This program uses Terragen to render the realistic landscape with realistic Sun position, depending on your local position (latitude, longitude), time and a real cloudiness getting online from Yahoo! Weather.
TerraScreen sets the resulting image on the your desktop as wallpaper. You may specify your own Terragen world and terrain, latitude, longitude, GMT, refresh time and other options. Note: there is no need to run Terragen manually, it is started automatically in background mode.
For example:
or:
Interface:
Orientation in Terragen:
15h:00m
17h:30m
19h:30m
18h:40m
19h:40m
21h:00m
No installation is required - just download and unzip files. The zip-archive consits of the 3 files: TerraScreen.exe, TerraScreen.tgw and TerraScreen.ter. The last two files are included for the demonstration needs only. After running TerraScreen at first time, file "data.txt" will be created. It includes your TerraScreen settings.
Note: Before the using the "Get cloudiness online", "Random clouds", "Follow the Sun" options you should copy your world file (*.tgw).
Note: You must uncheck the "Random clouds on each frame" option in Terragen in the Cloudscape dialog to successful use the "Random clouds" feature.
Download:
terrascreen_2009_Feb_25.zip - (49,2 KB) for Terragen ver. 0.9.X
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: The item "Get cloudiness online from Yahoo" is disabled. Why?
Q: How does the "Weather online" feature work?
Q: How to set up the settings to get the weather online for my location?
Q: What does mean "Location" parameter in the "Weather online" dialog?
Q: What is the different between the option "Random clouds" in TerraScreen and the option "Random clouds on each frame" in Terragen?
Q: About "Panorama".
History (since 2003):
Latest changes: Future:
Creating animation or script for animation. The idea belongs to Ralf Lehmann, Potsdam, Germany.
Contacts:
For questions, suggestions and bug reports - shneyberg AT yahoo.com
Links:
Terragen - is a scenery generator, created with the goal of generating photorealistic landscape images and animations. It is available for Windows and the Mac OS. At this stage in its development, Terragen is free for personal, noncommercial use.
Heavens-Above - if you want to know your latitude, longitude, sunrise, sunset time and much more.
Yahoo! Weather - Weather by Yaho:o)
A: You should set up your internet "Settings" and press "Check now" button. If status is OK, the item "Get cloudiness ..." will be enabled.
A: TerraScreen gets current weather conditions from Yahoo and sets "Density Shift" parameter in Terragen's world file to appropriate value. See details. Before using this feature you should copy the world file.
A: Suppose, you live in London. Go to the Yahoo! Weather (http://weather.yahoo.com), find Europe (http://weather.yahoo.com/regional/EUROPEX.html), find United Kingdom (http://weather.yahoo.com/regional/UKXX.html), go to the letter L (http://weather.yahoo.com/regional/UKXX_L.html and, at last, you will have found London (http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/UKXX0085.html). You must copy UKXX0085 to the "Location" field of "Weather online" dialog. That's all.
A: This parameter says where to get the weather info for your location. Please, see also the previous question.
A: The option in Terragen is usefull only in case of creating animation and it is useless in case of creating single frame. Moreover, to successful use the "Random clouds" feature in the TerraScreen the "Random clouds on each frame" option in the Terragen must be unchecked.
A: Suppose, you wish to create 360 degrees panorama for you screen resolution 1024x768.
1. Set number of images to (for example) 102 in TerraScreen
2. Set camera "Zoom" to 32,457 (corresponding camera FOV = 360/102 = 3,53 degrees) in Terragen.
3. Set image width in Terragen to 10 pixels (1024/102).
4. Image height can be any up to 768 pixels.
25-Feb-2009 - Yahoo weather works again!
10-Aug-2005 - Bug was fixed. Thanks to Alan Whitehead report.