Re: VMAP0 viewer

> > Secondly, I would like to see how much terrain use variation there
> > is in vmap0 v0eur data, but the viewer that is mentioned in the
> > readme file does not seem to be available, and the NGIA only offers
> > EDGE Viewer (R) to registered customers: http://tinyurl.com/2egmr
> > [www.nga.mil] Does anyone know of a view for VMAP0 data that is
> > freely available?
> 
> Here's a page listing some freely-available viewers for Windows:
> 
> http://www.mapability.com/index1.html?http&&&www.mapability.com/info/vmap0_soft.html


I also found something called NIMAMUSE, but "In the interest of
transitioning from government to commercially based products, NIMA has
discontinued its support ...". Wonderful. Apparently you can still
register to download the VPFView program though.
 http://earth-info.nga.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/


> If GRASS-GIS has vmap0 support, you could also use it, 

Yes, in GRASS 5.7 using 'v.in.ogr'. You need to compile OGDI into OGR.

see:
 http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/opengis/ogrhtml/drv_ogdi.html

OGR:
 http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/opengis/
http://postgis.refractions.net/pipermail/postgis-users/2002-April/000895.html


Moreover, you can use OGR to convert it into another more useful format
without using a GIS at all.

You might have a look at QGIS; it's pretty slick and just recently
support was added for reading GRASS vectors natively. That gives you the
flexibility & power of GRASS with the ease of use of a friendly GUI.
 http://qgis.sourceforge.net/

Actually looking at the QGIS site, I see it can use OGR to load data as
well, so you can skip the GRASS step altogether if you want.. of course
that means you can't repair & export as a shape file or do any
reclassifications, but if all you want to do is look at the data, this
might be the way to go.


> though GRASS has an interface so nasty that it makes Blender look like
> a Mac program.

What, the command line?? Compared to the terragear tutorial it's a
dream. ;) At least it is straight forward & you can't beat the price.
Specific suggestions for improvements are always welcome:
 http://grass.ibiblio.org/bugtracking/wish.html


Loading VMAP0 data into GRASS:
 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gis.freegis/315


Traditionally the *worst* part of GRASS was the installation on non-UNIX
machines, but now things are a bit better and there are binaries for 
MacOSX and Windows which are reported to work. Not sure what 5.7 (the
unreleased/experimental version) binaries are there, you'd have to look:
 http://grass.ibiblio.org


NVIZ, the 3D visualization package that comes with GRASS, is a bit
quirky but not too bad if you ever used a SiliconGraphics workstation.
I've used NVIZ and I've used Blender; I learnt NVIZ in an hour, I'm
still coming to grips with Blender...
But NVIZ is not an issue if you aren't doing advanced 3D DEM rendering
(say overlaying VMAP0 data over a STRM 3 arcsec DEM).

NVIZ has had a big update/simplification in the last 6 weeks. The GRASS
Tcl/Tk menu system is also due for a major update in the coming weeks.




For a nice summary of VPF, and other formats, see:
 http://www.tenetdefence.com/product/maplink/data.htm


best,
Hamish