Ultimate Terraformed Mars MARK V Milestone Release

[Helios_space]

Thank you very much,:)

[ElChristou]

Don, for info the feature pict of the day on the French Wikipedia is a rendering of a terraformed Mars, here:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:TerraformedMarsGlobeRealistic.jpg

[Don. Edwards]

ElChristou,

Have you seen my new avatar? Its the same image, done by someone on Deviant Art. Its has also been made into icons which I have as well. If you looks close this image has inspired my texture a little bit.

Don. Edwards

[Cham]

Don,

have you updated the 4k NormalMap texture ?

Also, when do you intend to release the larger resolution versions ?

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Cham,

Not yet, I just started a new job and haven't had time. I should have it by Sunday night I think if not sooner.

Don. Edwards

[ElChristou]

ElChristou,

Have you seen my new avatar? Its the same image, done by someone on Deviant Art. Its has also been made into icons which I have as well. If you looks close this image has inspired my texture a little bit.

Don. Edwards

Oops!

[zhar2]

thanks don, it worked.

very nice work too.

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Everyone,

I am a day early but I have 2 new normalmaps for the T-Mars test. The original has a height of x1, but it seems to barely show anything. So I made two more. TMAR-NORMAPx3.png has a height setting of x3 while TMAR-NORMAPx5.png has a setting of x5. See how they work for all of you.

Download Here

Just to let everyone know I have started a new job as a computer tech at another local shop. So work on the project is going to slow down a bit again. I still have to work out a few things with the new placement and style of the Tharsis ice sheet. I also have to tackle the night side lights texture. As I have stated that one is a complete restart but I have some ideas that should speed up its development.

I am also going to be looking into Using Fridger's tools to do the final conversions of the textures and for making the 16k VT version.

I will keep everyone posted as to how things are going. and please continue to give me feedback on the texture. I am toying with posibly doing a third version with the saturation cranked up a bit to give that eye popping look. Let me know if that is an interest to anyone.

Don. Edwards

[Cham]

Don,

there's a huge seam line visible on your latest normal map.

[Don. Edwards]

I saw that after posting. I don't why its there, I will have to go back and look at the bumpmap it was generated from and check it ends for an irregularity. Bare with me and I should have this fixed and replaced.

Don. Edwards

[PlutonianEmpire]

If anyone finds better atmospheric settings for Terraformed Mars please post them so I can give them a try. I still haven't figured out how to get the dark ring from showing around the planets rim under the upper atmosphere. So if anyone knows how to adjust that also let me know.

You probably have already figured it out by now, but here goes.

Are you talking about on the night side of the planet? If so, the reason for the dark ring is because the atmosphere is so high. I experimented with it on terraformed Pluto a while back, and saw that it appears to be in the celestia code. I do not know, however whether it was accidental, or done on purpose, and therefore there probably is no way around it.

I'm guessing that with a high atmosphere, you might see some light even at midnight in the upper atmosphere in a similar way you still see light on earth even 30 minutes after sunset, where photons that would normally bounce into space, bounce back to the surface because of air molecules. Not to mention, the gravity would bend the light waves somewhat.

Edited to add:

Anyway, I got the textures, and they are superb! Good work!

[fsgregs]

Don:

Congrats on your new job. With your talent, you should be working in Hollywood for big bucks in one of the special effects shops.

Beautiful textures and detail on the main map.

I concur about the seam on the normal map. Also, although I can see the Normal map, try as I might, I can't see any shadows changing at all with any of the 3 normal maps you've released. I've zoomed in close in several spots, and there is just no noticeable change in shadowing on the ground (other than normal darkening at the terminator).

FYI

Frank

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Frank,

Yes I have noticed it as well. These small normalmaps were made with the Photoshop Normalmap plug in. I don;t think it works right with with CS 4. I will generate a new normalmap again this weekend using the old nVidia texture tools and if that fixes the problem I will post this new one.

Don. Edwards

[Don. Edwards]

These are a few excerpts from a post I made about conditions here in the forum. They are my personal feelings on all things Celestia at this point.

"I for one am starting to give long thoughts on whether I even want to continue as a member anymore. I truly haven't launched Celestia for any kind of pleasurable use in over a year. I only use it know as a way of testing my textures. I have started to render my work in other applications for the creation of of 3D space art. I have personally been drifting farther and farther away from Celestia."

Objectionable text which mentioned WorldWind deleted

"Celestia has reached a crossroads. It hasn't seen any knew technology built into it for years know. All we have seen are minor improvements to the rendering engine to keep it up to date. So what truly is its future. I don't know but I am thinking that its time to move on to other things. How this effects projects I have in place is still unknown."

Peace to Everyone,
Don. Edwards

[selden]

Don,

I'm rather puzzled by some of your comments. Some of them sound as if they were written about a version of Celestia from two or three years ago.

What features would you like future versions of Celestia to include?

These are a few excerpts from a post I made about conditions here in the forum. They are my personal feelings on all things Celestia at this point.

"I for one am starting to give long thoughts on whether I even want to continue as a member anymore. I truly haven't launched Celestia for any kind of pleasurable use in over a year. I only use it know as a way of testing my textures. I have started to render my work in other applications for the creation of of 3D space art. I have personally been drifting farther and farther away from Celestia."

Celestia certainly is not the best engine for 3D rendering. Its shadow generation is relatively poor: models don't cast shadows, and objects are not self-shadowing. Also, it does not support a high dynamic range of illumination, although there's some hope that the next major release may include HDRI. Volumetric rendering (fog and smoke) is completely missing, although it can be faked with point sprites in some circumstances on some hardware.

Your comment about making Celestia like WorldWind confuses me. I would have thought the high resolution VT surfaces would be particularly of interest to you, since you're well known for your images of planetary surfaces. What other interests haven't you written much about?

Personally, I think 3D planetary surface rendering is one of the areas where Celestia is lacking. There are other renderers, the ones supporting procedural surface generation, for example, which are far better. Celestia doesn't even support displacement maps, which would make valleys and mountains much more realistic. Creating 3D models of them can be quite difficult for a planetary surface artist, and (it seems to me) more expensive computationally. Celestia's clouds are only a single simple 2D layer.

"Celestia has reached a crossroads. It hasn't seen any knew technology built into it for years know. All we have seen are minor improvements to the rendering engine to keep it up to date. So what truly is its future. I don't know but I am thinking that its time to move on to other things. How this effects projects I have in place is still unknown."

This one particularly confuses me. It seems to be commenting on v1.3 and perhaps v1.4. V1.5 and v1.6 have had major additions which are used for displaying celestial mechanics (frames, SPICE, high precision custom rotations) as well as animation and control (scripted orbit and rotation). Its support for displaying deep space objects is improving, as well as the star and galaxy catalogs it includes.

Another major capability, although not directly related to the depths of space, has been the addition of support for multiple languages, including several Asian ones. This makes Celestia approachable by many more people.

[Don. Edwards]

Selden,

I will not post any kind of retraction or edit my posts. If you are so inclined you may do it yourself. The only comment that was overtly controversial was my statement that to me Celestia seemed to be headed into being a NASA Whirlwind clone. This was not directed per say at Fridger. I was my own personal observation on how Celestia seems to be headed for the rendering of massive 128K textures rather than moving it code forward and adding features that have long been outstanding. If my comment can be seen as any kind of an attack it was on a piece of software and not a person. I think you are getting a bit carried away here. As I said it was my opinion and an observation. If you don't like it than I am sorry.
By the way I am using the most recent build of Celestia, not that it matters anyway.

You don't have to worry about banning me from the site. I am banning myself. To take load off the shatter.net server I have removed all my websites and downloads. I am leaving the vast collection of images there so that they remain for the forum. But if Chris chooses to he can do as he pleases with the account. I will not be using it any longer. I will not be making any further posts about anything in the forum or the status of my projects.

If anyone wishes to contact me about any of my textures in the future they can get my email address through my account information. or email me at

impulseman37@msn.com

For everyone else out there, its been great but the time has come to go. Thanks for your support and all I can say is keep an eye out there on the web, I will be out there with my textures given time.


Don. Edwards

[fsgregs]

Don:

I do not know what to say Your work has enormously enriched Celestia, particularly the educational version that I use. I can understand your disgust with the tone of some of the conversations that have been made on the forum. I totally support Selden's desire to finally stop the incivility and rudeness that has occurred. It is far past time he did so. However, I realize that most of the time, the idea exchange has been very productive, and has given Celestia followers a means to showcase new things, develop new controls and create beautiful new add-ons.

I urge you to not give up on Celestia entirely. Frankly, the millions of folks out there who use it ... need you Your textures are in front of thousands of kids of all ages in over 30 countries now, enabling them to see present day Earth and its clouds in beautiful detail, visit Mars of the future and Earth/moon of the past. It has been a labor of love for you too, and a means to distribute your work to thousands of people. I know you are angry ... but ...

Anyway, whatever you decide, I wish to sincerely thank you for all the professional time and effort you have put into making the Celestia universe a richer place.

Frank

[cartrite]

The only comment that was overtly controversial was my statement that to me Celestia seemed to be headed into being a NASA Whirlwind clone. This was not directed per say at Fridger. I was my own personal observation on how Celestia seems to be headed for the rendering of massive 128K textures rather than moving it code forward and adding features that have long been outstanding.

I'm not aware of anyone working on 128k+ textures except me so here is something to think about. These textures run on Celestia 1.3.2. They are a personal collection and I probably will never make them public. What would make you think that Celestia is heading towards a "NASA Whirlwind clone"?
I don't write code for Celestia. At best, I sometimes submit a patch to fix a bug. I got no idea why anyone's work on personal 128k/256k textures would cause you to leave the community.
cartrite

[acrosome]

Don,

Well, I just found a formula to very roughly estimate atmospheric pressure at a given altitude given a pressure at "sea level" and local gravity.

P = Po * exp (-g * h / H)
wherein
P = pressure in atmospheres
Po = pressure in atmospheres at "sea level"
g = gravity in Earth G
h = target altitude
H = scale height (which is 7,400m for Earth)

Granted, this equation ignores the effect of the lapse rate, and I used the same scale height for Mars as Earth. Still, comparing computed versus real pressures for Earth shows startlingly good correlation.

If I assume that you set sea level at -2,000m datum, then Olympus Mons is about 29,000m above sea level. Plugging that in with a sea-level pressure of 2 atmospheres and g=0.376, then I get 0.46 atmospheres for the caldera of Olympus Mons. That's equivalent to just under 6,000m/20,000 feet on Earth, right?

If I use the current real scale height for Mars (11,000m) it's even worse: 0.76 atmospheres. People could have summer homes there.

If I figured this correctly, and considering that Everest is about 29,000 feet high and covered in snow, then I think Olympus Mons should be covered in snow. It shouldn't "poke out of the atmosphere" and be barren, as shown on your textures. Nix Olympica is a reality!

Please check my math. I could easily have screwed this up, or it could just be that on Mars the air that high would be very dry. I am an amateur, after all.

Change of subject:

I keep hearing people quoting some ludicrously low pressures that humans can live at, assuming Earth-like O2 concentrations. Yes, humans can survive at these pressures, but over long timescales they don't thrive. Above certain altitudes on Earth humans start to lose weight and generally become quite fragile. I found an article quoting some data on permanent human settlements:

>> Individuals have lived for as long as 2 yr at an altitude of 5950 m, and there was a miner's camp at 5300 m for several years. The highest permanently inhabited town in the world at the present time appears to be La Rinconada, a mining village of over 7000 people in southern Peru at an altitude of up to 5100 m.

Granted, some of this may be due to economic factors rather than human hypoxia. A rough estimate for these altitude is about 0.5 atmospheres.

Again, am I missing something? Because I keep hearing people say humans can live at 300 millibar. (Heck, one guy said 150 millibar...) Or is this assuming a higher O2 concentration?

[t00fri]

acrosome,

Don has left this forum for reasons that I can well understand...

The formula you are referring to is the famous, so-called "barometric altitude" formula. Every wrist altimeter uses it and physics students MUST know it.

Despite it's apparent simplicity, it has various catches built in! The most important one being the temperature dependence of the coefficient in front of the altitude in the exponent. In order to get a reasonable prediction, one has to assume a "standard atmosphere" where the temperature decreases by a certain amount per n meters of altitude. Better wrist altimeters have such effects usually built in. But let me warn you of such "naive" applications of that formula for Mars, as you did above...

Fridger