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Full Version: Grand Tour Google Earth Megaoverlay Set
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Antdoghalo
NOTE: DUE TO FORUM ATTACHMENT SIZE LIMIT, I HAD TO SEPARATE THIS OVERLAY SET INTO MANY POSTS, YOU WILL HAVE TO CHECK THE REPLIES BELOW AND DOWNLOAD THE PLANETS INDIVIDUALLY (Venus, Moon, Mars is in multiple sections due to particularly large size of their sets and to make room for future updates like new models for future landers)

The Grand Tour overlay is an overlay set of the Solar System I have been developing overtime since 2010. The initial overlay set was lost in 2010 in a hard drive failure and for years I just forgot about it. In 2015, I had much time on my hands and I began work to redo the project better than before. I was close to completion before college courses ramped up and I forgot to finish it. In 2020 due to well... "Terrestrial Events" I had an excess of time to work on stuff and I finally got around to finishing the overlay set bigger and better than I even imagined it in 2015. This probably took several hundred hours to compile.

I have always wanted to share this overlay set on UMSF since it uses a lot of contributions by members here like maps, overlay sets, and even models.

This overlay set contains:
Overlays of 67 additional planetary objects
Models of 40 landers and images from many of them
IAU approved nomenclature for 45 objects
1,000 geolocated NASA Photojournal images
Atmospheric effects for Venus, Titan, Triton, and Pluto


This is just a thing introducing and explaining how the overlay set works since it's really big. The downloads for the planets themselves are in replies below and in the next page.

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To organize this overlay set, create a folder, SET TO "Show contents as options" and place the downloads found below in the replies into it. Venus, Moon, and Mars have a parent folder in the overlays download where you can also put the spacecraft, nomenclature, and NASA photojournal downloads. You should end up with a folder with subfolders for Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Mars moons, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Dwarf planets, Asteroids, comets, and extra.
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Mercury, includes overlay set and nomenclature

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Venus Overlays, includes surface, clouds, and science based overlays.


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Venus image tour (Geolocated NASA photojournal images of Venus, many of which are added into the basic overlay as areas of higher resolution)


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Venus Lander Models, download the Venus overlay set from the post above or else they will be on Earth. They are sized to scale as if the Earth sphere was a slightly smaller Venus sphere.

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Venus IAU approved nomenclature

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Additional Lunar Overlays, mainly science based (including vastly improved resolution topography on left of this image compared to default provided by Google which isn't even aligned correctly)

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A few dozen updated lander models for the moon (corrected locations as well as more recent probes Google has not added as well as higher resolution imagery for them)

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Updated lunar nomenclature (it's huge, it includes the lettered craters not shown in default Moon layer which is outdated by over a decade)

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Extra Mars Overlays (Mainly science based like gravity and mineral abundance)

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Some models for updated Mars landers like InSight and the located Mars 3

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Updated IAU approved Mars nomenclature (The default on Mars is outdated by a few years)
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Martian Moons (they looks like potatoes but I can't make them potatoes in GE)
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Jupiter and moons, several layers of the gas giant show it's changing clouds overtime


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Saturn and Moons, includes Huygens model and landing collage. Huygens is to scale of Earth, as in it's like there's a Titan-size globe. Titan also has realistic atmospheric effects visible by turning on sun and Earth atmosphere.


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(continued from previous page) Uranus and Moons

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Neptune and moons, Triton has a faint atmosphere on it.


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Dwarf Planets. One of the most beautiful things is to turn on Earth atmosphere and Sun on Pluto then view it from behind to see almost exactly what New Horizon's saw.


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Asteroids (aside from Vesta, Bennu, and Ryugu, they look weird since GE can't render potatoes)

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Comets (Note, many look weird since they too are potatoes) Here is the Deep Impact impactor collage

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Last but not least, the Sun and a temperature map of an exoplanet

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This is a reduced size basic version of the overlay set. It has only lower resolution overlays for those with dinosaur computers unable to handle 16K textures. If 16K+ textures can be handled on your computer with Google Earth then you don't need this.
Click to view attachment
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I recently got a newer even better computer and currently I am working on improving this overlay set with higher resolution maps, orbiter models, updates, and experimenting on some things. The updated version will not come out until next year though.
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