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Mars NASA Space Science

3D Martian Flyover Movies 69

Posted by kdawson from the wheee dept.
Matthew Sparkes writes "NASA has created two virtual flyovers of the Mars rover landing sites using 3D imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (New Scientist story here). The images were made using the most powerful camera ever sent to another planet, MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). The three-dimensional information is obtained by taking pairs of images from slightly different vantage points as the spacecraft orbits the Red Planet."
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3D Martian Flyover Movies More

3D Martian Flyover Movies

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  • I want my tax dollars back... (Score:3, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:09PM (#18337777)
    ...I don't see any Transformers in the movie.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 )
      ...I don't see any Transformers in the movie.

      They're advanced robots, they spotted the flyover cameras and hid in their camouflaged hiding spots when the satellites flew over.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by LotsOfPhil ( 982823 )
      me too:
      $ mplayer 171471main_Victoria480.mov
      ...
      Fourcc: avc1 Codec: 'H.264'
      ...

    • ...I don't see any Transformers in the movie.
      Look closer. There's one in the first video. It's on the left of the POV just before it flies over the rim of the crater. Fortunately, it doesn't react quickly enough to get a shot off.
    • Rock lords man, rock lords.

  • Its a start... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Shadow Wrought ( 586631 ) * <shadow.wroughtNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:10PM (#18337785) Homepage Journal
    At least they are now admitting when their footage is fake.
  • make it impossible to see the red sands of Mars? And what about all the Red Martian Princesses? Unless they smile, we'll be unable to see their auburn tresses, and red-skinned beauty!

    On the plus side, it should make it easier to spot the Green Martians, and hunt them over the Internets using our interstellar tubes.
    • So it wasn't just me that read the Edgar Rice Burroughs series, then?

      And don't forget the green men... Tars Tarkas, etc...

      • So it wasn't just me that read the Edgar Rice Burroughs series, then?

        I've actually got three first edition ERB books on top of one of my bookshelves.
  • The three-dimensional information is obtained by taking pairs of images from slightly different vantage points as the spacecraft orbits the Red Planet.
    What no radar?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Morham ( 751664 )
      Who needs Radar? :) It is kind of cool to see stereo imaging still being used and in far away places. It reminds me of when my dad took me to his work when I was a young teen. He worked for DMAC and took stereo images from Key Hole satellites (KH-11 I think) and using ancient technology hand traced topographical data to be input into the terrain following radar for the F-111 Aardvark bomber. If he didn't use his stereo glasses in conjunction with his little clear ruler device and cartography equipment he c
  • They wont like it, ill bet that much.

  • that's not mars... (Score:4, Funny)

    by notgm ( 1069012 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:16PM (#18337845)
    It's the Excel 97 easter egg.
  • Harry: Hey, Quaid.
    Douglas Quaid: Harry.
    Harry: How was your trip to Mars?
    Douglas Quaid: What trip?
    Harry: You went to Rekall, remember?
    Douglas Quaid: I did?
    Harry: Yeah, you did. I told you not to, but you went anyway.
    Douglas Quaid: What are you, my father?

  • Vista Pro (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Excelcia ( 906188 ) <slashdot@excelcia.ca> on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:20PM (#18337923) Homepage Journal
    I was using Vista Pro over 10 years ago to do flyovers on Mars. I made some great movies flying over and around Olympus Mons. The images that it generated with simple texturing and DEM [wikipedia.org] formatted landscape data was almost as good (considering resolution differences) as what I see there. I am singularly unimpressed with what they have now. Better yet, with a few changes in rendering rules, I could "terraform" Mars and see what Olympus Mons would look like with water and a treeline. I may see if I can dig out my old DOS copy of Vista Pro and play with it again.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by bubbl07 ( 777082 )
      You were using Vista 10 years ago? It's buggy and unstable now, I can't imagine the state it was in 10 years ago, let alone for something as intensive as Mars flyovers. You'd better cross your fingers that you don't get a BSOD...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by PitaBred ( 632671 )
      There's lots of other neat software out there (see the sig)

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by the_wishbone ( 1018542 )
      You're about to do a flyover on Mars.

      (C)ancel or (A)llow?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If that's your thing, you should check out Terragen [planetside.co.uk], which is free for personal use. There are even people who have already imported the geological data for Mars [space4case.com], for National Geographic no less. It's pretty-pretty.
    • Sometimes more impressive = more fake. Also, these features are cool, but they're not Olympus Mons. So, I'm not sure the comparisons are valid, and I tend to think the illusion of reality that NASA aims for when making these is potentially more boring, but more accurate than some commercially available interpolators.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )
      And these days Microsoft will try and sell it to you as a new thing.

      </obviousjoke>

    • Re:Vista Pro (Score:4, Insightful)

      by phlosoft ( 646130 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @05:07PM (#18339477) Homepage

      The images that it generated with simple texturing and DEM formatted landscape data was almost as good (considering resolution differences) as what I see there. I am singularly unimpressed with what they have now.
      And where do you think that digital elevation model came from? The news here isn't the 3D rendering engine, it is the acquisition of the 3D data + textures in the first place -- it is that they are automatically building the highest resolution DEM of Mars ever acquired using high resolution stereo imagery. But you're right, now that they've done the easy, unimpressive part, I'm sure we'd all love to see what amazing things you can do with their model in Vista Pro.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by samwichse ( 1056268 )
      You can download Vista Pro 3 here: http://fraktali.849pm.com/programs/dem.html [849pm.com]

  • I hope martians are 3D (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:25PM (#18337981) Homepage Journal
    I think it would be disappointing if Martians were only 2D, and scary if they were 4D.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by 26199 ( 577806 ) *

      Oh, I don't know. Having a 2D martian as a pet would be quite cool.

      Cheap to feed :)

      4D would also be neat. Handy for getting in and out of locked rooms.

  • Nice fly over, with nice clouds! I was unaware that they have clouds on Mars.

  • 3D Martian Flyover Movies! (Score:3, Funny)

    by BubbaFett ( 47115 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @03:30PM (#18338025)
    So, not only is there intelligent life on Mars, we've got 3D footage of them flying over us? Do they appear threatening? Any evidence of abduction?
  • So in the same day we have a High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment used by NASA to power an extraterrestrial vehicle yet no time for "science projects" [slashdot.org] in the government.

    But I guess since the HiRISE isn't being used on Earth that their may not necessarily be a disparity here after all. Either that or there's an ostensible difference between "project" and "experiment" that I'm missing.

    My head hurts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Buran ( 150348 )
      Uh, I guarantee you that the spacecraft is solar-powered. The experiments consume power.
    • Did you actually read the summary you linked to? Because I've never seen any indication that NASA was a branch of the Illinios state government...
  • MarsQuest [marsquestonline.org] has had some mars flyover demos for a while. These are controllable though. You can pilot them around. (warning, Flash Player ahead)
  • What height exaggeration were the flyovers done with? NASA has a long history of doing planetary animations that make things look way taller than they actually are, apparently in an attempt to make the animations appeal more to the public. Are these flyovers similarly exaggerated? If so, I'm not interested.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wes33 ( 698200 )
      The interior of the crater on the Opportunity flyby (which is Endurance crater iirc) is obviously suffering from rather server height exag... er, enhancement. Looks the same of the columbia hills in the spirit flyby. Sad really (and no mention of it on the website that I can see).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by JetJaguar ( 1539 )
      I think the one of Victoria Crater is probably about right. The stereo anaglyphs that were made are exagerated because the convergence angles were larger than the angles for human eyes. This fly over using the DEM looks about right though. I'm less certain about the Columbia Hills flyover, it looks a little exagerated to me, but I saw a presentation of Randy Kirk's a couple of weeks ago, and I got the impression that the height field has not been expanded in any of the movies that he has done, they are a

    • Re:What is the height exaggeration? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @11:54PM (#18343545) Homepage
      What height exaggeration were the flyovers done with? NASA has a long history of doing planetary animations that make things look way taller than they actually are, apparently in an attempt to make the animations appeal more to the public. Are these flyovers similarly exaggerated? If so, I'm not interested.

      You see the same thing with stereoscopic aerial photographs of earth. I believe that around here (Nova Scotia), when you view the Department of Natural Resources photos in stereo, you get something like a 10-to-1 exaggeration of height. It's not a marketing thing to "appeal more to the public", but allows one to actually notice height differences. If it weren't for the exaggeration, we wouldn't be able to perceive any height differences. The world really is amazingly flat (consider the view from space, it looks like a perfect sphere). Without some exaggeration, perhaps NASA videos wouldn't be "less marketable", but just completely unremarkable (who wants to look at nothing but seemingly flat surfaces).

      (In the case of aerial photographs, the exaggeration is simply an artifact of the spacing of the photos and the spacing of the human eyes; it's not some major plot to deceive. But the exaggeration is actually useful for people doing work in the field.)
  • Links to movies posted on slashdot !

    they're gonna LOVE us :D

    (I hope it's not running on some personnal equipment, or somethin...)
    • Interesting....now let's see how long it takes for somebody to copy this, add fancy colours and loop it into a video on youtube, accompanied by a Nickelback song.

  • Plug for Mars MOLA Viewer here (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mmacdona86 ( 524915 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2007 @04:22PM (#18338793)
    You can fly over all of Mars in realtime 3D/OpenGL with data from the Mars Orbiter MOLA experiment. These flyovers have much nicer hi-res textures, though.
    http://www.antlersoft.com/demo3d/mars/index.html/ [antlersoft.com]
    Runs in Linux and MS-Windows and it's open-source, as well.
  • In the real movie they flew into the trench instead of over it. No way to hit the exhaust port from the angle they show here.

  • ...Google Mars?


    ...or Google Moon for that matter?

  • What about some 'proper' 3D animations that can be viewed with 3D LCD glasses? I'd love to see some 3D Mars flyovers with my 3D capable LCD glasses.
  • Who read that "3D Martian Flowers Movies, too?

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