TerraVisor

TerraVisor is a 3D visualization tool designed for rendering and exploring terrain data. It provides users with interactive features to manipulate and visualize complex terrain models from real height data.

Features

• Real Height Data: Render height data from online services like NASA Earthdata, USGS National Map, or OpenTopography.
• Real-Time Tessellation: Dynamically tessellate the height data based on terrain slopes and proximity to the camera.
• Export Tessellated Terrain: Use the tessellated terrain in your own projects by exporting the tessellated mesh.

Installation

Prerequisites

Before building TerraVisor, ensure that you have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

• Git: Used for cloning the repository and managing source code.

• CMake: Build system generator used to configure the project.

• Build System: Needed by CMake to build and configure the project. This can be Ninja, Make, or any other build system you prefer.

• C++ Compiler: Required for compiling the project. You can use compilers like GCC on Windows or Linux, or MSVC on Windows.

• vcpkg: Package manager for acquiring C++ libraries.

  • Windows Users: Ensure you have either the Visual Studio Build Tools or Visual Studio with the C++ desktop development installed on your machine.

Installation Steps

1. Clone the Repository:

   First, clone the repository from GitLab

   git clone http://git.jackmchristensen.com/jack/terravisor.git
   cd terravisor
   

2. Install Dependencies:

   Use vcpkg to install dependencies. From the vcpkg directory call:

    ./vcpkg install glm glew glfw3 assimp freeimage
   

3. Configure the Project:

   Navigate back to the project root directory and configure the project using CMake and your build system of choice. For this example, we'll use Ninja:

   cmake -B build -S . -G Ninja --preset release
   

   If necessary, specify VCPKG_ROOT before configuring the project:

   • On Linux:

     export VCPKG_ROOT=/path/to/vcpkg
     

   • On Windows:

     set VCPKG_ROOT=C:/path/to/vcpkg # If in powershell use $Env:VCPKG_ROOT = "C:/path/to/vcpkg"
     

4. Build the Project:

   Build the project using Ninja:

   cmake --build build
   

5. Run the Application:

   Once the build process is complete, you can run the TerraVisor application:

   ./build/TerraVisor
   

Acknowledgements

GLEW - OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library
GLFW - OpenGL Framework
GLM - OpenGL Mathematics
ASSIMP - Open Asset Import Library
FreeImage - Open Source Image Library
Dear ImGui - GUI framework

Contact

For questions or support, please reach out to Jack Christensen at contact@jackmchristensen.com