Custom Terrain data

aero_spatial · June 28, 2023, 1:59am

Hi guys,

just wanted to know if there is anyway we can use our own terrain data in QGC,

I saw this
Map providers step2 by tilaktilak · Pull Request #7898 · mavlink/qgroundcontrol · GitHub

any development on this or can i use this and compile my own version of qgc?

thank you

JulianOes · June 28, 2023, 3:55am

Also have a look at [DRAFT] Include support for Ardupilot terrain servers as elevation data source by Davidsastresas · Pull Request #10715 · mavlink/qgroundcontrol · GitHub and maybe comment there. You might be able to work together with David Sastre on it.

aero_spatial · June 28, 2023, 4:41am

thank you very much for that information, i will check it

Ryanf55 · January 10, 2024, 5:30am

For anyone following, I did some work trying to get GDAL to pull terrain data from a VRT dataset that points to all the SRTM data hosted by ArduPilot’s server. It works. Take a look here:

github.com/ArduPilot/terraingen

Add a GDAL VRT dataset descriptor for the SRTM datasets

opened 02:22AM - 10 Jan 24 UTC

Ryanf55

The SRTM dataset hosted by the ArduPilot terrain server is useful for more than …just ground stations. Companion computers can also make use of the terrain data for path planning algorithms. As part of some ongoing work to enable SmartRTL for planes, which needs to run on a companion computer, we're using GDAL as a library to load terrain data. GDAL has support for many file formats, including the terrain hosted on ArduPilot's server. What I would like to request is to add a VRT dataset to support GDAL-based virtual file access of the terrain data. See https://github.com/ethz-asl/grid_map_geo/issues/35 for some more info and examples on what the VRT dataset looks like. Assuming the process I have running completes, would it be possible to upload the resultant `.vrt` file to the AP terrain database? It makes more sense for this to be hosted by AP, since 1) It takes a long time to compute the VRT database 2) The file is plaintext and not very large; it's just references to the existing datasets 3) It is useful for anyone using GDAL who wants access to AP's terrain data. For example, I would to add a new file to this directory: https://terrain.ardupilot.org/SRTM1/ It would be called `srtm1.vrt`, and it would contain the 23997 hosted files. I took a look at what QGC implemented, and unfortunately, it is not abstracted in a way that can be used elsewhere due to its heavy dependence on the UI framework QT.

I want access to the terrain data on the companion computer for path planning. The tooling (GDAL, C++) is very similar to the work done in QGC and what was done in grid_map_geo.

The alternative would be to implement the MAVLink terrain protocol on the companion computer, but then I lost out on the ability to use GDAL because no one has written a MAVLink driver for GDAL.

The capability of loading terrain from a web server, maintaining a local cache on disk, and serving the data to the application is a common need.

I’m happy to work together on this.