VTP

the Virtual Terrain Project (2001-2013)

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The dream of VTP was to foster the creation of tools for easily constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital form.

This goal would require a synergetic convergence of the fields of CAD, GIS, visual simulation, surveying and remote sensing.  VTP gathered information and tracked progress in areas such as procedural scene construction, feature extraction, and realtime rendering algorithms.  VTP wrote and supported a set of software tools, including an interactive runtime environment (VTP Enviro).  The tools and their source code are freely shared to help accelerate the adoption and development of the necessary technologies.

During its active years, the project helped hundreds of companies and thousands of students to implement realtime 3D terrain in their products, research and education.

You can still download the full VTP 3D software, or if you only need geoprocessing, download the VTBuilder tool.  Most of the subject pages below are outdated, but may still be useful collections of educational info.

Latest: 2015.10.18 added the book Digital Representations of the Real World to Media
  2015.10.17 added Potree to Noncommercial
  2015.10.16 add Environment Agency LIDAR to UK
  2015.09.27 add Tinman 3D SDK and update GeoFlyer 3D Maps on Commercial
added Procedural City Generation in Python to Procedural Buildings
  older news...

About Virtual Terrain
  Uses and Hype
  Tourism, Planning
  Small Terrain Areas / DTM
  Long-term Goals of the VTP
  Community, Media
  Data Openness

Elevation
  Overview / DEM, DTED
  Global Datasets: SRTM
  Bathymetry, Artificial Terrain
  Caves, Contour Data
  BT Repository

Ground Detail
  Imagery:
    Formats, Satellite, Aerial,
    Collecting Your Own Aerials / UAVs
    Whole-Earth, Free Sources,
    Commercial Sources,
    Processing Multi-band Images
  Geotypical, Ground Cover
  Large Textures in Hardware
  How to Apply Textures
    Spherical Textures
    Detail / Blending

Rendering
  Level of Detail (LOD):
    Papers, Implementations
    Spherical Grids, Paging
  TINs: precomputed, runtime
  Light & Shadows, Dynamic Range
  Sky / Atmosphere, Clouds, Water,
  Fog, Rain, and Lighting
  Performance, Navigation
  Draping

Data Sources and Formats
  Coordinate Systems / UTM
  Point Clouds, LIDAR
  Vector Data (DLG, TIGER, VMAP..)
  Topographical Maps (DRG..)
  OpenStreetMap
  Water Data
  Getting USGS Data, SDTS
  Network Protocols: WMS, WFS
  Data Collection (GPS, Surveying)
  Integrating Multiple Data Sources
  Representing Unknown Values
  Global Data Sharing/Referencing
  Cell Registration
  Distance

Culture
  Roads / Rail and Fences / Power
  Buildings and Cities:
    Procedural Buildings / Roofs
    Research and Projects
    Commercial Services
    Commercial Building Data
  Culture Classification
  Vehicles and Traffic
  Geocoding
  Flight-Sims

Plants
  Overview
  Research, Books and Papers
  Software Tools / Xfrog
  Distribution on Terrain / Land Cover
  Geometric Modeling
  Creating Plant Texture Maps
  Plant Images and Databases
  Forestry

The VTP Software
  Implementation and Development
  Vegetation, Plant Library
  Libraries: vtlib, vtdata
  File Formats: BT, VTST, VF, Loc/VTAP, ITF
  Documentation, Screenshots
  Applications:
  Enviro, VTBuilder, CManager
  Internationalization

Other Terrain Software
  Commercial
  Noncommercial
  Government / Academic
  Artificial / Artistic
  Location-specific
  GIS, CAD, 3D Modeling
  Games, Defense, Simulation
  Virtual Tourism
  Software Utilizing the VTP
  Earth Viewers chart

Modeled Areas
  Global Overview
  United States: California, Hawai‘i, Nevada, New York, Washington
  International: Africa, Asia, Australia, Costa Rica, China, Canada, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Middle East, Netherlands, New Zealand, North America, Central America, Romania, South Africa, South America, Spain, Switzerland, UK
  Beyond Earth