Hello! I had this kinda crazy idea a few days ago. Could real terrain data be used to create terrain? I’m clueless as to how I’d achieve this. Hopefully the community can brainstorm ways to make this work! If possible of course!
Some cities colleges have access to local survey information that are used for computer programs in landscaping. I’m sure you could use that for this if you really wanted to delve hard in.
I’ve been messing with the heightmap importer recently, and have run into a similar issue with sourcing heightmaps. You can use terrain party like Hyperant said, but I think there are some limitations with it as it’s hard to zoom in past a pretty large chunk of space.
I’ve found that specifically sourcing out terrain information of well-known or well-studied formations is easiest, but this only makes it possible to find data for ‘mainstream’ locations.
Here’s one of Everest (or possibly somewhere nearby), found from a quick google search.
I don’t really think there are enough free sources for high-quality heightmaps to really be able to reliably find one of anywhere in the world. After doing a little research though, I’ve found World Composer. While it’s almost 25 dollars and seems to be a Unity plugin, I think it might be possible to use it to export heightmaps with which you could use in Studio. I can’t say I’ve tried World Composer or even have much experience with it, so I’d suggest looking into it more on your own end.
My concern would still lie with how much zoom you could get out of the tool, though. I’ve also found it very tricky to recreate land masses with proper scaling, especially with height. If you find any innovations on how to do that, would probably save a whole lot of people a whole lot of time!
Terrain.party gave me a height map, but it’s contrast wasn’t the best.
After a bit of searching I found This This one provides much better contrast, only downside the heightmap isn’t a perfect 1:1 ratio. It seems as it screen captures your entire window so you must get your calculations correct.