Lake Mead & Mojave Desert Real-World Terrains 406 km²


G walk at 1.8 m eye height ... ✦ UNITY 2022.3 AND ABOVE ... The Built-in Render Pipeline has no post-processing, so the Built-in demo levels look ... ✦ USE CASES Open-world games


by Matei Ioan Alexandru


Price History +

30 real-world maps of Lake Mead, the Moapa Valley and the Virgin Mountains, 20 x 20 km (406 km²) each at 10 m. 9 demo scenes, Built-in/URP/HDRP.
  • Heightmaps - 30 x 16-bit greyscale PNG, 2017 x 2017 px: 30 maps of 20.16 x 20.16 km (about 20 x 20 km, 406 square km) at 10 m per pixel
  • Relief - 379 m to 2,043 m per map (lowest point of each map at 0)
  • Unity terrains - one terrain of 2049 samples per map, terrain holes for the exact edge
  • Height precision - one height level is about 1.2 cm on the flattest map and about 6.2 cm on the map with the largest height range
  • Demo content - 3 map prefabs (one prefab works in every pipeline) + 9 demo scenes (3 per pipeline)
  • Ground textures - Mojave and Lake Mead (8 ground layers) + the shared ground layers, 4096 x 4096 albedo, normal and mask
  • Rock beds - a bed table per demo map, read by the terrain shader in Built-in, URP and HDRP
  • Water - transparent river and lake surfaces whose colour comes from the real water depth (depth texture), soft uneven shorelines, travelling waves and river flow, for Built-in, URP and HDRP
  • Shaders - anti-tiling, world-aligned terrain shaders with side projection on steep faces, rock beds, shrubs and fine relief, for Built-in, URP and HDRP
  • Editor tools - Terrain Builder, Project Setup, Grand Canyon Ground Textures; PDF documentation included
  • Compatibility - Unity 2022.3 and above; Built-in, URP and HDRP

▶ Full 4K video showcase: https://youtu.be/NVtl8ZIP7sI


Lake Mead and the Mojave Desert - the Overton Arm and the open basins of Lake Mead, the Moapa Valley and the Muddy and Virgin Mountains - at their real size, 20 x 20 km per map

30 maps of Lake Mead and the Mojave Desert from real-world elevation data (DEM). Desert ranges of grey limestone and red sandstone, wide fans and pale badlands around the Moapa Valley, the Muddy and Virgin Mountains, and the bays and arms of Lake Mead - with up to 2,043 m of relief on a single map. Each map covers 20.16 x 20.16 km (about 20 x 20 km, 406 square km) at 10 m between samples. Every Unity terrain sample is an original heightmap pixel - nothing is stretched or resampled - and 1 Unity unit is 1 metre.

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✦ WHAT'S INSIDE

  • 30 heightmaps - 16-bit PNG, 2017 x 2017 px, relief from 379 m to 2,043 m per map
  • One Unity terrain per map - one terrain of 2049 samples per map; the unused 32-sample edge strip is cut away with terrain holes
  • 3 demo levels x 3 render pipelines - 9 ready scenes to fly or walk through: Lake Mead Basin, Overton Arm, Virgin Mountains
  • Terrain Builder - one click turns any heightmap into a real-scale Unity terrain
  • Mojave and Lake Mead ground look - 8 ground layers in 4K: meadow, forest floor, dry earth, scree, rock, gravel, red rock, lake bed
  • Lake Mead water - transparent dark blue-green lake coloured by its real depth, uneven sandy shores, wet ground at the waterline and a pale mineral band on the rock above today's water level, in Built-in, URP and HDRP
  • Dry season in the Mojave - the ground of the demo levels is painted from the real shape of each map: bedded limestone ranges, red sandstone, desert pavement and creosote on the fans, pale badlands and the pale band above Lake Mead

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✦ DESERT GROUND

  • Tilted limestone beds - the desert ranges show bedded grey limestone whose beds cut across the slopes like real fault blocks, with ledges that catch the light
  • Colour carried by the drainage - the ground below a wall takes the colour of the rock above it, carried down the map's real drainage
  • Washes and shore sand - washes where the map's real drainage gathers, sandy shores placed from the real level of Lake Mead
  • Shrubs in the shader - separate creosote and bursage shrubs, small and far apart, drawn by the terrain shader on the painted ground
  • Fine surface relief - lumps and hollows finer than the height data on the near ground, fading out with distance

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✦ FEATURES

  • Huge real-world maps - up to 20 x 20 km of real ground per map, at 10 m between samples: fault-block ranges, fans, badlands, washes, valley floors and the shoreline of Lake Mead are in the data itself
  • Exact scale - size and height range are in every file name and inside every PNG, and the builder reads them for you
  • Anti-tiling terrain shaders - every layer blends three texture sizes by viewing distance, so no repeating patterns
  • Cliffs without stretching - textures are projected from the side on steep faces, so walls show real rock texture instead of vertical streaks; flat ground is unchanged
  • Verify - compares every terrain height with the original pixels

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✦ PERFORMANCE

  • Native 3840 x 2160 - no upscaling, demo scenes in player builds: HDRP 100-134 FPS · URP 104-202 FPS · Built-in 173-430 FPS (RTX 3090)

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✦ DEMO CONTROLS

Mouse look · WASD move · Shift fast · G walk at 1.8 m eye height · F fly · N / P next / previous level · H help

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✦ UNITY 2022.3 AND ABOVE

Built-in, URP and HDRP in one package. Tools > Lidar Terrains > Project Setup switches on terrain holes, and Shore Water Setup the depth and opaque textures the water reads, in your pipeline asset with one click. The Built-in Render Pipeline has no post-processing, so the Built-in demo levels look simpler than the URP and HDRP ones.

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✦ USE CASES

Open-world games · flight and driving simulators · western, survival and exploration games · cinematics · terrain studies. The heightmaps also work in other tools: 16-bit PNG, north up, size and height range in the file name.

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✦ THE GRAND CANYON SERIES

Neighbouring ground, never the same map twice:

  • Grand Canyon Rims & Plateaus - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426850
  • Grand Canyon Inner Canyons - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426854
  • Grand Canyon-Parashant - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426856

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✦ MORE REAL-WORLD TERRAINS

Same format, same tools:

  • USA Sierra Nevada & Cascades - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426148
  • USA Rocky Mountains & Great Plains - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426150
  • USA California & Desert Southwest - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426152
  • USA Eastern Forests & Lakes - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426154
  • UK Fells, Moors & Dales - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/426156
  • Alaska Mountain Peaks - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/425664
  • Alaska Valleys & Uplands - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/425668
  • Alaska Fjords, Lakes & Volcanoes - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/425670