Help:Producing maps with xplanet

{{About|the GIS software xplanet|help with the interactive maps feature|mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer}}

Producing maps with xplanet is a wikipedia tutorial showing how to use xplanet as a piece of GIS kit, to make map images suitable for use on wikipedia and other such websites. By the end of the tutorial, you should be able to quickly and accurately produce maps of any region suitable for publication.

Getting [[xplanet]]

See the [http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/ project page] for downloads

Getting started

Typical command-line use of xplanet (this all goes on one line)

xplanet.exe

-projection orthographic

-config script.txt

-latitude 52.25

-longitude 21.00

-num_times 1

-geometry 600x600

-output xplanet_image.jpeg

-radius 70

-fontsize 16

Result:

200px

Script files

Some of the map data is typically stored in a script file (a text file on your computer) - the script I used for the above map was simply:

[earth]

grid=true

grid1=10

grid2=10

shade=100

shade=100 is important, because it says that nighttime regions should be shaded at 100% of daytime illumination. When drawing maps, the nighttime shading isn't normally needed, so set that to 100 to turn it off

Projection	ancient azimuthal hemisphere lambert mercator mollweide peters orthographic rectangular
config	data script
latitude, longitude	where to centre an orthographic projection
num_times	must be 1 (stop xplanet running continuously)
geometry	width and height of the desired image
output	where to save the image
radius	radius of the earth, as a percentage of image width (make this bigger to zoom in)
more...	try the docs [http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/README.config here] and [http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/README here]

Try it again, setting the latitude to 90, shows the north polar area

200px

How to produce "globe images of earth showing where a region is located

How generally to zoom in and project an image suitable for use as a map, and save as jpeg

How to plot locations on the map with labels

City locations are available for download - see xplanet site, and can be plotted on maps (as can anything you can generate a lat/long/name textfile for)

How to draw country-borders using the arcfile list

See the URL below for some examples

[http://thomas-wehr.homeip.net/weather/europawetter.php Xplanet sample output: with markerfiles produced with weather scripts]

[http://thomas-wehr.homeip.net/space/iss-position.php Xplanet sample output: following the International Spacestation ISS around the earth showing various information like volcanos, quakes. Using satellites as targets.]

[http://thomas-wehr.homeip.net/weather/hurricane.php Xplanet sample output: hurricane information using arcfile options. Storm data collected by scripts.]

==Drawing on maps tutorial==

plot significant points, then use them as template in GIMP?

Misc

Image:xplanet_peters.jpg]]