RGB Mars

Post #1by **selden** » 29.11.2002, 02:50

A few years ago, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a trilogy about terraforming Mars in the very near future. The books were titled "Red Mars", "Green Mars" and "Blue Mars". Frans Blok created a map of the planet, which can be seen on his Web page at http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwb/rgbmars.html

Frans was kind enough to send me a high quality version of that map, which I've scaled and rotated to make it compatible with Celestia. The results are available at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/blok/index.html

Don. Edwards · Post #2by **Don. Edwards** » 29.11.2002, 09:24

Hmmmm!
And just where do you think I got the idea for the GreeMars texture. From reading this great series of books. I have each and every on of them and they are one of my favorite sci-fi book series I have read. Another series I read but never finished was Chung Koa The Midlle Kingdom. It was set in a future were China reverted back to the empirial ways and ended up conquring the world. They then systimaticly erased history to there own version of it. I think I read the first five books. There were to be seven books but he wrote an eigth because he couldn't finish the story off that fast. Unfortunatly the last book was never made available in the USA and so I lost interest i it being that I would never be able to finish it. The final book is even out of print. Very hard to find. But if you like very serious sci-fi consider reading the Chug-Koa series. The Earth at htis time and the way its discribed would make a very interesting texture for Celestia. Hmm that gives me an idea...................... :idea:

Post #3by **selden** » 29.11.2002, 16:11

Don,

Well, I think Frans' map is more "artistic" and yours seem more "photorealistic". There certainly is room for both!

I have the impression that being able to see his map on a 3D world may have inspired him to work on it some more. I don't think he's downloaded Celestia yet, though. He commented about having a rather slow network connection.

I've added a small AVI to the page (6 seconds, 550KB). If anyone knows of a good mpeg codec or AVi to mpeg conversion utility, please let me know.

Don. Edwards · Post #4by **Don. Edwards** » 30.11.2002, 04:55

I look at Fran's map as kind of geopolitical map. Its not a real surface map of Mars so to speak. I think of mine as what it really would look like if it were transformed. The other thing is that in the books certain things were done to keep water from going to certain regions on the planet such as Marinares Valley. In the book they kept it from flooding to save the natural beaty of the region. Were I let the water run where it wants or where it really would go. I think of my map a map of what the Green Party in the book series would want ot happen versus what it was like in the Fran's map.

Post #5by **selden** » 30.11.2002, 23:40

Don,

I think your description of the differences is quite accurate..

I've updated my Celestia compatible versions of his map to have 0 degrees of longitude in the middle rather than at the right edge. Celestia will now display them with the correct phase. It'll look a little stranbe because the bumpmaps provided with Celestia incorrectly have 0 degrees of longitude at their right edges.

I'll try to generate appropriate bumpmaps shortly.

sigh.