A menu of stars and planets: Why isn't this your lucky day! It's already there and is called the 'Object finder' in StarStrider the menu (under the 'Navigation' section). Or try the short-cut key: F5
Selection/travel to options: There's lot's of stuff for selecting and navigating! Also for orbiting et c. Try the above mentioned menu again! There are also lots and lots of controls for 'free flight' with your virtual space-craft - and you can use the keyboard, mouse, joystick, or any other controller supported by DirectX. It's even completely user configurable! NB, this is all in the manual, but if this is too boring to read, then try the introductory tutorial called 'Controls and options'.
Landing on planets: If we could do that then I guess we could save NASA all the expensive of sending out space probes all over the solar system
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
. Seriously though, apart Earth itself, the only one of all the planets and the major satellites for which there is an elevation map that is even close to being accurate and detailed enough to do a 'low flyover' is Mars. (It was made from data collected by the MOLA instrument on the MGS spacecraft). And doing this properly would not only be enough work to warrant making it a program of its own, it would probably also require that the program be distributed on a DVD to fit in all the data.
Surface features: I'm not sure what you mean by "texture color mapping" - mapping a colored textures is already the first and most basic step in our rendering (as it is in Celestia). We then add many additional rendering steps (I'm particularly proud of the 6-step rendering of the Earth). Did you perhaps mean 'bump mapping'? Don't get me started on why I believe bump mapping of something like e.g. Luna is totally inappropriate and unscientific...
Best regards,
/ Markus /
http://www.starstrider.com/