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

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
• Software
  • GeoFusion Mars Demo
    • standalone downloadable demo for Windows, 32MB
  • Paul Bourke's Mars, renderings from the 1/32 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
• NASA Moon Downloads page is the main starting point
• A Revised Planet-Wide Digital Elevation Model of the Moon (2007)
  • data set is a revised version of a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) that was generated from the Clementine mission in 2000
• More coming in 2009: When the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission flies, DTMs produced by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) will complement the coarse global map of lunar terrain available from the Lunar Orbital Laser Altimeter (LOLA) experiment
• there is some description of rendering the Moon from earth on the Sky Rendering page
• The Ultramundum 4DMoon project
  • From May 2009, claims to be the first to "publish all the Moon without 'holes' and in real-time 3D with a continuous descent from space to surface level. Available NASA data have may problems and Ultramundum has developed a number of complex algorithms to create a continuous global surface coverage. A degree thesis analyses the complexities of the work that has been done."

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: