Wonderland Trail 3D Flyby, Mt Rainier 2005 Video

The Wonderland Trail is a 93 mile loop around Mt Rainier in Washington State. We hiked it in 13 days; no speed record but we were there to have a good time. The Wonderland video on another page follows our trip with pictures and video clips through sunshine and rain. This video is a bit different. First, this was made before Google Earth was out. I had the 7.5 minute USGS 1:24000 scale topographic maps and was experimenting with Digital Elevation Models (DEM) to make the look 3D. Once I got that working I started turning some of my flat topos into 3D. The Butterfield Trail video is an example. The video starts with an overview of the trail showing topographic relief. Then I started applying it to Landsat imagery of our project areas in Africa. I was able to develop a flight video that crisscrossed 1000 square miles showing individual farms. The Landsat images are not very high resolution but it worked well enough to put it on a loop to play at COP Nairobi in 2006.

The Wonderland Flyby was part of this development. I highlighted the trail and put flags and titles of the camp sites on the topos and then flew the route trying to give the viewer a different perspective than a flat topo.

During this same time Google with their billions of dollars and top tech guys were developing Google Earth. (In case you are unaware, Google Earth is different than Google Maps). They used the same DEM data but built a software engine that put my work to shame. If for some reason you have never used it, do you self a solid, download it and fly around your favorite mountain range. It has tilting to change the perceptive to make the ground pop up. They have acquired millions of data tiles of high resolution imagery, so detailed you can see the hiking trails and sometimes people on it. Plus, they have historical imagery that you can switch between while you are focused on an area. For example, I have been going back to some of my pre-GPS hikes and correcting the trails we hiked. Some images are fall and have more shadows. Some are summer taken when the sun is higher in the sky reducing some of the shadows. By switching back and forth you might see the trail on one image whereas not the other.

So while this video was put to shame by Google Earth, it was fun to build and a good learning experience.