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Landscape Simulations
Software Evaluations The Virtual Terrain Project is software and information aimed to map the features of the world. The software is VTBuilder, Enviro, Cmanager, and Bextractor. This software is open source with the hopes that people with computing expertise will help develop it and input ideas. VTBuilder imports terrain vegetation, and road information and exports this information for viewing in Enviro. In VTBuilder the user specifies vegetation and road information before exporting. Enviro is the visualization software. What differentiates Enviro from other software is that it operates in a fly through mode. The viewer navigates through the terrain as though flying or walking. Snapshots can be saved at the desired vantage points. The major drawback to this is that it requires a tremendous amount of computing power. For this reason the vegetation is usually not represented at its actual density. www.vterrain.org Cost: free Ease of Use It is easy to terrain and GIS files, but specifying vegetation takes some getting used to. The learning curve is pretty shallow. Ease of viewpoint placement Because you navigate through the terrain, you can get pictures virtually anywhere by walking where you want to go. Sometimes it is difficult knowing where you are and where you want to go. In full screen mode there is no displayed coordinates to tell where you are. Terrain accuracy The terrain appears as accurate as the DEM imported, but there is a sense that everything is shrunk. May be me. Vegetation accuracy To place vegetation, a bioregion file must be created. This specifies the biotypes within the GIS polygons, their species and density. From this file the vegetation is placed in the polygons. Due to the fact that the program operates in a flythrough mode, it is impossible without more computer power than I have to represent the full density of trees. Ease of vegetation manipulation Density can be adjusted by changing information in the species file and the bioregion file. Photo-realism Enviro uses billboards/photos to represent trees, so realism tends to be very good. Walk-through/Fly-through capable Goes without saying. Training availability No training, but support is pretty good. Sample Image 
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