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And if insted using the bookmarks, make a path along the route and export to trainz? is that possiblePlot your mainlines at the end of straight sections as best you can see in the GoogleEarth image, and use the track straightening tool for those sections, then the curved track joining them will be pretty much spot on. Keep an eye out for slight bends.
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Something else I found works beautifully - you can also use the "Trig Station" or "Lat-Long reader" in surveyor to plot points exactly - this is helpful over great distances rather than using a Surveyor ruler, and is certainly accurate enough for Trainz applications and can be used on DEM maps provided it is set up accurately to begin with.
The procedure I use to do this is to load up GoogleEarth and and use the "Add Placemark" button and start laying out placemarks at all the relevant spots you want to transfer into your Trainz route accurately. GE will even be so kind as to remember them from one session to the next! Name them as you go with a system that you are comfortable with.
The most important Placemark you will put down in GE is the one on which you will base the location of the "World Origin" in Surveyor. This part can be tricky, especially if you are using a DEM terrain map, as the location must be findable on a blank DEM map. You can use mountain peaks, trace out the flat water areas on the DEM map and use an obvious point along the coast, or use the very corner of the DEM map, anywhere is good provided you know the exact global co-ordinates and can find it in Surveyor. Though it is easiest, I personally am not comfortable with using mountaintops, as I am not sure if Trainz compensates distance measuring over irregular angles. You get the picture here - this step is critical - if it is wrongly placed then everything else you find using the "trig station" object will be wrong by the same margin.
Now that you have laid out your relevant Placemarks in GE, if you right click on the Placemark and select "Properties" it's exact global co-ordinates will be displayed for you. Take note of these co-ordinates for all of the Placemarks. This is a tedious process, but I found it worth the time. I found it easier using a spreadsheet for this bit.
Enter your route using Surveyor, find the exact location where you must put the "World Origin", place it and simply edit it's properties to reflect that precise location (and elevation!) that you got from GE. Once this is done accurately, any "Trig Station" or "Lat-Long reader" object placed on the map will display it's precise location using global co-ordinates BASED ON THE LOCATION OF THE WORLD ORIGIN.
I laid out a huge route this way and it worked fine. There is a major concern though, especially if maths and global co-ordinates are not your strong points. GOOGLE EARTH AND TRAINZ USE DIFFERENT FORMATS TO DISPLAY THEIR CO-ORDINATES. More specifically, GE uses the full "Degrees, Minutes, Seconds" format in which the seconds of a degree have the decimal place. In Trainz, the minutes of a degree have the decimal place. So you must convert the GE format to the Trainz format using a standard formula. Here again, using a spreadsheet comes in handy, I converted many hundreds of such co-ordinates in just a few minutes by copying-and-pasting the formula.
For the benefit of any who are not motivated to work it out but would like to try this out, the formula for converting the GE format of degree "minutes and seconds" to the decimalised Trainz format is:
minutes of a degree + (seconds of a degree / 60)
Calculate this to 3 decimal places to exactly match the Trainz format.
The full degrees figure (the first number) stays the same of course, and be sure to get the North/South and East/West part right when editing the world origin, or the result will be rather confusing. I learned that lesson the hard way.
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This procedure will heat your brain up a bit, and is tedious if you have a lot of GE Placemarks to manually write down or copy into your spreadsheet, but once you have done the first couple of locations correctly you will not go back to stretching rulers out over long distances ever again.
Hope this will help someone. If you want a DLS example of this procedure, checkout the route I uploaded to the DLS called "MagLev - Lathen Test Track, Germany" It was laid out using this procedure, even though it is small. I simply used the most northerly point of the north loop as the World Origin and plotted everything from there using the "Lat-Long reader". It was a flat route so I didn't worry about the elevation. I believe the W-O still carries it's starting co-ordinates that I got from Google Earth and converted to the Trainz format.
The version of GoogleEarth I use is 6.1.0.5001, and Trainz 2010 SP3.
I do not know if that is possible. I assume some kind of plug-in program for Google Earth would be required. The method I described requires no special programming except a simple spreadsheet, or even a pocket calculator. Just patience and a desire for accuracy.
I have never used the Add Path function of Google Earth. Let me know if you work out a way to do that.
This approach would only be "accurate" if the map projection of the "DEM map" is the same as the one used internally by Trainz to process latitude/longitude.you can also use the "Trig Station" or "Lat-Long reader" in surveyor to plot points exactly ... certainly accurate enough for Trainz applications ... and can be used on DEM maps
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The most important Placemark ... location of the "World Origin" in Surveyor. This part can be tricky, especially if you are using a DEM terrain map, as the location must be findable on a blank DEM map.
~snip~
I laid out a huge route this way and it worked fine. There is a major concern though, especially if maths and global co-ordinates are not your strong points. GOOGLE EARTH AND TRAINZ USE DIFFERENT FORMATS TO DISPLAY THEIR CO-ORDINATES. More specifically, GE uses the full "Degrees, Minutes, Seconds" format in which the seconds of a degree have the decimal place. In Trainz, the minutes of a degree have the decimal place. So you must convert the GE format to the Trainz format using a standard formula. Here again, using a spreadsheet comes in handy, I converted many hundreds of such co-ordinates in just a few minutes by copying-and-pasting the formula. ~snip~
The distortion I was referring to is also called deformation. See wikipedia for an illustration: Plate Carrée. All types of projection suffer from it, sooner or later, you simply can't flatten the orange peel without collateral damage. Even Google Earth has the problem. Just raise your eye altitude and you'll find your Cartesian approximation vanishing quickly.The second tip is that you can uncheck the Show terrain box (2). It’s useful when drawing lines with the GE ruler to mark up reference squares for basemaps etc. It will stop the “distortion” you get when the line traverses the terrain climbing up and down the hills and valleys. Make sure you turn it back on afterwards; otherwise the elevations will show zero metres against the Lat/long reading at the bottom of the GE screen.
As long as you stay close to the WO you should be fine. Basically the WO pinpoints the projection to a particular spot, resets both the Cartesian (Trainz World Coordinate) and the lat/long system to this location (also called True Origin). If the projection type is reasonable and has reasonable parameters, like proper earth radius, you will get good results near the origin. This is largely independent of the type of projection, it applies to all types of projections and is even independent of your model of the globe as a sphere or an ellipsoid. However, the further away you move from the origin the bigger the gap between the findings of two different projections/parameter sets.I remember playing with the World origin a long time ago and I found that the error results from the way Trainz uses its references. They are all base board related based on the grid and really have no accurate relationship to world references. This explains the cumulative error.
Since the error is non-linear, you can't calculate a simple percentage. You would have to create a huge table (or multiple tables). People did that in the past when migrating from one projection to another and didn't have computers. I found a thick volume from around 1930 when they changed over from Cassini-Soldner to Gauss-Krueger here in Germany.Perhaps somenone can calculate the percentage error and that can be applied to the values read on the baseboard