Help w/ DEM - No elevation in Route??

C

CSXJunior

New member
I just followed a tutorial tonight for using microdem and hog. ( http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ance...rrainGeneration/Computer-generatedTerrain.htm ) I'm using 2009.

My problem is that when I loaded my map into surveyor, its basically all flat. I'm doing an area in my town and it's by no means hilly but the track is elevated in alot of areas. The DEM was 30m just for your info.

The ONLY step I did not follow exactly was at this point :
http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ance...ion/MicroDEM-SelectingElevationMapOptions.htm
It says to click elevation then colors.. On my microdem it doesn't give another slideout tab to pick colors, although it does bring up the same screen. Only difference is I do not have an option to check "interpolate within grid" -- It's just not there.. Could this be my problem?

Everything else came out fine, the blue for the rail lines and blue for water. Is the red supposed to show up on the actual grid? I can see it in minimap but not actually on the base itself.

If anyone could help out, that would be greatly appreciated!! Maybe if I can get enough practice in I can do up a small route. Right now its the CSX Indy Line in the Shelby, OH area. (cleveland,oh-indianapolis, in). Thanks!
 
It might be that the elevated sections weren't picked up in the DEM data. Small features like this aren't likely to, in these cases you would have to recreated the missing detail based on photographs.

The DEM of the county I live in has no cuttings or embankments, they all have to be created manually.
 
If you didn't change colours to chroma that's where it went wrong.

Modify / Display Paramater / Elevetion / Chroma Depth Colours
 
CSXJunior said:
I just followed a tutorial tonight for using microdem and hog. ( http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wewain/trainz/Surveyor/Baseboard/Topology/TerrainGeneration/Computer-generatedTerrain.htm ) I'm using 2009.

My problem is that when I loaded my map into surveyor, its basically all flat. I'm doing an area in my town and it's by no means hilly but the track is elevated in alot of areas. The DEM was 30m just for your info.

The ONLY step I did not follow exactly was at this point :
http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wewain/trainz/Surveyor/Baseboard/Topology/TerrainGeneration/MicroDEM-SelectingElevationMapOptions.htm
It says to click elevation then colors.. On my microdem it doesn't give another slideout tab to pick colors, although it does bring up the same screen. Only difference is I do not have an option to check "interpolate within grid" -- It's just not there.. Could this be my problem?

Everything else came out fine, the blue for the rail lines and blue for water. Is the red supposed to show up on the actual grid? I can see it in minimap but not actually on the base itself.

If anyone could help out, that would be greatly appreciated!! Maybe if I can get enough practice in I can do up a small route. Right now its the CSX Indy Line in the Shelby, OH area. (cleveland,oh-indianapolis, in). Thanks!
Click to expand...


The instructions are for an older version of Microdem, If I am reading you correctly you have a flat landscape where it should be hilly?

Reason for this is you do not have to do the feet to metres conversion in the latest version of Microdem as the elevation values are in metres and you can use them in HOG as they stand, if like I did you didn't notice and convert you end up with a flat DEM. I flattened North Wales:hehe: Anyway on the second run I twigged that the Elevation was actually in Metres...... problem solved.

The Interpolate I believe is now done automatically so don't worry about that bit, it worked ok here without that option.

Colours has been covered in a previous reply.

The other things that are different in the instructions is that you can now save as TGA and don't have to use an external program to convert and one or two of the menu layouts / options are slightly different.

The tutorial probably needs slightly updating to reflect the current version of microdem.

If you get any odd holes in the DEM they can be fixed by using Edit > edit Holes > Interpolate across holes (smooth) first before doing anything else.
 
I could be wrong about this, but as I understand it the 30m means that the vertical resolution is 30 meters. So if a track is just a few feet higher then the surrounding ground, the elevation's not going to show up in the DEM data.
 
EdrickV said:
I could be wrong about this, but as I understand it the 30m means that the vertical resolution is 30 meters. So if a track is just a few feet higher then the surrounding ground, the elevation's not going to show up in the DEM data.
Click to expand...

I thought the 30m was horizontal resolution, so features less than 30m across are likely to be missed. I'm not sure of the vertical resolution, but it's probably better than 30m.
 
30 meters is the horizontal resolution (actually 1 arc second) which gives a reasonable interpolation in Trainz. My East Kentucky route uses 30m data. Where it is available 10 meter data (1/3 arc second) gives a better result - by happy co-incidence the default Trainz grid square is 10m, so you couldn't be more accurate anyway.

I am not certain of the vertical res either but it is very accurate indeed, nothing like 10 or 30 meters. It would be a fraction of a meter...

Andy ;)
 
Last edited:
The vertical resolution I mentioned was based on this statement that I found while doing a search earlier, though having taken a closer look the current DEM data for the US may be more accurate.

"Since the late-1980s, Level 1 Digital Terrain Elevation Models (DTED1) have been available for the USA. Prepared by the Defense Mapping Agency from USGS 1:250,000 scale 1 x 2-degree topographic sheets, the DTED1 data have a vertical accuracy of approximately 30 meters and horizontal profile of 3-arc-seconds, or approximately 100 meters."

http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc99/proceed/papers/pap629/p629.htm

I didn't see these statements before:
"In recent years, the USGS has released 30-meter profile Level 2 products that are derived from the digital extraction of elevation data from the hypsography contour separates used in the production 7.5-minute topographic quadrangle maps. Whereas the horizontal profile remains the same as Level 1 products, vertical accuracy improves to within one-half contour interval of the source map, which lies in the range of 1 to 3 meters, except in mountainous terrain."

"10-meter DEMs have the same vertical accuracy as 30-meter Level 2 products, but their 1/3-arc-second profile supplies a much improved representation of features of the actual landscape."

I believe I read a page (which might not be current) that said the USGS only released level 2 data for the US, the rest of the world had level 1 data released. (Though other sources may provide better data.)
 
Thanks to all of you for the replies. I managed to get everything worked out. I was converting the number to meters, when it was already in meters. I wasn't aware the newer version already did the conversion. I ended up using seamless ned data for a big area rather than merging small quadrants in microdem.

I started laying some track today and notice in spots the track will do a steep increase of a few feet then back down. The terrain for the rail lines can be real choppy and its a pain trying to get it smoothed out. Is it like this for anyone else?

And one more problem is I still cannot see the roads in surveyor. They are there in the minimap. I can see everything else, waterways and rail lines, just not roads. And after I saved once, the whole minimap reverted back to grey squares, rail lines and water was still showing but no roads... I'm getting so frustrated lol
 
CSXJunior said:
Thanks to all of you for the replies. I managed to get everything worked out. I was converting the number to meters, when it was already in meters. I wasn't aware the newer version already did the conversion. I ended up using seamless ned data for a big area rather than merging small quadrants in microdem.

I started laying some track today and notice in spots the track will do a steep increase of a few feet then back down. The terrain for the rail lines can be real choppy and its a pain trying to get it smoothed out. Is it like this for anyone else?

And one more problem is I still cannot see the roads in surveyor. They are there in the minimap. I can see everything else, waterways and rail lines, just not roads. And after I saved once, the whole minimap reverted back to grey squares, rail lines and water was still showing but no roads... I'm getting so frustrated lol
Click to expand...

I ended up using Google Earth on another PC and measuring things as a check as the lines always seem to end up in the wrong place anyway, not sure why the roads are not showing though.

You can do less damage to the terrain when smoothing by converting to the 5m grid if you have 2009 or 10. Any bad damage I use the plateau tool and raise / lower tools to repair, dont forget you can always undo and try again if something doesn't look quite right.

Also there is a handy tool from HiBaller for adjusting spline height if you get the floating track problem, see this thread it explains all http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=48725
 
CSXJunior said:
And one more problem is I still cannot see the roads in surveyor. They are there in the minimap. I can see everything else, waterways and rail lines, just not roads. And after I saved once, the whole minimap reverted back to grey squares, rail lines and water was still showing but no roads... I'm getting so frustrated lol
Click to expand...

On the missing roads thing make sure you have 9:21070 installed. There was another recent thread from somebody that got a hog texture download with the red missing.

On the mini-map thing, the background changing to grey after a route save is normal, no additional frustration required...

Andy ;)
 
Andi, I have been told that you need 9:21070 before but it is not on the DL. I have hog00 thru hog69 installed but not sure where I got them. Carl
 
Thanks again for the replies. I actually found a post by you dermmy that stated to change the hogdefault_64 to textures.txt in the main folder. I used hog_tiger before... So that fixed the roads not showing.

I'm happy now, I've been laying track like crazy and trying to smooth all the track out.

Hats off to all of you route developers out that, it seems like laying 15 miles of track takes forever.
 
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