Railworks America

Hello, I'm having some trouble using ReDEM. I run the .bil files through the program and when I put the .bin files in the route terrain folder there are large areas of missing tiles and gaps between some of the tiles that were generated. I do get a pop-up when I pick the .bil file to generate that says "DEM smaller than suggested DEM area". Is this normal? I am doing multiple .bil files for my route. Also, most of the .bil files that get run through ReDEM don't generate any tiles, but some do. And I have registered my ReDEM, so it should create the whole tiles. As a side note, I have also tried using BILxSRTM to convert the files to .hgt format instead, but those don't seem to work when I put them in the DEM/SRTM folder and try and load them in the editor. Is there something I'm doing wrong some where or missing something? I understand that the USGS download server was changed a while ago, could this be affecting it? Any help or suggestions would be great. Thanks in advance. :)

Tim Stricker
Yreka, CA

McCRRR19 wrote:Hello, I'm having some trouble using ReDEM. I run the .bil files through the program and when I put the .bin files in the route terrain folder there are large areas of missing tiles and gaps between some of the tiles that were generated. I do get a pop-up when I pick the .bil file to generate that says "DEM smaller than suggested DEM area". Is this normal? I am doing multiple .bil files for my route. Also, most of the .bil files that get run through ReDEM don't generate any tiles, but some do. And I have registered my ReDEM, so it should create the whole tiles. As a side note, I have also tried using BILxSRTM to convert the files to .hgt format instead, but those don't seem to work when I put them in the DEM/SRTM folder and try and load them in the editor. Is there something I'm doing wrong some where or missing something? I understand that the USGS download server was changed a while ago, could this be affecting it? Any help or suggestions would be great. Thanks in advance. :)

Tim Stricker
Yreka, CA

It's been a LONG time since I used it but from memory... I had alot of trouble finding a .bil that didn't result it gaps, but I eventually did and the terrain came out complete on about my sixth .bil. I also used two different 1/3 .bils to cover my whole route which I simply generated seperately then combined the files in the folder, overwriting some (I guess they were identical anyway, just from different overlapping .bils). I can't remember a time I didn't get the "DEM smaller than suggested DEM area" message. No idea what it actually means but it made no difference to me. Last thing, I downloaded the .bils I ended up using after the USGS changed and there was no difference to the ones I experimented with before the change. Stick to using .bils and keep it at 'till you crack it. You wont be dissappointed.

Anyone notice that the new distribution is no longer seamless? I've DEM'd several routes to see if it was something I did, and noted tiles along the borders of the downloaded DEM are missing. Each route had one issue or another. Basically, it looks like an entire tiles row/column is missing (0 elevation). I've been able to repair the missing 1/9 DEM with 1/3 DEM, missing 1/3 DEM with Seamless backups, and SRTM data as a last resort. FWIW, each route area was between 125 and 250 miles in length, and the DEM had been delivered broken into smaller download rectangles (denoted by the red dashed lines displayed from the server and where I believe the problems are found - I haven't confirmed yet, however).

Areas I found issue (so far):

•California (1/9 and 1/3)
•Kentucky (1/3)
•Maryland (1/9 and 1/3)
•Nebraska (1/3)
•Oregon (1/3)
•South Dakota (1/3)
•Virginia (1/3)
•West Virginia (1/9 and 1/3)
•Wyoming (1/3)
I've also noticed that some of the DEM downloaded has a pronounced "step" in places or a raised grid pattern. Easy enough to fix using the smooth tool, but I've never had to do this with the older server. Overall the DEM is OK, and one or two bad sections wouldn't be so bad, but to me the quality of the files has been reduced significantly. I could download smaller areas and allow ReDem to stitch things together, but I'll probably still need to smooth the raised patterns if found.

As Marc already said in the ReDEM thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6151
It happen often, that some tiles wont show up in the game but thats not ReDem's fault and the message "Dem smaller than... bla bla" is also normal because ReDem will not generate the whole elevation data file (.bil) just your suggestet DEM bounds. You have to download the missing area's and run them again through ReDem to get the full terrain

Kevin

Thanks for the replies.I'll keep working at it. ;) One other question about ReDEM though. Does it genterate the tiles around your route markers only? If so, that might be my problem since my markers only mark the towns my route will go to since it's a route of a projected railroad that was never built and I was going to feel my way through the mountains while the laying track and never made any markers following the path of the track.

Tim Stricker
Yreka, CA

McCRRR19 wrote:Thanks for the replies.I'll keep working at it. ;) One other question about ReDEM though. Does it genterate the tiles around your route markers only? If so, that might be my problem since my markers only mark the towns my route will go to since it's a route of a projected railroad that was never built and I was going to feel my way through the mountains while the laying track and never made any markers following the path of the track.

Tim Stricker
Yreka, CA

Yup just around your markers. Thats why it's important to set markers along the whole track

I'm having a bit of trouble with REDEM myself. I'm trying to get a route DEM'ed, but it's proving problematic. I have about 3-4 different sets of multiple BIL files (I can't download just one BIL that encompasses my route) that I am trying to get to blend into seamless terrain. I would like to know if there are certain options that must be ticked in Redem for it to work correctly. Generate partial tiles and overwrite tiles are the two options that I wonder about. The reason I say this is because the first BIL will extract fine, but all the other ones after it will show an excess amount of skipped tiles in the window when it finishes running, as well as having little to no tiles generated. All I want to do is extract some terrain. I was under the impression that Redem would make this process easy. So far it has proved otherwise. I am doing something wrong or is the program just being stubborn?

Thanks in advance
Zach

nsl714 wrote:I'm having a bit of trouble with REDEM myself. I'm trying to get a route DEM'ed, but it's proving problematic. I have about 3-4 different sets of multiple BIL files (I can't download just one BIL that encompasses my route) that I am trying to get to blend into seamless terrain. I would like to know if there are certain options that must be ticked in Redem for it to work correctly. Generate partial tiles and overwrite tiles are the two options that I wonder about. The reason I say this is because the first BIL will extract fine, but all the other ones after it will show an excess amount of skipped tiles in the window when it finishes running, as well as having little to no tiles generated. All I want to do is extract some terrain. I was under the impression that Redem would make this process easy. So far it has proved otherwise. I am doing something wrong or is the program just being stubborn?

Thanks in advance
Zach

That would mean that you either placed not enough markers along your track or you not selected enough range tiles. Could you show a map of the track and the area you downloaded?

Certainly. I am in firm belief that I have enough markers. I have a csv file created from a kml in Google Earth, with markers quite densely placed the whole length of the route. At least every 1/3 mile, as shown here:



In each case of downloading data, I downloaded from USGS the files in the 24k range...



The 100k range...



and even the county range.



Each time, i would download the elevation data in the BIL_16INT form as required by ReDem. I would download the 1/3 arcsec data toward the bottom of the window as shown here:



Upon downloading, I would extract the .bil, .blw, and .hdr files to a folder, where I could select and process them through Redem. I had a setting of 2 tiles beyond the marker files, prompting creation of a total of approximately 924 tiles. After running nearly all the bil files, (approximately 40 files) and copying the terrain files to the proper folder in my developers folder under assets in railworks, I would go into the editor, and checkmark my developers folder in route editor. I would appear underground of course, but a few tiles down the track, (following my markers of course), I would discover the inevitable cliff down to sea level, and the rest of the route would be flat as a pancake. And there is where i stand. As an addendum, running each bil through Redem, I had the default setup, (overwriting tiles unchecked, and create partial tiles unchecked in options), and as I said, a number of tiles would form, the amount that Redem said would form, but most all were billiard table flat. That just about sums up my situation as it stands right now.

Thanks,
Zach

Ok, firtsly thanks for showing a map. Now, go back to USGS National Map and draw a rectangle from the annotation bar right on the upper middle screen and then download this area. It should give you about 2-3 bil files which you have to run again through ReDem. But then the terrain should display properly

Regards,
Kevin

My guess is that your markers may be too far apart. My own markers are generally spaced about 100~200 meters, and I set the number of tiles to generate from those markers at a minimum of 4 (flat), up to a maximum of 9 (mountainous). IIRC, I DEM'd Sherman Hill at 6 tiles.

Ok, this time I went and highlighted an appropriate area of the map with the rectangle tool under annotations. Upon receiving the files, I ran them through REDEM with a buffer zone of 4 tiles. Upon completion, I was about 100 tiles short, (1565 compared to the 1667 called for), which is completely reasonable as the route mostly follows Lake Michigan, where there is no data available from Redem, if that makes sense. (A certain amount of the highlighted area fell into parts of the lake where the 24k data didn't go, thus I'm assuming there is no data). Once I copied the tiles to the appropriate folder, I loaded the route and this is what I saw, a beautifully extracted terrain that is surprisingly accurate.



However, there were problems on the horizon. Upon exploring the route, I reached a point where the terrain dropped off, as it had previously, and the flatness continued to the end of the route.



Furthermore, upon returning to my starting point in the same session, (which is is roughly in the middle of the route), I found the terrain to be gone, as the below picture shot approximately where the first photo was shows.



I reloaded the route into the editor, and the terrain came back. But upon venturing to the other extents of the route, the same issue as above happened each time. I measured the distance to the dropoff from the origin in each instance, and the dropoff was about 5.6 miles from the origin each time. So this is clearly not a problem with Redem, which did it's job correctly as far as I can tell. However, I have no clue what is going on here. Any suggestions or help on this new problem would be much appreciated.

Thank You,
Zach

You may have to zoom-in while in the map viewer and download smaller and more chunks of data. If you select an area that contains a red dashed line in the middle of your selection, that area along the line will be void of terrain detail. The selection is too large to contain in a single seamless section of DEM.

Ok, I did that now. I made sure that the selections were overlapping, and that the selections were one file each. After processing, the correct number of tiles was produced. However, the disappearing terrain problem I noted above still persists. I'm going to try and do some research on whether it has been a past problem for users, or if this is a new affliction, possibly that came with TS2013.

Thanks Again,
Zach

EDIT: I have found my problem. I had the tiles placed in my developers folder, and this was causing all my headaches. I moved them to a Terrain folder made in the route folder, and now all the terrain shows up correctly.

Thanks again to all who helped with my issues. I'm sure I'll have more before I'm done with this route!

Zach

I'm trying to add terrain and have been hitting a brick wall with every attempt. I have DL'd my 28 1/9 arc second Chunks for my route in the BIL_16INT format and have extracted them into a folder on my desktop. Some chunks contain several BIL files and some only contain one. I process the BIL files one at a time with ReDem and I am storing the 1317 BIN files ReDem generates each time in a temp storage folder on my desktop. It is at this point where it seems that I begin completely wasting my time. I drop the 1317 BIN files into my route's Terrain folder, fire up my route in TS2013 and I get a perfectly flat world. It seems to make no difference if I select to overwrite files each time or not. The only difference being that overwriting takes a bit longer to process. I have tried the Import SRTM method several months ago with good results but now that method will not work either. I have read here and there that some folks managed to get the terrain to load after multiple attempts, but no one has been able to state just what exactly it was that they did different during the last attempt that made it all start working. I am hoping that to somebody out there reading this, the solution is an obvious one and that they will take the time to let me know just what it is that I am doing wrong, because it is certain I haven't a clue. One thing I do know though and that is that this is supposed to be a hobby, and entertaining, and creating content for it should not be this difficult.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Lyric

LDWinn wrote:I'm trying to add terrain and have been hitting a brick wall with every attempt. I have DL'd my 28 1/9 arc second Chunks for my route in the BIL_16INT format and have extracted them into a folder on my desktop. Some chunks contain several BIL files and some only contain one. I process the BIL files one at a time with ReDem and I am storing the 1317 BIN files ReDem generates each time in a temp storage folder on my desktop. It is at this point where it seems that I begin completely wasting my time. I drop the 1317 BIN files into my route's Terrain folder, fire up my route in TS2013 and I get a perfectly flat world. It seems to make no difference if I select to overwrite files each time or not. The only difference being that overwriting takes a bit longer to process. I have tried the Import SRTM method several months ago with good results but now that method will not work either. I have read here and there that some folks managed to get the terrain to load after multiple attempts, but no one has been able to state just what exactly it was that they did different during the last attempt that made it all start working. I am hoping that to somebody out there reading this, the solution is an obvious one and that they will take the time to let me know just what it is that I am doing wrong, because it is certain I haven't a clue. One thing I do know though and that is that this is supposed to be a hobby, and entertaining, and creating content for it should not be this difficult.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Lyric

The most common issue why the terrain is not showing up are the coordinates. Just check them again. Sometimes it's just a missing " - "(minus) at the begining and your at the wrong place.