Earth map for FT3

Deadshade

I own the FT3 and Bill Roach's Terraformer add-on.

I would like to edit a real Earth map in FT3 but cannot find how to get one. I thought that there would be a default Earth map either in FT3 or in the Terraformer add-on but it seems that this is not the case.

I understand that I need a height map in a .bmp format which can be imported in FT3. Can somebody tell me where I could download such a map please ? Thanks in advance for your help !

jslayton

A BMP file probably isn't the best thing to use due to limited per-pixel precision. Using Real World Data — ProFantasy Community Forum has some suggestions. I think that ETOPO5.bin shipped with FT, but ETOPO2 is better. FT really needs to get some more import formats.

Quenten

How can one get hold of ETOPO2, and can it be imported into FT3 like ETOPO5. And why is it better?

jslayton

The link above has a reference to https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model that is the source for the ETOPO data sets (the link [ https://forum.profantasy.com/discussion/133/using-real-world-data ] also shows what import settings to use for ETOPO2). ETOPO1, ETOPO2, and ETOPO5 are 1, 2, and 5 arcminute data sets. You'll notice that ETOPO1, ETOPO2, and ETOPO5 data sets are all marked as deprecated, but that doesn't mean that they aren't useful. ETOPO2 is about 250MB of data, which was a big data set once upon a time. The 64-bit version of FT might be able to handle ETOPO1, but the older 32-bit version could only handle files with a maximum size of 1GB, so it probably couldn't handle ETOPO1 (which is just about that size).

The main advantages of ETOPO5 are that it's good enough for most whole-earth maps and it's small enough to ship around easily on a single CD with other stuff, but it is fairly low resolution by today's standards.

Maidhc O Casain

So, I'm a total novice when it comes to working with stuff like this…

The site has data sets in TIFF and NetCD format, but I have no idea how that translates to the .bin file and data sets referenced in WelshPiper's instructions. I'm interested in seeing what I can do with the ETOPO1 (or even the ETOPO 2022) sets but I don't even know where to start…

jslayton

Converting from NetCDF or TIFF to something that FT can use would require use of a third-party tool such as QGIS or GDAL.

The Microsoft Copilot interface to a ChatGPT model tells us for the query "gdal convert geotiff to raw binary":

Certainly! To convert a GeoTIFF file to raw binary format using GDAL, you can use the gdal_translate utility. This tool allows you to convert raster data between different formats and perform various operations like subsetting, resampling, and rescaling pixels.

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Open your command prompt or terminal.
2. Navigate to the directory where your GeoTIFF file is located.
3. Use the following command to convert the GeoTIFF to a headerless binary file (raw format):

gdal_translate -of ENVI input.tif output.bin

• Replace input.tif with the path to your GeoTIFF file.
• Replace output.bin with the desired name for your binary output file.

This command will create a headerless binary file (output.bin) from your GeoTIFF data. The -of ENVI option specifies the output format as ENVI, which is a common format for raw binary data. You can adjust other options as needed, such as specifying the data type (-ot) or selecting specific bands (-b).

That seems to match fairly well with what gdal_translate — GDAL documentation says on the subject, but as it's a ChatGPT response, it may or may not be correct. After all, LLMs only sound like they might be a good answer, they aren't necessarily a good answer.

The ETOPO2 .bin files are available from Index of /mgg/global/relief/ETOPO2/ETOPO2v2-2006/ETOPO2v2c/raw_binary (noaa.gov) if you're looking to use that data set immediately instead of converting ETOPO1.

Maidhc O Casain

Thank you! Time to go play around :D.