UPDATE!! - Ultimate Terraformed Mars Texture

[buggs_moran]

Don, I can't wait to see the finished textures. I'd be happy to evaluate them closely and comment, if you wish.

Frank

Ditto, nice work. I love the detail along the coast in the third picture. Looks like it's coming along fine Don.

[Don. Edwards]

Here are the screen sots of the texture at the 16k level with the new Terraformed normalmap that helps show a different surface of Mars.

Areas of Savanna and Deciduous forest.


Over the Northern end of the Argyre Sea and the Gulf of Chryse.


Over the vast Temperate Rain forests that girdle the planet.


Over the Mariners Sea.


The green valleys of Noctis Labarynthus.


More Savanna and Deciduous forest south of Olympus Mons.


The forested Isle of Elysium, and Elysium Mons.


Transition from temperate rainforest to Savanna.


The Vast Coral Reefs of the Great Northern Ocean and Chryse Sea


The Grasslands and Tundra of Tempe Terra.


So those are the shots and where the texture is at this point. I will probably contact a few of you about giving it a test in a few days. I would say I am about half way done. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, hopefully they will work. I still have to add an ice and snow layer for the highest peaks.

As always comments are welcome.
I did the narration insets to help describe what everyone is seeing, or at least my impression of what you are seeing.

Don. Edwards

[d.m.falk]

Oooh, when's the next flight to Mars? I hear there's some mighty fine fishin' to be had down in the Chryse delta- Nothing like Olympus bass flying out of the water 50 feet above you!

d.m.f.
(Nice job- Keep it up! )

[fsgregs]

Don, next I suppose you'll have to invent an entire Mars culture to match that unbelievable vista of a world you are creating. Are the grasslanders friendly and gregarious, or do they stick to their traditional agrarian ways? Will robots harvest the forests that cover the highlands? Will there be Martian armies, or will they have learned to keep their world from becomming another Earth? Hummm! Good questions! Then ... we'll need cities, spaceports ... with the new Celestia sound capability, we could even have radio stations playing "Martian" music.

I am going to have to create a whole new Educational journey into Mars of the far future!!!

Fan*&%#tastic!!!!

Frank

[selden]

Careful, now, Frank, you don't want to slip into writing science fiction!

[Johaen]

Wow..

It's soooo pretty. Can I move to your Mars? Pleeeease?!

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Frank,

Well the Grasslanders are a pretty friendly bunch. So are the one living in the forests with trees over a thousand feet high.
Its the ones living in valleys of Noctis Labarynthus you have to worry about, they are a strange bunch. Rather isolated from everyone else and they like it that way.

All for fun of course.

Don, Edwards

[ElChristou]

Don., this is a really fantastic work!!
Many Tx for the effort!!

[Cham]

Don,

this looks like a real work of art ! Can't wait to install this on my system !

[Chuft-Captain]

Don,

This looks fantastic. Cant wait.
I might have to upgrade my machine to be able to handle 16K textures, but for this it might be worth it.

Anyone have any idea what the recommended minimum graphics and memory requirements would be for handling 8K/16K textures such as these?

[selden]

An 8K dds file with mipmaps will use 43MB of graphics memory, so a 128MB card will be just barely adequate, since you'll want to use several 8K textures simultaneously.

An Nvidia 6200 for the AGP bus seems to be less than $60 with 256MB of memory (eVGA brand from NewEgg).

[Don. Edwards]

Well here is what I have got, an EGV nVidia GeForce FX 5900 XT with 128Mb of VRAM. For the screenshots I loaded the new Terraformed Mars texture at 16k, the Normalmap at 16k, the specmap at 8k, the cloudmap is also an 8k. I ram into a problem trying to use the 16k specmap, it would only load up close to the planet, otherwise it was distorted and streaked across the surface. Moving to the 8k Specmap fixed that issue. The funny thing is that I can load the clouds and cloud shadows and everything still works. Of course a 16k texture is not merrily a doubling of the textures size but quadrupling its size. I made this graphic way back but never posted it to explain texture size better so everyone would understand how the texture sizes impacts a video card.

I think it does a good job of putting things in perspective. A 16k texture is nearly 19 feet wide by 9.5 feet tall. Imagine printing that image and pasting it on a wall. It?€™s really amazing once you sit back and really think about what Celestia is doing and what it puts your video card through.

Don. Edwards

[selden]

Don,

It'd be interesting to know how many MB one of your 8K and 16K DDS GreenMars textures occupy. The value of 43MB with mipmaps I got from one of your 8K Earth textures.

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Selden,

The new Terraformed Mars texture at 16k weighs in at 85.3MB, the Normalmap at 81.5MB, the 8k Specmap at 42.6MB, and the cloudmap is 42.6MB. Of course simple mathematics tells us that all of these simply can't fit into a 128MB graphics card and they don't of course. Celestia is using system RAM to cache some of this a well. How much and how it?€™s done I don't know. But after shutting down Celestia I have a noticeable lag in system performance for about 20 seconds as the textures are flushed from the system RAM.
I think the graphics card is being used as the main buffer memory for the textures and it is what decides how many and what sizes can and will be used. The rest I believe is being loaded into RAM for fast caching to the VRAM through the AGP bus?€™ side banding feature when needed.

My next move will be to a 256MB video card as soon as I can. The card Frank bought me has served me well but it is starting to show its age. I won't be retiring it, but moving to my media PC. I am hoping to move to a GeForce 6600 series card with 256MB of RAM or possibly the new 7600 series when it is released. I am looking at a system rebuild here very shortly. I am moving to an Athlon 64 system with PCIx graphics. I think that will hold me for a while.

Don. Edwards

[Don. Edwards]

OOPS

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Everyone,

Thought it was time for some updated news on how thins is going. I have tried to do some weather eroding of some of the geologic features on Mars with not to good results. So the idea I had about eroding Olympus Mons, the Tharsis highlands and volcanoes, and the edges of Vallis Marineris are essentially off. The effects basically looked ok, but it made things look to different and actually filled in most of Vallis Marineris almost totally up with sediments. Also the prospect of cutting the 16k texture into little 512x512 tiles, loading them in, eroding them, and then reassembling them is just a daunting task and I am sure I would have given up at about 1/3 through the process anyway.

So I took a different approach, one that I think s probably more accurate in a 100 thousand year span of time anyway. I have decided to cover Olympus Mons and possibly most of the Tharsis Rise under an ice sheet.
In all likelihood this is what would happen anyway. So at this point I have Olympus Mons, now called the Olympus Ice field done and ready to show off. It?€™s not quite complete and I may change it a bit but it is very close to what I have in mind. I plan on giving Tharsis a similar treatment, but it being a larger area is going to take longer to do. So this may be the last update pictures for a week or so. I have also made the initial snow map for the highest points on the surface. It looks ok, but I am not sure I am totally happy with it. So I will let everyone else make the judgment call on it. Also I need to know if everyone thinks the upper topmost part of Olympus Mons should protrude out of the ice sheet. I am leaning on thinking this would be a good idea. I think that even though the atmosphere would quite thick, it would be very dry at the topmost altitudes of Olympus' peak, ergo no ice there. I would probably give the same treatment to the other three Tharsis volcanoes as well, have there calderas just breaking out of the ice.
So now is everyone?€™s chance to get some input into the creation of a texture.

Ok now for the pictures, I hope everyone enjoys these.











Ok that takes care of the updated pictures. 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. The ice sheet is a very white so this is the only thing I can think of at this point.
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. In the forth picture you can just catch a glimpse of the new south polar cap and its small surrounding sea.

Ok that?€™s it for now.

Don. Edwards

[fsgregs]

Good Grief!!!!!

Wow

Eyes bugging OUT

Frank

[Johaen]

Whoa... it's the update that's so important, Don needed to post it twice!

Kidding aside, it does look awsome Don. I absolutely can't wait for the final product.

*drool*

[Don. Edwards]

NO, its just that I must of hit the submit button twice. I took one of them out.

[GlobeMaker]

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