Terrain from Satellite

So, I was thinking about making my first map. But I can't decide how to do the terrain.
First I thought I make a mountain with Blender, but it's really difficult - well, I guess I could get used to it if I stick to it a little bit longer (I really need to, I got such a great idea).

Then I thought about making a small race track by painting a grayscale heightmap myself, but I am a bad painter and it turned out to not work for me. Maybe it's a matter of painting technique, but I am simply not skilled.

So I thought - what else can I do? Where can I get a decent terrain, paint a track on it and slam some trees in?

Well - what about satellite images?
I found this site that offers 3d heightmaps in decent resolution (90m) for $1 per square mile - which is pretty ok, I think.
I haven't bought any yet, but I think I do. Does anyone think that it is possible to convert that color coded image to a greyscale image and use this? Of course the scale might be altered a little to make up for more variety. All I need to do then is pick out the proper region.

It's also available in 5m resolution, so the Nurburgring Nordschleife... but I don't know the price. Probably too expensive.

 

Its actually been done before, of the top gear test track. Granted, it was a completely flat plane, but its definitely doable with the correct height maps and all that

 

Learn how to use WorldMachine. That software is pretty incredible once you've learned how to use it.

Don't pay for any satellite height maps. There's a chance it's available elsewhere for free.

http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

It's been ages since I've explored that site but I imagine all those goodies are still there at no cost (well the taxpayer pays ).

 

Doing maps from USGS or satellite data is definitely going on. You can see it in certain maps and I believe someone posted something about the conversion process from
USGS data.

 

I've been looking at ripping data from Google earth for a little bit now beforeI found this thread and it is possible although I've yet to been successful. But here is a couple of links describing the process and I could try it on my mac later to see if I get any other result.

http://brian-horning.com/google-earth-to-obj-using-glintercept/
http://brian-horning.com/google-earth-to-3ds-using-3d-ripper-dx/

I'd really like to se someone making this work as the meshes seems to be high enough quality to be usable with only some modification. That said, usable not necessarily pretty.

 

That USGS site is pretty cool. Even more so it provides even greyscale heightmaps!
I need only the terrain, no buildings - I was looking for something that provides a great landscape. However, the second link to Brian Horning is pretty impressive (where he shows a video of how to export building meshes with textures from Google Earth). Thanks for the advice so far!

 

I made a couple maps for rigs of rods using real satellite data. There is a tutorial on the rigs of rods wiki on how to do it for anyone interested.

http://www.rigsofrods.com/wiki/page...USGS_Seamless_Server_to_make_terrains_for_you

It works quite well. You could easily use the height map on a BeamNG project. So its definitely possible.