MetaVR Asia 3D Terrain

MetaVR™ has built over 1,350 geocells of 3D terrain covering parts of Asia in its round-earth geocentric Metadesic™ format. The 13,560,000 km² virtual terrain includes Afghanistan, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Pakistan, and Turkey. This terrain was built from 15-meter color LandSat imagery, color-fused with 1-meter black-and-white imagery of Iraq. In addition, the terrain includes 60 cm high-resolution natural color insets of the Kabul province of Afghanistan, Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, Tehran, Tokyo, and Osaka. Terrain elevation information was based on 3-arcsecond SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) elevation data, subsampled to achieve a nominal 60 m post spacing.

Residing in a geocentric coordinate system, these terrain tiles are suitable for real-time visualization, simulation, and synthetic vision such as glass-cockpit displays, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) applications and fixed-wing cockpit simulation.

	Images from the Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq areas of MetaVR's virtual Asia terrain in Metadesic format.

This dataset can also serve as a baseline to which you can add your own higher-fidelity information, such as high-resolution aerial imagery or LIDAR elevation data, GPS point surveys, or 3D point features (such as buildings, trees, targets, and runway models).

If information is provided directly from sensors in the field, such information can also be added to the terrain in real time. Using MetaVR’s Terrain Tools for ESRI ArcGIS, you can update terrain areas of interest as you obtain additional imagery source data.

As additional source data becomes available, MetaVR will continue to build terrain for additional portions of the Asia continent.

The following symbolic representation shows the geographic coverage of this 3D dataset's terrain tiles. This tile coverage map was generated with MetaVR's Model Viewer. The green areas indicate use of 15 mpp imagery and the red areas are the high-resolution insets.

	Geographic coverage of the terrain tiles of Asia. Click Zoom for a closer look at the coverage.

Although this terrain dataset is comprised of portions of Asia and the Middle East, with MetaVR's Terrain Tools for ArcGIS you could construct a terrain of the entire region, or the entire earth.

The Metadesic (MDS) format dataset requires Virtual Reality Scene Generator™ VRSG™ version 5.5 or greater.

Specifications for MetaVR’s Asia terrain dataset in Metadesic format:

		Database size		= 1357 geocells
		Size on disk Terrain post spacing Elevation source data Imagery source data		= 985 GB = 60 meters-per-post (mpp) = 3 arcsecond (85 mpp) SRTM = 15 meters-per-pixel (mpp) LandSat of Afghanistan, India, Iran, Japan, Pakistan, Turkey, and the UAE, and portions of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan; 1-meter black-and-white imagery color fused with 15-meter color LandSat imagery of Iraq (approximately 70-geocell area); 60 cm natural color insets of Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, Tehran, Tokyo, and Osaka

MetaVR’s Asia 3D terrain in Metadesic format is available for purchase to all US Government agencies and contractors (for official use only) and requires version 5 of VRSG. 

The terrain is delivered on an external hard drive. (A nominal fee covers the processing of large quantities of data in the Metadesic format and the hard drive distribution media).

You can order this 3D terrain dataset directly from MetaVR.