UPDATE!! - Ultimate Terraformed Mars Texture

[tech2000]

Hi Don,

You said, "Also in the third shot, with snow on it is a very seldom seen volcano that is
just east of Hellas. I knew it was there but with a dusting of snow it sure is visible now."

That seldom-seen volcano is called Tyrrhena Patera. The rough southern hemisphere
only has three big volcanoes. Your textures are marvelous and I will surely
return to this thread again to look at your pictures of Mars. Here is a list of the
names of major volcanoes and craters on Mars, so people can learn the names of
these alien landmasses:


The Three Biggest Impact Craters with Latitude and Longitude

Hellas Planitia : 45 south, 290 west longitude
Argyre Planitia: 50 south, 45 west
Isidis Planitia: 15 south, 270 west


Summary of the Five Biggest Volcanoes with Latitude and Longitude

Olympus Mons : 18 north, 133 west
Arsia Mons : 9 south, 120 west
Pavonis Mons : 0 north, 113 west
Ascraeus Mons : 12 north, 105 west
Elysium Mons : 15 north, 213 west


Summary of Eleven Volcanoes with Latitude and Longitude

Ceraunius Tholus : 24 north, 97 west
Uranius Tholus : 26 north, 97 west
Uranius Patera : 27 north, 93 west
Tharsis Tholus : 13 north, 92 west
Hecates Tholus : 33 north, 210 west
Albor Tholus : 19 north, 210 west
Biblis Patera : 2 north, 124 west
Ulysses Patera : 3 north, 122 west
Alba Patera : 40 north, 110 west
Apollinaris Patera : 9 south, 186 west
Tyrrhena Patera : 22 south, 253 west


Summary of Ten Craters with Diameter, Latitude and Longitude

Orca Crater : 220 miles = 354km, 15 north, 182 west
Cassini Crater : 258 miles = 415km, 24 north, 328 west
Huygens Crater : 283 miles = 456km, 14 south, 304 west
Schiaparelli Crater : 286 miles = 461km, 2 south, 343 west
Antoniadi Crater : 236 miles = 381km, 22 north, 299 west
Aram Chaos Crater : 174 miles = 280km, 2 north, 21 west
Gale Crater : 107 miles = 172km, 5 south, 222 west
Lowell Crater : 125 miles = 201km, 52 south, 81 west
Newton Crater : 178 miles = 287km, 41 south, 158 west
Galle Crater : 143 miles = 230km, 51 south, 31 west

If someone with the proper knowledge would make a script about all these features os mars... I for sure would love it..

Very nice textures.

[selden]

Tech,

Many people misuse the term "script", so I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Do you mean "create a catalog to show the locations on the planet" or do you mean "create a tour of these locations" ?

A catalog of labels for all of the locations that GM has mentioned is included with Celestia v1.4.1, so you can GoTo any of them. If you turn on Labelling in the Render menu and go close to Mars, you'll see all of their names.

If you mean a Cel or CelX script that will take you on a tour of those locations, however, that does not yet exist.

[Chuft-Captain]

Some of you may notice a yellowing of the ice in the Olympus shot, which is not in the texture; it seems to be an artifact generated by Celestia itself

Didn't notice this on my laptop display Don, however it's not the best display device in the world.

Perhaps it's an artifact generated by a Martian "taking a leak".
Note for future colonists of Mars: "Never eat yellow snow".

Actually, to be serious, it's probably just a "perceptual" thing in the visual cortex of your brain, where colours will take on different hues depending on surrounding colours in the field of view. In this case, there's a lot of briight white, so anything slightly less white may appear yellow. Put the same yellow area in a field of black, and it will appear bright white.

So I wouldn't worry about it. (Unless you're planning to eat it)

[tech2000]

Tech,

Many people misuse the term "script", so I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Do you mean "create a catalog to show the locations on the planet" or do you mean "create a tour of these locations" ?

A catalog of labels for all of the locations that GM has mentioned is included with Celestia v1.4.1, so you can GoTo any of them. If you turn on Labelling in the Render menu and go close to Mars, you'll see all of their names.

If you mean a Cel or CelX script that will take you on a tour of those locations, however, that does not yet exist.

Sorry. I mean ofcourse a tour with some sort of presentation with information. Maybe we could all help out. How about an open development of a mainscript with a mainmenu and submenus.

ie.

1 - solar system
\ 1 - sol
| 2 - Mercery
| 3 - Venus

2 - deep space
\ 1 - galaxies
| 2 - nebulas

well, you get idea, right?

What will also help to get a very nice base of knowledge to tour...

Or am I just to much of a visionary.. (or to tired)

[Johaen]

Some of you may notice a yellowing of the ice in the Olympus shot, which is not in the texture; it seems to be an artifact generated by Celestia itself

Didn't notice this on my laptop display Don, however it's not the best display device in the world.

Perhaps it's an artifact generated by a Martian "taking a leak".
Note for future colonists of Mars: "Never eat yellow snow".

Actually, to be serious, it's probably just a "perceptual" thing in the visual cortex of your brain, where colours will take on different hues depending on surrounding colours in the field of view. In this case, there's a lot of briight white, so anything slightly less white may appear yellow. Put the same yellow area in a field of black, and it will appear bright white.

So I wouldn't worry about it. (Unless you're planning to eat it)

It also looks white to me. I actually checked the Red Blue and Green levels of the image in GIMPShop, and it's actually got a very slight bluish tint, rather than yellow (red and green together).

[barbarossa2]

Oh my. Yes. Absolutely beautiful.

Just one quick question Don, how did you calculate the amount of water needed for these ocean levels? And where is it coming from? Not that this has to be "hard science fiction". I love imagination too!

Just curious!

Great work!

[d.m.falk]

FWIW, great pics. My only quibble really is, with the height of Olympus and the Tharsis range, they're above what would be the natural cloud layer, and thus above the snow line.... Particularly since Olympus' escarpment (at its base) is up to 4 miles high. (At present, Olympus and the Tharsis range are the only places that literally poke out above the atmosphere, they're so high...)

Now, if we see a terraformed Venus on this scale...

I'd love to see as many worlds in our Solar system- expluding the gas giants, of course- terraformed. Might defy logic in some cases, but we could say, in those cases, there was technolkogy involved that doesn't exist at present.

When viewing these pics, I was imagining such a world history spanning this millennium, etyc., but I've since forgot what I had in mind.

Don't stop.

d.m.f.

[Giorgio]

Once again a very very interesting texture that make me sorry for not going thorugh the Celestia guide thoroughly before buying my new graphic card. Haze makes such a great difference.

[Don. Edwards]

d.m.falk,

It is true that in its present state the great volcanoes of Mars rise through its thin atmosphere. But this is a fully terraformed Mars with an atmosphere twice as dense as the Earths, so there is a possibility of ice building up on those peaks. Of course there would be many different things going on in this region when it come to weather, so who knows. Also as I stated above that I was considering having the summits of the volcanoes poke out of the ice layer. This texture is far from complete so there is still some wiggle room. I can make changes to anything I want at this point. I work in layers so all I have to do is add or remove a layer or something in the layer to achieve what I think looks best.

Giorgio,

Hey guy, I am sorry that you can't get that haze layer on your ATI, Maybe they will support this feature in a future build of Celestia or ATI's drivers, so hang in there.


BTW,
I have temporarily stopped working on textures as I have started to build my new computer. It is a slight improvement over the present one. I am moving to an Athlon 64 based system but will still be using the same graphics card and taking a temporary hit in the memory department down to just 1gig, only 2 memory slots on the new board. But so far the thing runs faster than my present system. I will keep everyone posted on how things move along.

Don. Edwards

[Don. Edwards]

Here are tow shots of where I have taken the Ultimate Terraformed Mars texture. Some of you may not like it, and some of you will. Needless to say I had to take into consideration that Olympus Mons and the whole Tharsis rise is so high much of it is almost outside the atmosphere. Of course this terraformed Mars has an atmosphere that is well over twice as dense as what we have here on Earth. Never the less I had to take into account the altitude and what things would looks like. So Now Olympus Mons has a glacial skirt around it and there is a massive ice sheet on west side of Tharsis. The reason for the ice sheet is because the jet streams carrying warm humid air up over the Tharsis rise would freeze out as snow and ice. The moist air would never make it to the tops of the great volcanoes. All the ice and snow would pile up and form a great glacial ice sheet. Which is exactly what I made, behind the ice sheet is a dry high altitude desert. The same principal is play at Olympus Mons but on a slightly smaller scale. The warm humid air is carried up and around the escarpments and freezes out much as it does in Tharsis. This is similar to how the air currents flow around the Himalayas here on Earth.





I hope this doesn't disappoint many people. But this is how it?€™s going to look. I still have a few tweaks to perform. But it is nearly done.

Don. Edwards

[buggs_moran]

That is a really cool, intuitive way of thinking about how it would look. All of the terraformed Mars' I have seen never take the altitude and of O.Mons and the plateau into consideration (kind of like the Himalayas and the desert plateau to their north ). Most artists just make everything wet and green, and top the altitudes with snow. I like it alot, can't wait to see more.

[ElChristou]

Don, with so much ice, I can easely imagine many rivers running down the lower lands till the oceans... do you plan to add some?

[PlutonianEmpire]

Most artists just make everything wet and green, and top the altitudes with snow.

I'm guilty of that...

*blush*

[Don. Edwards]

ElChristou,

Yes I plan on adding rivers and glacial lakes along some to edges to the ice. Mainly in the lower most western side. At this point I think I would call the texture 85% finished. I still have some work to do.

I am also considering going back to my old computer. While the Athlon 64 is fast I am having a few issues with it here and there. My older Athlon 3200 at least had stability on its side and more memory slots. I lost 512mb of RAM in the changeover. Needless to say it is slowing me down, allot as of late. Working with these huge 3gig multi layered PSD files is killing the new machine.

Don. Edwards

[Malenfant]

Wow, that's a really interesting assessment of how the climate would work out there. It's great that you're taking that sort of thing into account, it adds a lot of verisimilitude to the texture!

[Malenfant]

I am also considering going back to my old computer. While the Athlon 64 is fast I am having a few issues with it here and there. My older Athlon 3200 at least had stability on its side and more memory slots. I lost 512mb of RAM in the changeover. Needless to say it is slowing me down, allot as of late. Working with these huge 3gig multi layered PSD files is killing the new machine.

Don. Edwards

You considered going to Windows 64-bit? You can get a lot more RAM going if you run that (I think 8GB is the limit, assuming you have a motherboard that can support that much RAM).

[Don. Edwards]

Windows XP 64bit has allot of issues with 32bit programs and forget any that have 16bit code in them still. Also there are interface issues with XP 64bit. Its true it does offer allot more memory usage, but I think if I do decide to use it it will be on a dedicated hard drive and note for full time use.
The motherboard I got has only 2 memory slots and I carried over 2 sticks from the previous machine as they were working well. I really think its my present install of XP. Its Media Center Edition and has allot of junk running in the background that can't be shut off easily. So I am preparing for another fesh install of regular old XP Pro. Another issue I seem to be having is that Windows Vista will not install on this new Mobo. That doesn;t boad well for the future. It does install on the other system and works great.

[ANDREA]

Windows XP 64bit has allot of issues with 32bit programs and forget any that have 16bit code in them still. Also there are interface issues with XP 64bit. Its true it does offer allot more memory usage, but I think if I do decide to use it it will be on a dedicated hard drive and note for full time use.
The motherboard I got has only 2 memory slots and I carried over 2 sticks from the previous machine as they were working well. I really think its my present install of XP. Its Media Center Edition and has allot of junk running in the background that can't be shut off easily. So I am preparing for another fesh install of regular old XP Pro. Another issue I seem to be having is that Windows Vista will not install on this new Mobo. That doesn;t boad well for the future. It does install on the other system and works great.

Don, I'm using the WIN XP 64 Trial Ed, and it works well for me.
Have you tried this?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/trial.mspx
Give a look, if you want.
My suggestion is to change anyhow your Mboard, I'm using the latest Asus A8N32- SLI Deluxe, and I'm very satisfied (4 RAM slots).
Bye

Andrea

[fsgregs]

Don:

Your work is great. I would be honored to incorporate it into Activity 5, the Terraforming of Mars (with your approval) as soon as it is done.

When you do release it, please release a read-me file with it that outlines the what ... and why ... of the geological features you added. I would never have thought to remove the snow from the top of Olympus Mons due to altitude being too high and dry. That is brilliant thinking . I can envision devoting at least 4 new pages of the Terraforming journey (and LOTS of cel:urls) to the final Mars image, and I don't want to miss anything you may have put in.

Frank

[PlutonianEmpire]

Wow. With that much bare ground still available, I imagine there would still be huge dust storms sometimes.

Also, will there be 2k versions available? Just curious.