Beyond Earth

Many of the tools and approaches for rendering the Earth can be applied to other planetary objects, although understandably there is a great deal less data for them.

Imagery for Solar System Bodies

• many links to surface imagery are at Cylindrical Planetary Maps on the Internet
• The Celestia Motherlode has imagery for use in the Celestia space simulator, but much of it could be adapted for other tools
• J Hasting's Planetary Image Maps is a good collection of imagery [no longer online as of 2008?]

Mars

• Data
  • Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA)
    • includes a gridded topographic map (EGDR) at up to 1/128 degree resolution
    • these are in a raw format (.img) an a cylindrical projection, with a header describing extents
  • The Celestia Motherlode: Mars Surface Maps
  • J Hasting's Mars page [no longer online as of 2008?]
• Software
  • GeoFusion Mars Demo
    • standalone downloadable demo for Windows, 32MB
  • Paul Bourke's Mars, renderings from the 1/128 degree dataset
  • NASA World Wind can be configured to show Mars, both imagery and elevation
  • Druantia is an open-source project (GPL) to produce a Mars visualization
    • still in the early stages as of January 2005
• Longitude on Mars is traditionally given in the range 0 to 360 degrees, versus the -180 to 180 standard on Earth

Moon

• J Hasting's Moon page
• there is some description of rendering the Moon from earth on the Sky Rendering page
• is there a good public elevation dataset for the moon?

Simulation

• Computing planetary positions

Middle Earth

• A great deal of work is ongoing with ME-DEM (The Middle-Earth DEM Project)
  • Started in mid-2003, with the goal: "Create a digital elevation model (DEM) of Middle Earth. More broadly, we intend to map it in every feasible aspect, potentially to build a highly detailed model which includes rivers, vegetation, buildings, roads, even subterranean features. In short, a living, breathing Middle Earth!"
  • tools that are used a lot include Leveller, L3DT, Wilbur and World Machine, as well as some use of the VTP software for realtime 3D.
  • From First Age - Making of Beleriand Part 5: