A lot to cover. I'll get right to it. First, DEM is "Digital Elevation Map". It's a generic term that has been incorrectly used to refer to many different specific types of digital elevation maps. There is a USGS DEM format with the extension .dem for example, but you can also get "DEM's" from the USGS in many other formats. SRTM and SDTS are both DEM formats. ;) The USGS seamless data website is admittedly complicated, but it's also incredibly powerful. They simply would not be able to provide the breadth and detail, the sheer variety of data they make freely available with any normal HTML system. It's unfortunate that the system is rather demanding, but there is an FTP fallback for many of the data types. The map interface is just way easier and faster (for those that it works for). I have been working the past week or two off and on to get this new high resolution data into a number of good formats. I have used it at 8193x8193 (native resolution, no downsampling) in Terragen and Terragen 2 alpha. I would love to see it used in Vue and see how well Vue 5, and especially Vue Infinite, match up to what Terragen and TG2 can do. To that end I would be glad to provide the data in whatever format would work best for Vue. I have access to Global Mapper for the original export from DEM, and then Leveller for exporting to many other formats - both have very powerful import/export capability. What you need to do is find the easiest and most widely available, compatible, and highest detail terrain format that Vue supports. Let me know here or in private message or e-mail. Beware: all terrains of this data so far made available are "compromised" in some way! Manel's terrain, which I believe you are using, is in Geographic projection, which is less accurate, and it also is only 16 bit accuracy - in Terragen you can see visible "stairstepping". The Terranuts version posted by Aaron Tyler from the TG community is very small, downsampled, and is also stretched vertically. Furthermore all uncorrected data has stitch seams. I have taken the time to remove the DEM seams by hand. This will be the best, most artifact-free data you can get out of the available raw data. I've taken the time so you don't have to. The Terragen .ter terrain files from my work should be available by tomorrow on Ashundar. Specific formats for Vue can be made available once I know what format will work best. Let me know. - Oshyan