This is an ambitious project to create a realistic heightmap of Britannia using such tools as Photoshop, Terragen, and L3DT.

This in turn would be useful for some Ultima project developers, since I know for a fact that tools exist for some game engines (Neverwinter Nights 2 especially) that allow for the automatic creation of terrain based on imported heightmaps.

But that’s not the reason Mark has undertaken this project for himself. As he creates this work, he also wants to consider: “size and scaling of the continent, political and demographic issues, economy and trade routes, [and] geology and land formation.” In that regard, it’s as much an anthropological study as it is a really cool piece of artwork. You can see just how cool by clicking on the project’s image there on the left; that’s a sample/preview image he sent me a couple months back. It can be viewed in somewhat better detail at Aiera’s Flickr page.