Extract heightmap Altis/Stratis

[Senshi 10]

I searched a bit, but was unable to find this info.

I'm entirely unfamiliar with terrain editing in Arma3, but I am interested in getting the heightmap for Altis and Stratis. I really don't care about the format, as long as it's somehow readable (be it as greyscale image, textfile or whatever).

Can anyone tell me how I would go about to achieve this? I fiddled with Terrain Builder and some more, but I have been unable to figure out how to open Altis with those tools.

Just knowing which file in the .pbos holds the actual heightmap information would be great.

[ianbanks 30]

The file that contains the heights is the ".wrp" file; there should be one per map.

It also includes the object list, a grid of ".rvmap" file paths that link to the satellite map, and a few other grids precalculated from objects and various other map files.

Terrain Builder can open unbinarized .wrp's, which you can get just by running (for example) "convertwrp Stratis.wrp" from Mikero's tools.

It's quicker to do this though:

• convertwrp Stratis.wrp 60
  
• depew Stratis.pew -EE1 Stratis.xyz
  

You can get either a ".asc" or ".xyz" from Mikero's "depew" tool, which are both common height map formats. And then you can play...

Edited April 6, 2014 by IanBanks

[Senshi 10]

Great, thank you!

I was almost there on my own, then, darn. I actually tried converting the wrp but my convertwrp just always failed with some cryptic error message on opening. Stupid me failed to notice my depbo libs were ancient...updated those today and it works like a charm :) .

One more question: Is there information available on the datum/ projection of those DEMs?

[ianbanks 30]

One more question: Is there information available on the datum/ projection of those DEMs?

Not in the game files. The road shapefiles are all done at a fake origin of 0N 200000E, and the only other reference to real world coordinates are the fairly non-specific A2 latitude and longitude settings (which are in the southern hemisphere for Stratis and Altis).

GIS packages (like QGIS, which is free) can georeference data by taking manually clicked tie points between your new data and an existing georeferenced file, though.

[Senshi 10]

I'm aware of geocoding (Msc in Geoinformatics...), but with known projections it's always much cleaner and nicer, hence the question. Won't have such a big impact on my project (Leaflet-based webmap using a simple TMS of Altis & Stratis), just a "nice to have".

Heightmap info is great as it allows me to generate various surface maps (reliefs, topographics etc.) in GIS which can be integrated as alternative basemaps.