LAS VEGAS AREA TERRAIN MESH



This FS2000 terrain mesh, at 30 meters horizontal resolution, covers the southern tip of Nevada, USA, and includes the city of Las Vegas. The territory spans deserts and sand dunes, lakes, snow-capped mountains, canyon-forming rivers, sunshine over 325 days a year and the neon lights of the "Entertainment Capital of the World".



As anything of this complexity in flight simulator, this scenery demands plenty of computer power, including CPU and RAM, to achieve acceptable frame rates and smoothness of the image. I recommended to try this terrain mesh only if you are experienced in tuning your FS installation for performance.





To Install:



This terrain mesh is contained in a file called las30m10.bgl which you can install as any other scenery file. If you are not familiar with this process, please read Tim Dickens tutorial. Point your browser to:



http://www.flightsimulatorworld.com/tutorial/fs2kscn.htm



This is a summary of the basics:



1) Place the las30m10.bgl file into the scenery subfolder of the folder where you would like to install very high resolution terrain mesh files like this one.



2) Start FS2000 and select Scenery Library from the World menu, then select Add area and find the folder where you placed the scenery. Click OK and if needed, click the checkmark to make the scenery active.



3) To make sure the simulator loads the scenery file correctly the first time, quit the simulator and start again. If you skip this step, you may risk crashing the simulator or your computer, or not having the scenery loaded correctly. 





Take a tour:



Land with the Sun rising at KLAS (McCarran International) runway 25 R. Don't get too distracted with the view of the mountains ahead.





Technical Information ---



  Source data: 88 7.5 Minute DEM files from the USGS (30 meter horizontal resolution) converted to 1x1 arc second DTED files and merged to form one BGL file. This is the standard method used in most of my large terrain mesh projects. Two additional files of 3x3 arc second horizontal resolution were merged in areas where no 30 meter data was available. These were resampled to 1x1 arc second by interpolation, which may create some odd looking terrain in a few spots.

  

  Level of Detail (LOD): 10



  Approximate area covered: 12500 sq. km. (4900 sq. miles)



    Corners of the area covered:



    N  36.62500° W 115.75000°        N  36.62500° W 114.50000°



    N  35.50000° W 115.75000°        N  35.50000° W 114.50000°

  



  Calibration point: 

                     Griffith Peak

		      Elevation and Geographic Coordinates from DEM

			11050 ft, N 36 14 2.9900, W 115 38 48.55 (WGS84)

		      Elevation and Geographic Coordinates in FS 2000 with this file

			11047 ft, N 36 14 3.4321, W 115 38 48.0171

		



Tools used:



Microsoft Terrain SDK ( http://www.microsoft.com/games/fs2000/devdesk.asp )

Microdem ( http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/website/microdem.htm ) (latest debugging version)

DEMconvert ( http://members.bellatlantic.net/~pguth/demconv.htm ) (development version that can export BSQ files)





Notes about this first release:



FS2000 runways can only be rendered absolutely flat. That's the way it works. The side effect is that if an airport, like KLAS, lies on terrain that is on a gentle slope, the flattening of the runway will create ridges that are not really there in real life. This is annoying and distracting, but there's no way around it.



This project was also tested with 2 outstanding add-ons for the Las Vegas region. They are the Las Vegas 2000 scenery by Vincent Coene ( http://users.swing.be/flightsim/ ) and the McCARRAN INTERNATIONAL - LAS VEGAS (KLAS)

Version 2.0 Scenery for FS2000 by Shehryar Ansari. The latter, offering the busy airport in fine detail, imposes heavy demands for processing power, which combined with the demands of this terrain mesh, may make the combination tolerable only on the fastest processors available today ( 700 Mhz and above).



Finally, just as a reminder, terrain mesh files don't change roads, rivers, coastlines and the placement of textures over the terrain. Odd things can happen, like floating lakes, rivers and roads, as well as farmland on top of a rain forest, or suburban streets on the sides of steep slopes, etc. This can be fixed, but it's an entirely different project.





Other 30 Meter Resolution Projects Previously Released:



El Paso/South Central New Mexico (elp30m10.zip)

Phoenix Area in Arizona, USA (merges with Tucson Area) (ohx30m10.zip)

Tucson Area in Arizona, USA (merges with Phoenix Area) (tus30m10.zip)

Puerto Rico (entire island) (purtmv1.zip)



Next Project:



Riverside, California, USA





Acknowledgements:



Dr. Peter Guth (creator of Microdem and DEMconvert) fine tuned his tools to make this work possible. He offered valuable insight on the method to use to convert multiple 7.5 minute DEM files into a single seamless terrain file for flight simulator. 







Copyright and License to Use:



This archive is Copyright by Orlando Sotomayor on the year 2000. You have the right to use for your personal enjoyment. Redistribution for any type of commercial use is strictly prohibited. September 21, 2000.







							Questions?



							Contact Orlando Sotomayor at osd@att.net