Mars topography

onefroggyevening

O
Hi all,

I've searched the forum for anything on mars and its topography but couldn't find anything.

So my question is, do you think we'll see realistic topology for Mars, the Moon, all other planets and moons in our solar system for which there is such data?

It would be amazing to fly over say Olympus Mons (22 km), or the Hellas crater (4 km deep and 2000 km across)

Some nice images:

http://master-zoro.blogspot.be/2011/05/most-beautiful-mysterious-and.html

http://www.techedon.com/wp-content/themes/striking/cache/images/5267_NASA_Olympus-Mons-Olimpa_mars-625x469.jpg
 

Patrick_68000

Patrick_68000
It would be great that the planets of our solar system are faithfully reproduced.
But in 1300 years, there will have been of changes. Should be anticipate
 

NeoRacer

N
Honestly can't imagine the man hours it'll take just to do 1 planet, especially Earth alone, I wouldn't have too high expectations for hires detail. It'll be procedural at best. They dont have an EA size team. We can hope though..


Willem said:
Hi all,

I've searched the forum for anything on mars and its topography but couldn't find anything.

So my question is, do you think we'll see realistic topology for Mars, the Moon, all other planets and moons in our solar system for which there is such data?

It would be amazing to fly over say Olympus Mons (22 km), or the Hellas crater (4 km deep and 2000 km across)

Some nice images:

http://master-zoro.blogspot.be/2011/05/most-beautiful-mysterious-and.html

http://www.techedon.com/wp-content/themes/striking/cache/images/5267_NASA_Olympus-Mons-Olimpa_mars-625x469.jpg
Click to expand...
 

Rog

Rog
I don't think the devs would have to model Mars manually too much - pretty sure the topography data is freely available from NASA or the USGS.
 

nicomak

nicomak
NeoRacer said:
Honestly can't imagine the man hours it'll take just to do 1 planet, especially Earth alone, I wouldn't have too high expectations for hires detail. It'll be procedural at best. They dont have an EA size team. We can hope though..
Click to expand...

Well large features like Valles Marineris, the bulge of Tharsis with its volcanos including the Olympus Mons should be in the game, it doesnt have to be precisely the same, just similar enough.

And dont forget mars has been terraformed, what's underwater doesnt need that much detail.

And how did google earth or space engine get their data for mars surface? As Rog said, there's probabebly some mesh available somewhere, and even if you dont use a high res mesh you could procedurally complete it.

Venus may also have some interesting topgraphy but for the rest the greater concern is how they look, not so much if they have the same topography.
 
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Chock

Chock
NeoRacer said:
Honestly can't imagine the man hours it'll take just to do 1 planet, especially Earth alone, I wouldn't have too high expectations for hires detail. It'll be procedural at best. They dont have an EA size team. We can hope though..
Click to expand...

It isn't necessary to do terrain altitude mapping by hand for Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, that data is freely available. And since it was acquired by NASA on various missions, and being that NASA is funded by the people of the good old US of A, they offer the data to the public for free.

You can see examples of this data being used in sims and games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, X-Plane, Trainz, Silent Hunter etc, where they used the data gathered on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission from 2000. This was a mission in which the Orbiter spent eleven days criss-crossing the Earth with a special radar mapping system and got extremely accurate data for the terrain height of the Earth. I've actually used that data to make sceneries for various computer simulations, so I know it is pretty easy to do so. Other space missions have gathered data for most of the planets nearby.

Do a Google search on Radar Topography NASA and Geosciences Node Data and you will find more about it if you are curious. Not all the data and the programs necessary to interpret are free, but it is not expensive either, and ironically, it ain't rocket science to use it. I'd put money on FD having used that data for our solar system's modelling.
 
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NeoRacer

N
oh Im sure but it takes more than just plopping a height map onto a sphere and callin it 'good' You would still have to add citys and such which is a huge undertaking. Even FSX 10 stock looks pretty bad and they spent years with a decent team/MS Funding before they got shut down. So not sure how ED will handle this. We're talking about a PLANET here. They got away with it on earlier games with very simple stuff..people wont go for that these days.

Chock said:
It isn't necessary to do terrain altitude mapping by hand for Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Moon, that data is freely available. And since it was acquired by NASA on various missions, and being that NASA is funded by the people of the good old US of A, they offer the data to the public for free.

You can see examples of this data being used in sims and games such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, X-Plane, Trainz, Silent Hunter etc, where they used the data gathered on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission from 2000. This was a mission in which the Orbiter spent eleven days criss-crossing the Earth with a special radar mapping system and got extremely accurate data for the terrain height of the Earth. I've actually used that data to make sceneries for various computer simulations, so I know it is pretty easy to do so. Other space missions have gathered data for most of the planets nearby.

Do a Google search on Radar Topography NASA and Geosciences Node Data and you will find more about it if you are curious. Not all the data and the programs necessary to interpret are free, but it is not expensive either, and ironically, it ain't rocket science to use it. I'd put money on FD having used that data for our solar system's modelling.
Click to expand...
 

onefroggyevening

O
Chock said:
Do a Google search on Radar Topography NASA and Geosciences Node Data and you will find more about it if you are curious. Not all the data and the programs necessary to interpret are free, but it is not expensive either, and ironically, it ain't rocket science to use it. I'd put money on FD having used that data for our solar system's modelling.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Found a webpage with Venus images, except the resolution seems kind of low to use as a topology map. Still amazing that we even have images.

http://futureplanets.blogspot.be/2009/11/proposed-discovery-venus-radar-mission.html

It has been more than 15 years since the Magellan mission mapped Venus with S-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images at ~100-m resolution. Advances in radar technology are such that current Earth-orbiting SAR instruments are capable of providing images at meter-scale resolution. RAVEN (RAdar at VENus) is a mission concept that utilizes the instrument developed for the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) to map Venus in an economical, highly capable, and reliable way. RCM relies on a C-band SAR that can be tuned to generate images at a wide variety of resolutions and swath widths, ranging from ScanSAR mode (broad swaths at 30-m resolution) to strip-map mode (resolutions as fine as 3 m), as well as a spotlight mode that can image patches at 1-m resolution. In particular, the high-resolution modes allow the landing sites of previous missions to be pinpointed and characterized... Our current estimates indicate that within an imaging cycle of one Venus day we can image 20-30 percent of the planet at 20–30-m resolution and several percent at 3-5 m resolution. These figures compare favorably to the coverage provided by recent imaging systems orbiting Mars. Our strategy calls for the first cycle of coverage to be devoted to imaging large geographic areas (e.g., Thetis Regio) at 20–30-m resolution with interleaved observation of pre-selected targets at high resolution. The second cycle will include additional imaging, but the focus will be repeat-pass coverage to obtain topography for a significant fraction of the first-cycle targets... All components of the spacecraft are expected to remain operational well beyond the nominal mission time, so global mapping at 10 m or better resolution during an extended mission is conceivable."
Click to expand...

Here's hoping that one day such a mission becomes reality.

Some nice images:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/magellan.html

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/mission_page/VN_Magellan_page1.html
 

Chock

Chock
NeoRacer said:
oh Im sure but it takes more than just plopping a height map onto a sphere and callin it 'good' You would still have to add citys and such which is a huge undertaking. Even FSX 10 stock looks pretty bad and they spent years with a decent team/MS Funding before they got shut down. So not sure how ED will handle this. We're talking about a PLANET here. They got away with it on earlier games with very simple stuff..people wont go for that these days.
Click to expand...

Again, stuff like MSFS and X-Plane use 'autogen' for larges areas of scenery, which as I'm sure you know adds generic buildings and trees based on a few regional settings. It doesn't always look architecturally accurate to what our Earth looks like today, but it does work, and since we are in the future with ED, who is to say 'that's not what Birmingham looks like' because for all we know, it might look exactly like that in a thousand years. Spaceports will need a little bit more work of course, but again it is reasonable to assume that one could use a library set of building components to construct these, after all, most airports kind of look the same, they have a main building some taxi and bus ranks, some piers for the aeroplanes to dock at, and a few taxiways and runways, these being sort of the present day equivalent of spaceports.

This of course also offers Frontier the possibility of earning some extra cash by releasing a SDK for scenery developers, not unlike MS did with Flight Simulator. This, as I'm sure you know has developed into quite a large and lucrative side industry in providing payware add-ons for flight simmers to add more realistic models of their favourite airports and the standard is generally very high for such sceneries, as they are often a labour of love. If FD did that, they could control the canon of such add-ons with an approval process, then sell such add ons through their own store and take a percentage royalty. Offering the option of not using such sceneries, as in the case of MSFS where you can instead use the generic airports that are built in, means that this could be a choice the players make on the level of detail they want for their favourite planetary hang outs.
 
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NeoRacer

N
Very true, I've been impressed with the Space Engines planet gen technology and if they can do that plus auto gen citys it could be cool
 

Mars

Mars
I have to hope that Mars is accurately represented. I hear he really is a stunningly handsome chap. :D
 

nicomak

nicomak
there is a map of its topography, blue isnt water of course but what if?
mercatorMOLA.jpg


+some landing sites
http://indigestible.nightwares.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/mars-topo-and-landing-sites.jpg

with water+topography
O_MarsGlobeOceanLg.jpg


terraformed(more water)
Terraformed_Mars_by_Quanto.jpg



and some other nice imaginary view from space, maybe it will look very familiar once looking at the ingame mars :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/MarsTransitionV.jpg

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/m...obeRealistic.jpeg.pagespeed.ce.08QQlMcA_p.jpg

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/126/a/1/Terraformed_Mars_3426_AD_by_77Mynameislol77.png

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/TerraformedMars.jpg
 
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