lk8000terrain

Terrain color schemes and shading inside LK8000

LK8000 has a powerful and flexible terrain drawing engine allowing pilots to choose the best colors for their local maps.

Drawing terrain on a small 4 inches screen is something different than drawing on a PC screen. Furthermore, light conditions during the flight will be totally different from light inside an hangar or under the shadow of a tree. This is why development in LK has gone further finding the best possible combinations for an airborne moving map, with extensive testing and adjusting.

Depending on the kind of terrain you are flying over, flat lands, mountainous, mixed, deserts, etc.  you can test and choose the perfect choice for your screen while you are still on ground. Even during the flight, you can still make the terrain drawing better depending on light conditions.

There are 13 presets for terrain in LK. Some are good for flat lands, some other for steep mountains, etc.

You choose the color scheme from system config menu 4:

TERRAIN SHADING

Sun shade is painted according to sun position during the day. This is only approximated, no real calculations on sun azimuth. Sun is now rotating from East to West (south or north depending on emisphere) instead of being in a fixed position.  Rotation is made from -60degrees to 0 (N or S) between 7am and 12am, to the east.
At 12am sun is presumed to be 0 degrees N or S.
Then it is rotating from 0 to 60 during 12am-18  , to the west. Time is local time. Daylight saving is not calculated.
At all effects, you will see the shades from sun shining from east in the morning, and west in late afternoon.
For simulations, between h21 and 7am in SIM mode time will be shifted 12h, so for example at 11pm localtime we shall assume it is 11am. Because there is no sun in the night, of course.

ATTENTION: sun shade is painted only when wind speed is set lower than 6kmh (3.2knots).
In other words, we are assuming that sun will prevail over a wind of 5kmh on a mountain.
Otherwise, sun won't be used for shading, and only wind will be used. We cannot mix them.

Terrain shading can also be enabled-disabled while flying from the Screen View menu:

Unshaded terrain can be better visible in certain situations, and it is also the default choice for other commercial software that cannot add shades to terrain. Here is the difference with shades on and off of the same terrain :

Of course, shaded and unshaded terrain quality depend also on the color scheme you have chosen. Let's look at your choices.

Low Lands are painted above.

Mountainous

This is better than LowLands if you are flying in the mountains.

Imhof 7

Imhof 4

Imhof 12

Imhof Atlas

ICAO

LKoogle lowlands

LKoogle schemes are grey scaled, and are good on some PNAs screen with high contrast ratio.

LKoogle mountains

Low Alps

High Alps

YouSee

Some people claimed they don't really need fancy colors, and wished they could have their old software's color scheme.

Here it is. And Shaded it does look good too!

Unshaded YouSee is the classic look. Good for all seasons!

High Contrast

This is a color scheme to be used in flat lands, not in the mountains!

A powerful feature of LK8000 is the autocontrast.. see special chapter about it.