Software That Shows Global Vistas
Imagine having a computer program that could paint a nearly infinite variety of scenes from some of America’s most beautiful landscapes. It is called Vistapro, and it lets you explore the frontiers of computing as well as the frontiers of nature.
This is “virtual reality” software, meaning that it can render images of the real world from simple geographic data files mixed with sophisticated rules from the world of artificial intelligence.
Or you can create entirely fictional landscapes--more than 4 billion variations.
Publisher of this $130 program for IBM and compatible PCs equipped with VGA color graphics and hard disks is Virtual Reality Laboratories Inc. of San Luis Obispo, (805) 545-8515.
The starting point for the reality side of Vistapro is mapping data from the U.S. Geological Survey that provides the elevation of the earth’s surface at 30-meter intervals. The folks at Virtual Reality Labs present the data for a handful of locations about four miles square, centered on such spectacular features as Yosemite National Park’s Half Dome and El Capitan formations.
From such data, Vistapro generates a small topographic map that looks like the maps published by the Geological Survey, minus a lot of detail. You position two dots on the map surface, one indicating the “camera” and the other the “target” that will be viewed by the camera’s lens. Then you click on an on-screen control button labeled “render” and the image you ordered is painted on the screen.
Depending on the resolution of your computer’s graphics card and monitor, the picture can be quite detailed. It can also take a long time to complete, so there are a variety of low-resolution draft image modes that quickly give you the general idea.
Enough enhancements are available to let you tinker with the image endlessly. For instance, artificial intelligence rules govern the rendering of trees on your landscape so that they are thinner on ridge tops, denser in the valley bottoms and won’t grow on the sides of cliffs.
The data with the program contains no information about things like lakes and rivers. But the software allows you to place your own wherever you want.
The pictures you create can be saved as PCX files, which can be used in many other kinds of graphics software.
Of course you have complete control over lighting, so you can illuminate the face of Half Dome in ways that Ansel Adams could only have dreamed about.
You can also be extremely accurate, specifying azimuth and declination of the sun to match any hour of any season.
Which leads naturally to the publisher’s other product, Distant Suns, a desktop planetarium using Windows. (Vistapro is not a Windows program.)
Distant Suns, $130, depicts the sky anywhere on earth from 4173 BC to AD 10000. It can provide the sun (or moon) angles you need to make accurate renderings with Vistapro.
It can also simulate eclipses. The spectacular sunset solar eclipse in January was obscured by clouds where I live. But with Distant Suns I was able to replay it minute by minute, seeing a simulation of what the clouds hid from view.
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