As OSM itself does not contain any height data, the terrain contour lines you're seeing on some OSM maps are generally produced from third-party datasets".

     

     

     

     

     

    Post edited by Martirilla on
  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621

    Martirilla said:

    Thanks. Terrain Party knows nothing about even very central parts of the UK apparently. "No heightmap data was available."

    Yeah, bummer, I got excited alreadyfrown. Forgot that North America is considered the center of the known Universe:))

  • MartirillaMartirilla Posts: 178

    Found it. https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/ has the whole world as a seamless heightmap, with deep zoom and a simple one-click export. Find your location on Google Maps first, copy the URL and thus get the two co-ordinates from the URL. Trim and use these to craft a new location URL for HeightMapper.

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,104

    This any good?

    https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/#12/56.9998/-3.7298

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,523

    Weird. I have a height map of my bit of Kent I got from Terrain Party. Can't do it via my android tablet, but have it from earlier this year on a PC. Texturing is more difficult.

    Regards,

    Richard

     

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