Using terrainr to retrieve spatial data and make 3D landscape visualizations

rOpenSci package or resource used*

terrainr

What did you do?

Visualized Mt. St. Helens in Unity, using public-domain data from the USGS entirely retrieved and pre-processed in R.

URL or code snippet for your use case*

library(terrainr)
library(sf)
library(progressr)
handlers("progress")

st_helens <- data.frame(
  lat = 46.1914,
  lng = -122.1956
)

st_helens <- st_as_sf(st_helens, coords = c("lng", "lat"))
st_helens <- st_set_crs(st_helens, 4326)
st_helens <- set_bbox_side_length(st_helens, 8000)

with_progress(
  output_tiles <- get_tiles(st_helens,
                            services = c("elevation", "ortho"))
)

merged_tiles <- vapply(output_tiles, merge_rasters, character(1))
mapply(
  function(x, y) raster_to_raw_tiles(x, "st_helens", raw = y),
  merged_tiles,
  c(TRUE, FALSE)
)

This gets you a set of files in the format that Unity expects. You still need to import them by hand (for now…) – see the Unity vignette for more on that!

Image

I’m only allowed to upload one image – the original tweet has a few more.

Sector

Other

Field(s) of application

ecology, geography