It's particularly nice navigating with a Spaceball (or Space Navigator) controller, though I had to play with the settings a bit to get it to respond well (the default settings aren't very good). It would be really nice if it would do stereo rendering, both as side-by side as well as supporting Stereographics frame switching. Perhaps someday. The available HiRise imagery seems unfortunately sparse.

I can remember struggling away with putting together some 3D views of Mars terrain a few years ago. So to have the entire Mars terrain in 3D makes me feel very spoilt !

In case any readers haven't noticed, Google Mars also has a 'flight simulator mode', where you can fly a jet fighter or a prop plane over the surface. It's kinda fun to fly over Noctis Labyrinthus.

It's in the 'Tools' menu.

Did anybody verify if distance measurement tool is working properly in GoogleMars?
Also, having a "comparison image" overlayed somewhere to get an idea of how big are Mars features would be cool, but it can't be done if we don't know if the measurment tool gives right results.

I spot checked on Meridiani where we drove the rover and the distances seem to match the visible features. This only validates the correlation between HiRISE and surface imaging and tracks. I have no idea relative to areas where there is no HiRISE data. I would be surprsed if there were large errors.

Paolo

I was not talking about images size, but about the "ruler" tool of GoogleEarth: if I drag it for 100 meters on Mars... are they ACTUALLY 100 meters, or just 60 (or whatelse, can't remember Mars radius...)

Nor is Paolo - he's talking about the ruler tool. And - as far as measuring where there is HiRISE imagery to corroborate the measurements - they're accurate - so, one can infer - it's accurate over the whole planet.

full inline quote removed - ADMIN

sorry, my fault.
thanks.

Re: the ruler tool

If you take the pole-to-pole distance using the ruler, you find Earth's hemicircumference to be about 19.5 Mm and Mars's to be about 10.5 Mm. So it looks like they do take it into account. (If you try this yourself, note that the distance will not update when you switch from Earth to Mars, so you have to nudge the endpoints a bit to get it to recalculate.)

Just to confirm, ys I was measuring with the ruler tool on Hirise images as projected by GE (Mars). As far as inferring that this is correct over the entire surface, I would not be so certain. I'm sure they did the best they could but I would not be surprised if there were some areas where they had stitching problems and therefore locally the ruler might be giving a different value than the truth. But for our simple observations and measurements I think it is quite a remarkable tool. Quite impressive.

Paolo

It's still a bit experimental, but below kml should give a 'drivability map' (12 mtr grid variance) on Google Mars for the whole area from Endurance down to Endeavour at 2 mtr resolution (you can zoom down lower but then you might get small offset errors).
Light green is best, green is good, blue is 'be careful', red is potentially hazardous (settings are a bit on the 'safe' side so there are many 'fals alarms' but those area's can only be judged at ground level).

It still takes a bit of time to load (and I hope my webserver survives), next version I will add more levels to make it load faster. On the area's where Google Mars does not give HiRise coverage there is a slight offset, I won't be so pretentious to say that this is due to Google Mars but they seem to be using some kind of projection for those area's which not completely matches my own.

Next versions of this I will post in the 'Google Mars' thread so as not to clutter up this thread

Remember you need to open Google Mars first before opening the kml, otherwise it opens somewhere on earth and weird things might happen. After opening the kml you need to go to Victoria crater to see the map.

Regards,

Geert.

Click to view attachment

EDIT: UPDATED AND FASTER VERSION UPLOADED ON 20/04

Too "heavy" for my computer/bandwith.
I did this sort of experiment before but loading from a local image previously downloaded from an external server. In know there are some sort of kml keywords to limit the access to the referred pictures only if the "zoom factor" is high enough and avoid this problem but I don't remember them by memory.
I'll try tomorrow from a different machine/place.

I have uploaded an updated version in previous message which has more layers and should load a lot faster although it is slightly less resolution.

It worked!

I first thought it didn't but then after reading again your original post "After opening the kml you need to go to Victoria crater to see the map." I found it right there. One suggestion: there is a KML keyword to automatically focus on the map after opening it so no need to do it manually.

-------------------
Moved the posts to the "Google Mars" thread.

Below a first draft of Endeavour crater in Hires for Google Mars.

Start Google Mars first, then open the file. If it doesn't automatically take you to Endeavour after opening, then move to Endeavour and zoom in to see.

Click to view attachment

There is still a slight offset with the Google Mars background, I'll see if I can fix that later this week.

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In order to improve resolution without slowing down the application too much I have divided the earlier 'drivebility' map in three parts:

Endurance crater to Victoria crater: Click to view attachment

Victoria crater to Mini Endurance: Click to view attachment

Mini Endurance to Endeavour: Click to view attachment

People who downloaded the earlier version don't need to do anything as it will upgrade automatically.

Click to view attachment

This new map has a resolution of aprox 1.7 mtr/pixel, it is no use going up any further as that's way outside the scope of the calculations.
'Red' should be seen as 'potentially' dangerous, however the settings are a bit on the safe side ('better safe then sorry'), only way to judge the real danger is with the eyes of the rover down on the surface. Basically dunes which are converging/merging are seen as a threat and marked red.

First draft of a map of mineral composition of Victoria area as measured by CRISM.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

This map is based on measured quantities and distribution of Oxidized iron minerals (ferric minerals, coatings, and iron minerals). Due to the lower resolution of CRISM the number of zoom-levels is somewhat less then the other maps.

In this version there is still a slight offset in longitude, I'll correct that later this week but it will upgrade automatically (the kml is only a link to server based files, makes life a lot easier).

I am glad this tool is driving creativity!

Click to view attachment

Map of difference between THEMIS Day and Night IR measurements for Meridiani area

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Theorie is that lose sand/dust will show up bright in Daytime IR and dark in Night time IR, so a large difference between daytime and night time IR measurements will show a larger risk of lose sand (I hope).

Map shows least difference in measurements as lightgreen, then onwards to blue, and red is shown as the highest difference (you can't call it a 'no go' area for there is no data on which value's are actually dangerous). Presently Oppy is almost through the 'red' area and should get on 'firmer' ground soon if this map is correct ;-).

Note resolution of THEMIS is only down to aprox. 100 meter/pixel so don't expect data on each individual dune ;-).

Can anyone else had the problem of a grid of red 'X' boxes that are obfuscating most of the landing site and endeavor crater in the Google Earth(mars) regardless of whether or not i load the .kml file ?? it looks like google mars is trying to load data (as the boxes transition from loading symbol to an 'X'). so far i havent had any luck searching on this topic.

Atomoid

In google mars go to the side panel and scroll down the places section and untick the HR plus MOC variance also you can untick the Crism Victoria box if you wish to remove the mineral colours.
At least this worked for me
Hope this helps

Roy F

This looks like an interesting new feature for Google Mars!

From Arizona SU News: "The first of the new features lets anyone, anywhere, recommend places on Mars to photograph with ASU's THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The second new feature shows the most recent infrared images of Mars sent back to Earth from the THEMIS camera."

Cool.

Just been pottering away on Google Mars for a while, wandering around some of my favourite places, including what's probably my fave crater on Mars, which I'm sure you all recognise from this view...

Click to view attachment

... but when you take a look at the bigger picture - wow! Talk about "Landslide Alley"!

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Hands up who loves Google Mars..?

Blog post on "Landslide Alley"...

http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2010/03/1...landslide-alley

Wow, looks so cool from that perspective!

I hope Google includes the MOC,CTX and HIRISE images in the next release!
That way i can resume my search for volcanoes on the red planet !


Good thing theres a lot of user discoveries, overlays, databases, and info at Google Earth Community!

Does anyone know exactly how Googe Mars does obtain their Digital Terrain Models (DTM) used to render those views ?

It was my understanding that they use the MOLA base map (200-meter-ish post spacing) plus HRSC (Mars Express) DEMs (~50 m resolution) where available and only then draping CTX/HiRISE images etc. over them.

HOWEVER: The impression from views like that of the "half crater" and "landslide-alley" posted by Stu above is that the actual terrain models must be considerably more accurate than MOLA alone.
But yet there does not seem any other altimetry data of that region (i.e. HRSC or HiRISE DTMs) The only related data is CTX imagery but that is 2D-only, i.e. can be draped over the terrain)

So are we seeing still officially unreleased HRSC DTM data, or am I missing some other sources ?

A related question: is there a way to view/save the data in Google Mars as a height map, i.e. similar to what is displayed in the "google maps" like window at the bottom of each HiRISE observation page (i.e. http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_016354_1745 ?

Now I can anser the first of my questions myself: I simply did not zoom out far enough to see the huge green stripes that indicate the MEX/HRSC coverage when enabled in the "Spacecraft Imagery" checkbox
Those HRSC stripes are so large that they are simply not visible at finer scales ... zooming out one can see that really about 50% of the surface must have been coverd by HRSC already ... very impressive !!

The following question remains. Anyone able to get the Google Mars view as height values rather than 3D shaded perspective ?

I don't understand what you mean, are you asking about something like this?

That's not quite what I'm looking for: this view does not only contain the color coded height values but there is an additional relief shading applied and mixed with the color coded height. While this is convenient for viewing it is hard to extract the original height data (i.e the DEM) from it. Plus, the color coded height view seems to be available at the coarsest (MOLA) resolution only. The much more detailed HRSC 3D data is not displayed or downloadable in this manner although it must be used by the Google Mars engine internally for the perspective view display.

However, as I have found out in the mean time, there is a direct link provided to the original PDS data record of the HRSC observations that can be used to download and process the original imagery and DTM data

Then get off UMSF, get onto your computer and start rendering awesome 3D views of Landslide Alley...!!