Contour Map Creator - Possible Handy Tool for Mapmaking

[Combatintman]

I stumbled across this yesterday on a miniatures gaming forum.  At first look, it seems pretty easy to use and pretty handy. Linky here:

http://contourmapcreator.urgr8.ch/

[benpark]

This is going to save people a lot of time figuring out heights. Thank you!

Edited June 25, 2018 by benpark
Typo

[rocketman]

I have to check this one out. Thanks for posting!

[Erwin]

Amazing what is available out there...

[Bil Hardenberger]

Just a word of warning on this application...

...it is generating the contours from real world data, however it is not really very precise.  if you look at the image below, both the generated contours (colored lines) and the contours as shown on the underlying map image (gray lines) are 20 meters.  However the difference in quality and detail is striking.  Increasing the resolution to a smaller increment, say 5 meters only adds interpolated contours between what you already have, it does not add any real detail.

However, for areas of the world where getting contour data is difficult or if you don't care too much about accuracy and are only trying to get some reasonable contours laid in then this is still of course an incredible tool.

Bil 

[Badger73]

I couldn't figure out how to get a ground scale in this app.  For example, what is the width and height in meters of Bil's example above?  What am I missing?  Thank you.

[BletchleyGeek]

I see that the precision of the contouring algorithms depends on several things... kind of hard of pinpoint as I reckon accuracy is very sensitive to the quality of the source data (which I guess is mostly based on the SRTM survey). That introduces a fundamental limitation: that survey had a resolution of 30 meters. That means that every cell in the dataset grid covers about 16 CMx2 action spots (a 4x4 patch).  I don't know if there are higher resolution surveys publicly available covering anywhere else than the Continental United States, and surely Google Earth/Maps seems to be using SRTM data judging from the artifacts.

For areas in Western Europe I think you get very reasonable stuff at the scale of a huge CMx2 engagement:

 

but you will have to make up the micro terrain anyways. For a Company level operational wargame the level of detail is pretty good.

I think  QGIS incorporates this same algorithm if anybody is wondering about a useable desktop app. 

Edited June 26, 2018 by BletchleyGeek