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Mars terrain imported from google earth?

R

Rcnesneg

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162
Is it possible to import mars terrain from google earth into FSX somehow? I cant get google sketchup to read a .kmz file from it, it says import failed. The add location only works on earth... Any advice here?
 
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Is mars really that scary?:confused: If it helps, i have a 3d model i can test with, but all i have now is that converted to a very large scenery object that is hardened, but it has problems with the hardens being slightly off in altitude.
 
It may help to explain what exactly you want to achieve.

The FSX terrain engine has modelled the Earth, but AFAIK has no capacity to add other planets as terrain. Any imagery / Mesh etc therefore will not be able to be resampled as terrain.

If you are wanting to Add the Mars planet, it would have to be added as an object, and there I suspect the probems only get worse.

I do not know of any way to add an object that is not positioned relative to Earth WGS84 co-ordinates. If Mars were in Geostationary orbit around the Earth then this might be ok, but it isn't ...

Having solved that one (!), I don't think the AMSL variable will accept variables of the order of 100 million km (and altering by the minute)


If you are wanting to add Mars to FSX, I'm afraid I have to ask "Why?"

There are lots of good and satisfying scenery areas that could be added to (albeit a somewhat terrestial) flight simulator, so that people can fly their planes to them.

Perhaps FSX is the wrong platform for such a venture?
 
I would like to take a part of martian terrain and place it in FSX as a fictional testing ground for NASA. I have orbiter, and it just isn't the same.
 
No ... still don't follow.

You can't resize the Earth, change its gravity, or alter its atmosphere.

You can lay "martian" imagery (and mesh for that matter) in a section of ground in the FSX Earth model, but you will need to fictionalise co-ordinates etc for it. Is that what you want to do?

The thing you keep coming up against is that FSX only models the Earth and the things on it. (Even the moon is not modelled in 3D or any aspect other than an almanac)

Reductively, it comes down to this:
If you wish to create something on the Earth (fictional or real, using whatever source you like) you can do it. If, however, it is on another planet / celestial body, then you're out of luck.
 
why you don't try with places like the Grand Canyon (there is a freeware scenery 500 Mb), like Nasa do in the real world.or my neighbourhood, that is Mars too.
 
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Hi guys,

actually, this would make for an interesting project. In fact, the entire Moon has been modeled for FS9/FSX in very neat detail: http://www.terrabuilder.com/FlashWeb2/index.html and http://secure.simmarket.com/terrabuilder-moon.phtml

There are at least three different terrain models available for Mars though only low-res versions cover the entire planet; see http://ode.rsl.wustl.edu/mars/ or http://webgis.wr.usgs.gov/pigwad/down/mars_dl.htm . The most spectacular data are the 1-m resolution HiRISE terrain models even if they only cover relatively small areas: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/dtm/

Obviously, one would need to have some GIS tool to georeference and scale the files (e.g., the HiRISE .IMG files load straight into Global Mapper) and then also either find corresponding orthoimagery to overlay onto the terrain data or create custom landclass textures - with little green autogen people ;-) - to approximate the hues and patterns of the dusty red surface.

As for a direct import from GE of imagery or elevation into FSX I'd say no but the above resources and a bit of knowledge of the FSX terrain SDK and GIS tools shouldn't make Martian landscapes too difficult to create for FSX.

Cheers, Holger
 
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Interesting indeed, but with Terrabuilder I guess the terrain data are pure speculation, are not based in real data, maybe ?, anyway I was not aware of all this.
 
What i want to do is create a small square area IE: 5 miles by 5 miles, that imitates a bit of martian terrain, somewhere on earth.
 
That is "relatively" easy, although the mesh won't match (unless you have accompanying mesh).

Work out the resolution of your imagery for x and y dimensions, to construct your xdim and ydim values for resample.exe

Pick a place for the top corner of your imagery (ulx and uly values)

Compile.

If you don't have the original pixel dimensions, you may just have to guess.
 
ulX and ulY? uh... I think I'm jumping into something I've never worked with before... I have applied photoreal imagery before, i can probably handle applying a martian texture, but its the terrain heights i want - IE: craters where craters appear, etc
 
Unless you are making them by hand, you need elevation data (ie Mesh)

Not sure if this data is available.

the xdim ydim ulxmap ulymap are things specified in the inf file, which is parsed to resample.exe

These are explained in the FSX SDK documents
 
Jumping on this thread rather late, but I just noticed it... I'm the author of TerraBuilder:Moon. What Rcnesneg is asking for is easily accomplished. I wanted to do another take on TBM by converting (terraforming) Earth into Mars. Using simConnect, I already developed a DLL module that, if an object is defined as "spacecraft", turns off the FSX flight model, and asserts it's own, Newtonian model. Basically, I created a space simulator... I already have stuff in the orbit (it's pretty neat :) )

The major obstacle to even starting to attempt this is the physical size of Mars (let alone Moon), which should be quite smaller than Earth. So, even before I start to consider undertaking this, I was wondering:

Is it possible to "shrink" Earth by completely redefining its global terrain mesh file, using (for starters) flat data set (making a perfectly smooth ball) and giving it some kind of a huge "Bias" or "BaseValue" parameters (say, -40000 meters)? In theory, this should create a globally-sunken mesh, effectively shriking the FS globe. Any takers? :confused:

Misho
 
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Also came across this thread a bit late.

I think it's even easier to handle this: Just use the earth as it is and rescale your aircraft/orbiter to a scale that fits the earth if it was the size of Mars. So your aircraft and everything is some 50% or so bigger (don't have the numbers at the moment), which would also change the physics. If I'm not mistaken that would mean that drag+gravity effects are less imminent than with earth scale.
Might be worth a try.
 
Horst18519 said:
Also came across this thread a bit late.

I think it's even easier to handle this: Just use the earth as it is and rescale your aircraft/orbiter to a scale that fits the earth if it was the size of Mars. So your aircraft and everything is some 50% or so bigger (don't have the numbers at the moment), which would also change the physics. If I'm not mistaken that would mean that drag+gravity effects are less imminent than with earth scale.
Might be worth a try.
Click to expand...

Ugh. I was thinking about that as well but that may throw a lot of things off, as in, viewing distances, speed readouts, etc. Worth a try as a last resort, IF the mesh trick doesn't work.
 
Nothing in FSX is absolute. You would have to program gauges for your orbiter anyway, so you can program you to give "Mars" readouts, not "Earth" readouts.

And the viewing distance (spot view) is automatically adjusted by FSX depending on the aircraft size.
 
Hi Misho.

I think you'd need to delete all the FSX mesh, and start over with all heights relative to earth's mean sea level as an constant offset. I would guess all elevations would be negative. There would be a limit to the mesh's minimum at -32000 meters relative to earth's MSL.

dem4km.bgl would need to be replaced, and all the mesh files in the individual default scenery folders.

All vehicle or aircraft gauges would need to reflect the elevation constant offset as well.

I think it could be do-able.

Dick
 
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