This is an old version of LandSerf. For the latest release please visit www.landserf.org

File Formats Used by LandSerf 2

ArcGIS Raster Text File

Default file extension: .grd

Example Description
ncols 321
nrows 468
xllcorner 387570.0
yllcorner 5289240.0
cellsize 30
nodata_value -32766
-32766 393 393 393 393 ..etc
-32766 395 396 396 394 ..etc
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing raster data. Header information consists of at least the number of rows/columns, the geographical origin and the grid cell resolution. Any other header items are permitted but ignored. Note that this format only allows square pixels to be written (single cellsize value). On output from LandSerf, if the raster cells are not square, their dimension is given as the average of the two sides.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from north to south, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

Raster values can be floating point or integer numbers and are separated by any number of whitespace characters.

When output from LandSerf, null values are given the numeric value -32766. If you wish to use another number to represent null on output, the raster should be transformed in LandSerf ('Transform raster values').

ArcGIS Binary Image (BIL) File

Default file extension: .bil (with .hdr and .blw files containing metadata)

Example Description
.hdr file:
BYTEORDER M
NROWS 468
NCOLS 321
NBITS 16
NBANDS 1

.blw file:
30.0
0.0000000
0.0000000
-30.0
387570.0
5289240.0

.bil file - binary equivalent of:
386 393 393 393 393 ..etc
387 395 396 396 394 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary integer file with two separate header files containing image metadata and georeferencing. fileName.bil contains the 16 bit or 32 bit integers in row prime order from north to south.

fileName.hdr contains image metadata including the number of rows, columns and bits per cell. Byte order is 'big-endian' if BYTEORDER is set to M (Motorola), or 'little-endian' if set to I (Intel). LandSerf assumes only 1 interleaved layer.

fileName.blw contains the georeferencing information including grid resolution, and coordinates of the centre of the upper-left pixel of the image. The six values represent the affine transformation from image to georeferenced coordinates. If the order of the 6 values are represented by A-F, the transformation is

x' = Ax + By + E
y' = Cx + Dy + F

Therefore, values (A,D) give (xRes,-yRes), (E,F) give (xOrigin,yOrigin) and (B,C) define the rotation (usually 0). Note that D is negative since the image origin is at the top, but georeferenced origin will be at the bottom.

ArcGIS 'GridFloat' text file.

Default file extension: .flt (with .hdr file containing metadata)

Example Description
.hdr file:
ncols 321
nrows 468
xllcorner 387570.0
yllcorner 5289240.0
cellsize 30.0
nodata_value -32767
byteorder LSBFIRST

.flt file - binary equivalent of:
386.1 393.0 393.4 392.8 392.6 ..etc
387.0 394.5 396.4 396.3 393.9 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary floating point file with separate header file containing raster metadata and georeferencing. fileName.flt contains the 32 floating point values in row prime order from north to south.

fileName.hdr contains image metadata including the number of rows and columns, cell size and location of lower-left corner. Note that only one cellsize value is permitted, so this format can only store square pixel values. On output from LandSerf, if the raster cells are not square, their dimension is given as the average of the two sides.Byte order is 'big-endian' if byteorder is set to MSBFIRST, or 'little-endian' if set to LSBFIRST. Note also that this '.hdr file' is not in the same format as the .hdr files used by the BIL format.

ArcGIS 'ungenerate' Vector Text File

Default file extensions: .poi, .lin, .pol or .gen (geometry) and .atr (attributes)

Example Description
1
320550.0 425320.0
320633.0 425320.0
320720.0 425300.0
320701.0 425295.0
END
2
360297.0 425310.0
361050.0 425305.0
361078.0 425300.0
END
3 361455.0 424987.0
4 361632.0 425001.0
5 361760.0 424977.0
:
etc.
END
ASCII file for storing vector data. Points are stored in ID, x, y order on a single line. Separators can be spaces, tabs or commas. Vector objects consisting of lines or areas comprise an ID on its own line followed by space, comma or tab separated x and y coordinates, one pair per line. The end of each object's geometry is marked by the 'END' keyword. A final 'END' terminates the file. The file extension is usually used to distinguish lines from areas (.lin or .pol). If extension is not one of these then only repeated first and last coordinates can be used to infer polygon-line distinction. Attributes are stored in a separate file, each line comprising the object ID, a comma, and the object's attributes.

IDs should be integers, geometry should be floating point numbers. Attributes can be numbers or text.

ArcGIS Shapefile Binary Vector File

Default file extensions: .shp, .shx, and .dbf

Example Description
3 binary files containing geometry, attributes and indexing information. Shapefiles contain geometric vector object information without topological structure. The geometry is stored in a fileName.shp file with each item referenced by a unique ID. IDs can be related to multiple attributes in a dBase II format fileName.dbf file. fileName.shx file contains indexing information and is not used by LandSerf when importing data.

For detailed information about shapefile formats, see www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf

Attribute Table

Default file extension: .atr

Example Description
1 35.4 "Sheffield"
2 17.6 "Nottingham"
3 11.5 "Birmingham"
4 5.0 "Liverpool"
:
etc.
ASCII file representing an attribute table. Columns are space, tab or comma separated. The first column is the primary ID, the remaining columns are the attributes associated with that ID. The primary ID must be integer or a floating point number, the remaining attributes can be numbers or text. Text attributes containing spaces, tabs or commas must be enclosed in double quotes. There must be an equal number of columns in every row.

BT Binary Raster File (Virtual Terrain Project)

Default file extension: .bt

Byte OffsetLengthContents Description
010"binterr1.3" A marker which indicates that this is a BT 1.3 file
104 (int)Columns Width (east-west) dimension of the height grid.
144 (int)Rows Height (north-south) dimension of the height grid.
182 (short)Data size Bytes per elevation grid point, either 2 or 4.
202 (short)Floating-point flag If 1, the data consists of floating point values (float), otherwise they are integers.
222 (short)Projection 0: Geographic
1: metres or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)
2: feet (international foot = .3048 meters)
3: feet (U.S. survey foot = 1200/3937 meters)
242 (short)UTM zone Indicates the UTM zone (1-60) if the file is in UTM. The usual convention is negative zone numbers for the southern hemisphere.
262 (short)Datum Indicates the Datum (ignored).
288 (double)Left extent The extents are specified in the coordinate space specified by the UTM flag/zone fields. If UTM is false, they are ordinary geographic (latitude-longitude) values.
368 (double)Right extent  
44 8 (double)Bottom extent  
528 (double)Top extent  
602 (short)External projection 0: Projection is fully described by this header
1: Projection is specified in a external .prj file
624 (float)Vertical scale Scaling factor for vertical units. If set to 0 (for backward compatibility), assumed to represent a scaling of 1
66-255190unused Bytes of value 0 are used to pad the rest of the header.
Followed by binary equivalent of the following...
390.0 392.0 393.0 393.0 393.0 ..etc
391.0 391.0 392.0 392.0 393.0 ..etc
:
etc.
Raster data are stored in nrows rows from south to north, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

Raster values should be 'little-endian' values either 32-bit float or 16-bit integer according to the header value.

EDX Raster Text File

Default file extension: .asc

Example Description
Copyright 1994. EDX Engineering, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 5 280000.0 80000.0 280000.0 100000.0 300000.0 100000.0 300000.0 80000.0 50.0 50.0 401 401 .0 -2.00000 49.00000 6377563.4 .00334091 .99960000 -100000.0 400000.0 .0 323.0
392 393 393 393 393 ..etc
393 394 393 395 394 ..etc
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing elevation data. Header information consists of a single first line with whitespace characters separating the following information copyright, ktype, xc(1), yc(1), xc(2), yc(2), xc(3), yc(3), xc(4), yc(4), xinc_ns, xinc_ew, ny, nx, cell_offset, xlno, xlto, rad, f, xko, false_north, false_east, min_elev, max_elev. LandSerf uses the copyright field, the south-west [xc(1), yc(1)] and north-east [xc(3), yc(3)] corners and the resolution fields [xinc_ns, xinc_ew] only, but all other values should be included in the same order.

Raster data are stored in ncols rows from west to east, each row consisting of nrows values from south to north.

Raster values should be integer values only and are separated by any number of whitespace characters.

Generic Binary Raster File

Default file extension: .bin

Example Description
Binary equivalent of the following...
390 392 393 393 393 ..etc
391 391 392 392 393 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary file for storing raster data. No header information is used, by default, when importing generic binary rasters, the grid resolution is assumed to be 50x the vertical units.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from north to south, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

On saving, raster values are stored as integers and are stored as Intel ordered words (low byte first). To store non-integer values, rasters should first be transformed (e.g. by multiplying by 100) into suitable positive integers. Any values outside the range of the word (ie, 0-255 for 8 bits, 0-65535 for 16 bits etc.), will be truncated around the minimum and maximum values. On import, files can be 8, 16 or 32 bit words and use either Intel or Motorola byte ordering.

Generic Point Vector Text File

Default file extension: .txt

Example Description
340530.0 448650.0 390.0 "Church"
340580.0 448650.0 392.0 "Car park"
350550.0 441250.0 493.0 "Unclassified"
:
etc.
Text file for storing point data. No header information is required although comment lines starting with # are ignored and permitted at any point in the file.

Point data are stored in x y [att1] [att2] order, one point per line and can be space, tab or comma separated. All values can be in either integer or floating point formats. Attributes are optional. If only one attribute per point is provided and it is numeric (e.g. height value), it is stored as the primary attribute. If more than 1 attribute is provided, or the first attribute is non-numeric, they are stored in a separate attribute table with an automatically computed point ID. Non-numeric attributes that consist of more than one word should be enclosed in double quotation marks.

Generic Raster Text File

Default file extension: .txt

Example Description
390 392 393 393 393 ..etc
391 391 392 392 393 ..etc
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing raster data. No header information is used, by default the grid resolution is assumed to be 50x the vertical units.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from north to south, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

Raster values can be floating point or integer numbers and are separated by any number of whitespace characters (including new lines). Lines starting with # are assumed to be comments and are ignored.

When output from LandSerf, null values are given the numeric value -32766. If you wish to use another number to represent null on output, the raster should be transformed in LandSerf ('Transform raster values').

Generic Vector Text File

Default file extension: .txt

Example Description
P 340000.0 483520.0 14.16 5
P 345000.0 479050 13.01 5
L 2 7
366000.0 489530.0 14.5
375210.0 488100.0 10
A 3 9
366000.0 489550.0 14.5
368100.0 488780.0 10.0
368200.0 488180.0 12.0
:
etc.
Text file for storing point, line, flow and area vector data. No header information is necessary although lines starting with # are assumed to be comments and are ignored. x,y and z values all assumed to be in the same units.

Feature type is identified by a P, L or A prefix representing point, line and area features respectively. Point data are stored in x y [z] Attrib order, one point per line. z values are optional. Line and Area data have an initial line containing the number of coordinates and an optional feature attribute. Coordinates follow in x y [z] order where the z value is optional.

All coordinates and attributes can be in either integer or floating point formats. If multiple attributes are required, they should be stored in a separate attribute table.

Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Shoreline File

Default file extension: .ghs

Example Description
Binary floating point lat/long coordinates. Binary format file holding global shorelines, rivers and lakes as closed areas. Available at a number of generalisation levels from www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/shorelines/gshhs.html. This site includes more detailed information on the file format.

GTOPO30 DEM Files

Default file extension: .dem (with .hdr, .dmw, .prj files containing metadata)

Example Description
.hdr file:
BYTEORDER M
LAYOUT BIL
NROWS 6000
NCOLS 4800
NBANDS 1
NBITS 16
BANDROWBYTES 9600
TOTALROWBYTES 9600
BANDGAPBYTES 0
NODATA -9999
ULXMAP -99.99583333333334
ULYMAP 39.99583333333333
XDIM 0.00833333333333
YDIM 0.00833333333333


.dmw file:
30.0
0.00833333333333
0.00000000000000
0.00000000000000
-0.00833333333333
-99.99583333333334
39.99583333333333


.prj file:
Projection GEOGRAPHIC
Datum WGS84
Zunits METERS
Units DD
Spheroid WGS84
Xshift 0.0000000000
Yshift 0.0000000000


.dem file - binary equivalent of:
386 393 393 393 393 ..etc
387 395 396 396 394 ..etc
:
etc.
Global DEM files distributed as a min binary integer .DEM file with a collection of metadata files. Those used by LandSerf include the .hdr file that contains file format metadata, a .dmw that contains spatial transformation metadata and a .prj file that contains global map projection information. All spatial metadata are recorded as decimal degrees. Note that this collection is a specific case of the more general Binary Image file distribution.

fileName.dem contains the raster values in row-wise order in the format indicated by the associated .hdr file.

fileName.hdr contains image metadata including the number of rows, columns and bits per cell. Byte order is 'big-endian' if BYTEORDER is set to M (Motorola), or 'little-endian' if set to I (Intel). LandSerf assumes only 1 interleaved layer.

fileName.dmw contains the georeferencing information including grid resolution, and coordinates of the centre of the upper-left pixel of the image. The six values represent the affine transformation from image to georeferenced coordinates. If the order of the 6 values are represented by A-F, the transformation is

x' = Ax + By + E
y' = Cx + Dy + F

Therefore, values (A,D) give (xRes,-yRes), (E,F) give (xOrigin,yOrigin) and (B,C) define the rotation (always 0 for GTOPO30). Note that D is negative since the image origin is at the top, but georeferenced origin will be at the bottom.

fileName.prj contains global map projection information such as the spheroid used and projection type. It can also contain projection parameters. All GTOPO30 data use WGS84 geographic (lat/long) coordinates with the addition that an antarctic DEM is provided using a polar stereographic projection.

For more details on the format and distribution of GTOPO30 files, see http://edcdaac.usgs.gov/gtopo30/README.asp.

Graphics Image File

Default file extension: .jpg, .gif, .png, .tif, .bmp

Example Description
GIF, TIF, JPEG or PNG file. Binary image file. Export is in either GIF, JPEG or PNG format (plus .bmp format from 3d viewer). Import can read GIF, JPEG, PNG or TIF (including GeoTIFF) format. Currently LZW compressed TIF files and CMYK colour scales cannot be read. Since most graphics images formats do not generally store geographical limits, they require some geographical information to be defined.

Import allows image files to be stretched over primary raster. If an ArcGIS 'world' transformation file is present with same name and '.w' extension (ie. .GFW, .JGW, .PGW or .TFW), the image will be georeferenced on import.



Exported images are given the dimensions of LandSerf's graphical display at the point at which the image is saved.

GRASS Raster Text File

Default file extension: .txt

Example Description
north: 517000
south: 506000
east: 350000
west: 333000
rows: 220
cols: 340
null: -32766
type: float
multiplier: 10

647 662 680 695 709 ..etc
644 660 680 694 707 ..etc
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing raster data. Header information consists of at the outer bounds of the raster and the number of rows/columns (in any order). It can optionally include the value representing null cells, the type of cell (float or int), and the value by which cells are multiplied.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from north to south, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

Raster values can be floating point or integer numbers and are separated by any number of whitespace characters.

GRASS Vector Text File

Default file extension: .txt

Example Description
Geometry file...
ORGANIZATION: Jo Wood
DIGIT DATE: 2.5.03
DIGIT NAME:
MAP NAME: contours from lakes.dem
MAP DATE:
MAP SCALE: 25000
OTHER INFO:
ZONE: 0
WEST EDGE: 333000
EAST EDGE: 350000
SOUTH EDGE: 506000
NORTH EDGE: 517000
MAP THRESH: 0
VERTI:
L 3
506025 336625
506025 336625
506025 336625
:
etc.


Attribute file...
L 336625.0000 506025.0000 50
L 333165.2545 507005.2545 100
L 334774.6173 506041.1564 100
:
etc.


Category file...
# 2 categories
0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
50: low risk
100: high risk
Text files for storing point, line, and area vector data. Geometry, primary and an optional secondary attribute set are stored in separate files in subdirectories dig_ascii, dig_att and dig_cats respectively.

The geometry file contains header information in the first 14 lines. The bounds of the vector map are used to set the edge values in the header, the remaining items are either ignored by LandSerf or stored as 'notes' when importing.

Feature type is identified by a P, L or A prefix representing point, line and area features respectively. Each new feature contains the type and number of coordinates to follow. Note that coordinate data are stored in y x order, one pair per line in the geometry file, but x y order in the attribute file.

The primary attributes are stored in a separate file with the same name in the subdirectory dig_att. Attributes are linked to geometry by identifying a coordinate pair in common (the first pair) followed by the attribute (one per line).

If secondary attributes (i.e. the attribute selected in an attribute table that is not a primary ID) are present, they are stored in a separate file with the same name in the subdirectory dig_cats

All coordinates and primary attributes can be in either integer or floating point formats. Secondary attributes (category labels in GRASS) can be numeric or textual.

MasterMap Vector Text File

Default file extensions: .gz, .xml

Example Description
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<osgb:FeatureCollection
xmlns:gml='http://www.opengis.net/gml'
xmlns:xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink'
xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
fid='GDS-2183-1'>

:
etc.
GML format vector of GB Ordnance Survey's 'MasterMap' large scale spatial database. See www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/osmastermap for more details.

NTF Raster Text File

Default file extension: .ntf

Example Description
07 Section header record (raster bounds)
50 Grid header record (DEM range)
51 Grid record (DEM values)
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing geographical data. This is a complex transfer format used largely by the GB Ordnance Survey for distributing their pre-MasterMap digital data. It is also referred to as British Standard BS 7567 'Electronic Transfer of Geographic Information'. For details see e.g. http://www.bsi-global.com/ (select a catalogue search for BS 7567) or gdal.velocet.ca/~warmerda/projects/ntf. Header information is stored in section and grid header records, the elevation values in a grid record.

NTF Vector Text File

Default file extension: .ntf

Example Description
02 Database header record (product type)
07 Section header record (vector bounds)
05 Feature class record (attribute labels)
15 Point record
23 Line record
21 Geometry record (coordinates)
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing geographical data. This is a complex transfer format used largely by the GB Ordnance Survey for distributing their pre-MasterMap digital data. It is also referred to as British Standard BS 7567 'Electronic Transfer of Geographic Information'. For details see e.g. http://www.bsi-global.com/ (select a catalogue search for BS 7567) or gdal.velocet.ca/~warmerda/projects/ntf. LandSerf can read Profile and Panorama contour and form-line files, LandLine (large scale), Meridian (medium scale) and Strategi (small scale) vector data in this format.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) File

Default file extension: .svg or svgz

Example Description
  Scalable vector graphics viewable over the web with any SVG plugin. If file has extension .svgz, then it will be compressed using GZIP deflation. Most SVG plugins should be able to decompress .svgz files on the fly. The geometry is mirrored in the X axis since the default SVG origin is the top-left corner. Styles are defined separately allowing easy user customisation of vector appearance. Polygons should have repeated first and last coordinates to ensure closing boundary.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 360 180">
<!-- Format definitions -->
<defs>
<style type="text/css"><![CDATA[
  polyline { stroke:black; stroke-width:0.03%; stroke-opacity:1; fill:none; }
  polygon { stroke:black; stroke-width:0.03%; stroke-opacity:1; fill-opacity:0.2; }
  circle { stroke:black; stroke-width:0.03%; stroke-opacity:1; fill-opacity:0.8; }
]]</style>
</defs>

<!-- Object metadata -->
<title>title</title>
<desc>description</desc>

<!-- Geometry -->
<g id="spatialObject" transform="translate(180.0,83.626945) scale(1,-1)">

<!-- Point features -->
<circle style="fill:#0000ff;" cx="7.6" cy="47.5" r="1"/>

<!-- Line features -->
<polylinestyle="fill:#0000ff; " points="107.1,4.7 107.9,4.79 108.0,4.7 "/>

<!-- Area features -->
<polygon style="fill:#0000ff; " points="107.1,4.7 107.9,4.79 108.0,4.7 107.1,4.7"/>

:
etc.

</g>
</svg>
etc.

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM

Default file extension: .hgt or .srtm

Example Description
Binary equivalent of the following...
218 218 219 219 219 ..etc
217 217 218 218 219 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary file for storing global elevation data, sampled at 1 arc-second, 3 arc-second or 30 arc-second resolution. No header information is included, but the file name indicates the geographic origin of the DEM. See ftp://e0mss21u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/Documentation/SRTM_Topo.txt for details. LandSerf can also read 'srtm30Plus' files that comprises combined SRTM, GTOPO30 and bathymetric data at 30 arc-second resolution. For more details see http://topex.ucsd.edu/WWW_html/srtm30_plus.html.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from north to south, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east. Raster will consist of 1201x1201 cells (3 arc-second DEM), 3601x3601 cells(1 arc-second DEM), 48000x6000 cells (30 arc-second srtm30plus), or 7200x3600 cells (30 arc-second antarctic srtm30plus).

Terragen Raster Binary File

Default file extension: .raw

Example Description
Binary equivalent of the following...
218 218 219 219 219 ..etc
217 217 218 218 219 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary file for storing raster data. No header information is included in the file.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from south to north, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

On export from LandSerf raster values will be a square of side 2^n+1, for example, 257x257, 513x513, 1025x1025 depending on the original raster size. Attribute values will be 8 bit integers. LandSerf will automatically scale any raster to these dimensions with a range of 0-255. On import a choice of 8, 16 or 32 bit Intel (low byte first) ordered integers can made.

Terragen Native Binary File

Default file extension: .ter

Example Description
Binary equivalent of the following...
218 218 219 219 219 ..etc
217 217 218 218 219 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary file for storing terrain data. Unlike Terragen's 'raw' binary file format, this contains header information and can be used to export non-square terrain data without resampling of elevation values.

For details of the format, see www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/dev/tgterrain.html.

3D Route File

Default file extensions: .r3d .xml

Example Description
  XML file for storing 3d viewing parameters. The optional <environment> tag stores parameters describing the surrounding space. The optional <surface> tag contains parameters describing the surface appearance. The <waypoint> tags describe a sequence of camera positions and views. These are used to construct 'flythroughs' in the 3d viewer, but can also be imported as 2d vectors in LandSerf.
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!--3d route and viewing parameters generated by LandSerf 2.2-->
<fieldtrip>
<title>3d route generated by LandSerf 2.2</title>
<environment fogdensity="0.1" sky="true" skycolour="#ff1a801f" seacolour="#ffad69aa" fogcolour="#ffccb4b3" wallcolour="#ffdcdef5"></environment>
<surface resolution="4" vscale="1.9" smooth="true" grid="false"></surface>
<route>
<waypoint name="waypoint1">
<view heading="320.0" pitch="-33.0" fov="70.0">
<spatial type="point" x="50.0" y="-25.0" z="51.5"></spatial>
</view>
</waypoint>
<waypoint name="waypoint2">
<view heading="328.0" pitch="-23.0" fov="30.8">
<spatial type="point" x="89.2" y="6.8" z="17.4"></spatial>
</view>
</waypoint>
</route>
</fieldtrip>

USGS Native DEM Text File

Default file extension: .dem

Example Description
MOUNT RAINIER WEST, WA-24000 LAT:: 46 45 0.0000 N LONG:: -121 45 0.0000 W SCALE:: 24000 ...etc ... 392 393 393 393 393 ...etc
ASCII file for storing elevation data. Header information contains spatial extent, resolution, geometry, projection and error information in 1024 byte blocks. Structure is relatively complex and is documented at rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/nmpstds/demstds.html. See also www.cs.arizona.edu/topovista/sdts2dem/ for an error-corrected and updated version of the sdts2dem converter.

Raster data are stored in columns rows from west to east, each row consisting of values from south to north. Because of the projection or potentially large areas into planar coordinates, each S-N profile can be of a different length.

Raster values are integers but can be scaled by a multiplier stored in the header file. They are stored in fixed-width 1024 byte records, although LandSerf will use whitespace delimiters to read in the raster body.

VistaPro Raster Binary File

Default file extension: .bin

Example Description
Binary equivalent of the following...
390 392 393 393 393 ..etc
391 391 392 392 393 ..etc
:
etc.
Binary file for storing raster data. No header information is used, by default the grid resolution is assumed to be 50x the vertical units.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from south to north, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

Raster values should be 16 bit Intel (low byte first) integers. If floating point values are required, scale up to largest possible integer value (65535) and rescale after file has been transferred.

VistaPro Raster Text File

Default file extension: .txt

Example Description
390 392 393 393 393 ..etc
391 391 392 392 393 ..etc
:
etc.
ASCII file for storing raster data. No header information is used, by default the grid resolution is assumed to be 50x the vertical units.

Raster data are stored in nrows rows from south to north, each row consisting of ncols values from west to east.

Raster values should be integers and are separated by any number of whitespace characters (including new lines).

VRML Raster 'World'

Default file extensions: .wrl .wrz .vrml

Example Description
#VRML V2.0 utf8#
# Converted from LandSerf file: Soil
# SW corner was originally: 320000.0,435020.0
# Scaled so centre is at 0,0,0 with largest side 10 units long
Background {
   skyColor [0.0 0.2 0.7, 0.0 0.5 1.0, 1.0 1.0 1.0 ]
   skyAngle [ 1.309, 1.571 ]
   groundColor [0.1 0.10 0.0,0.4 0.25 0.2, 0.6 0.60 0.6, ]
   groundAngle [ 1.309, 1.571 ] }
Transform {
   translation -5, -4, -10
   scale 0.1,0.1,0.1
   children
   [
     Shape {
      appearance Appearance { material Material { } }
      geometry ElevationGrid {
         xDimension 100
         zDimension 100
         xSpacing 1.0
         zSpacing 1.0
         solid FALSE
         creaseAngle 3
         height [
        2.5961194, 2.5735216, etc.
        2.5961135, 2.5735227, etc.
        etc.
        ]
       colorPerVertex TRUE
       color Color {
       color [
         0.553 0.163 0.463, etc.
         0.553 0.121 0.495, etc.
        etc.
] } } } ] }
ASCII file for defining Virtual Reality worlds. If the extension is .wrz, file is GZIP compressed. Consists of raster elevations values in a VRML97 heightfield and vertex colouring as RGB triplets for each elevation. All geometry is scaled to form a 20x20 unit grid centred at local coordinates 0,0,0. Null values are represented by the minimum raster value. You may wish to consider resampling DEM to a reasonably coarse resolution (100x100 or so) before output to keep VRML world a manageable size.

Includes a simple ground plane and sky to provide background context.

Raster values are floating point and are separated by any number of whitespace characters.

Output has been tested with the excellent Cortona VRML client compatible with most web browsers (IE, Opera, Firefox, Mozilla).