Quote Originally Posted by zeichen View Post
Being precise and accurate is good but spending dozens of hours to get no return on results is a waste on that particular piece. However, you never know when that effort might pay off in time saved or better results for another project.
This is very true, why I don't get discouraged when a long process comes to naught. Because it didn't really, I always learn something.

Now, I really wish that I could go visit every kind of place that matched a location I was mapping but that's not generally going to be a realistic possibility. But there are other possibilities. I have spent no time in desert environments like the one I'm mapping. But I've been in a dust storm that fired grit like a sandblaster. And I've seen how blizzards pile snow around buildings in the most amazing shapes. Even though I don't have the experience of the exact environment, I think, zeichen, that your point is spot on and that I can definitely draw on my own real world experiences to inform my maps. I've probably done this from time to time, but thank you for delivering the idea to my conscious mind. It will be really fun henceforth starting a project and thinking, "Okay, where have I been that's like this map?"

cheers,
Meshon