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3D Martian Flyover Movies

Posted by kdawson on 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."

69 comments

  1. I want my tax dollars back... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...I don't see any Transformers in the movie.

    1. Re:I want my tax dollars back... by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...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.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    2. Re:I want my tax dollars back... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course not. After years of neglect, they all rusted.

    3. Re:I want my tax dollars back... by LotsOfPhil · · Score: 2, Funny

      me too:
      $ mplayer 171471main_Victoria480.mov
      ...
      Fourcc: avc1 Codec: 'H.264'
      ...

      --
      This post climbed Mt. Washington.
    4. Re:I want my tax dollars back... by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...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.
      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
    5. Re:I want my tax dollars back... by RockModeNick · · Score: 1

      Rock lords man, rock lords.

  2. Its a start... by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 2, Funny

    At least they are now admitting when their footage is fake.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
    1. Re:Its a start... by MattSparkes · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I have a friend who completely believes the moon landings were faked. It's frustrating, to say the least.

      --
      Matthew Sparkes
    2. Re:Its a start... by DigitumDei · · Score: 1

      Or he just completely enjoys watching you get frustrated. ;)

      --
      East Coast Brewers
    3. Re:Its a start... by MattSparkes · · Score: 1

      Now that is a distinct possibility...

      --
      Matthew Sparkes
    4. Re:Its a start... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I have a friend who completely believes the moon landings were faked." Your friend is a very intelligent person. You should ask him about other current events.

    5. Re:Its a start... by cheater512 · · Score: 1

      I have one too. He goes quiet whenever I prove him wrong as he tries to find some more 'conclusive evidence' that it was faked.

    6. Re:Its a start... by MattSparkes · · Score: 1

      My friend is very intelligent, but she is very misguided about this particular subject.

      --
      Matthew Sparkes
  3. But won't wearing red lenses ... by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:But won't wearing red lenses ... by Kittenman · · Score: 1
      So it wasn't just me that read the Edgar Rice Burroughs series, then?

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

      --
      "The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:But won't wearing red lenses ... by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      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.

      --
      -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  4. what by mastershake_phd · · Score: 1

    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?

    --
    Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
    1. Re:what by Morham · · Score: 1

      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 could miscalculate the height of a mountain and cause a bomber to by the farm. Talk about a pucker factor! You wouldn't believe the size of the photo enlargers for the stock KH film. They could take that stock (50mm I think) film and blow it up to the size of a wall! I will never forget those trips to his office!

  5. At First.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought someone posted a blog about thier favorite all time Martian movies

    I guess not

  6. But what will the mysterons make of this? by ijakings · · Score: 2, Funny

    They wont like it, ill bet that much.

  7. that's not mars... by notgm · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's the Excel 97 easter egg.

    1. Re:that's not mars... by neongrau · · Score: 1

      you're right! it's just the new DirectX 10 that makes it look way better these days ;)

  8. They're even better ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 0

    ... when you watch them while listening to Jan Hammer's "Miami Vice Theme".

  9. FREAKIN' AWESOME by dotmax · · Score: 0

    This is the Coolest Thing Ever So Far This Century.

  10. Oops.. by emAugust · · Score: 1

    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?

  11. Vista Pro by Excelcia · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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 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.

    1. Re:Vista Pro by bubbl07 · · Score: 2, Funny

      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...

    2. Re:Vista Pro by Penguinshit · · Score: 1

      on Mars you get RSODs...

      --

      I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...

    3. Re:Vista Pro by PitaBred · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
    4. Re:Vista Pro by the_wishbone · · Score: 2, Funny

      You're about to do a flyover on Mars.

      (C)ancel or (A)llow?

    5. Re:Vista Pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If that's your thing, you should check out Terragen, which is free for personal use. There are even people who have already imported the geological data for Mars, for National Geographic no less. It's pretty-pretty.

    6. Re:Vista Pro by posterlogo · · Score: 1

      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.

    7. Re:Vista Pro by Trogre · · Score: 1

      And these days Microsoft will try and sell it to you as a new thing.

      </obviousjoke>

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    8. Re:Vista Pro by phlosoft · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    9. Re:Vista Pro by samwichse · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can download Vista Pro 3 here: http://fraktali.849pm.com/programs/dem.html

  12. I hope martians are 3D by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think it would be disappointing if Martians were only 2D, and scary if they were 4D.

    1. Re:I hope martians are 3D by 26199 · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

  13. Nice by Anon-Admin · · Score: 1

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

    1. Re:Nice by Karthikkito · · Score: 2, Informative

      Quite a few clouds, in fact! http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/08.11.04.oppo rtunity.jpg

  14. 3D Martian Flyover Movies! by BubbaFett · · Score: 2, Funny

    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?

    1. Re:3D Martian Flyover Movies! by rrohbeck · · Score: 1

      Yeah. I always knew we would capture them on film one day.

      --
      thegodmovie.com - watch it
    2. Re:3D Martian Flyover Movies! by laejoh · · Score: 0

      Any evidence of abduction?

      You're asking for a goatse pic?

  15. HiRISE? by bubbl07 · · Score: 1

    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" 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.

    1. Re:HiRISE? by Buran · · Score: 1

      Uh, I guarantee you that the spacecraft is solar-powered. The experiments consume power.

      --
      i am a soviet space shuttle
    2. Re:HiRISE? by mshannon78660 · · Score: 1

      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...

  16. MarsQuest by IPFreely · · Score: 1

    MarsQuest has had some mars flyover demos for a while. These are controllable though. You can pilot them around. (warning, Flash Player ahead)

    --
    There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
  17. Quicktime? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why can't they use open formats? Apple has too much DRM and spyware baggage.

    1. Re:Quicktime? by j1m+5n0w · · Score: 1

      Much to my surprise, I was actually able to watch this movie from within firefox in Ubuntu for x86-64. I think I have some sort of gstreamer and/or mplayer plugin installed. Not that I'm claiming that quicktime is an open format, but at least it is possible to watch this with non-Apple software. Personally, I think it's a shame firefox doesn't support at least some sort of video format natively (even one that few people use would be better than nothing).

  18. There is no such thing. by pavon · · Score: 1

    H.264 is the closest thing you are going to get to an open codec (apart from Theora which is very sub par). If you don't like the Quicktime software download VideoLAN.

  19. What is the height exaggeration? by jiawen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What is the height exaggeration? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A frend of mine attended a lecture by Edward Tufte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte and in the lecture he used the vertical exaggeration of the Venus fly over animations as an example of bad data representation. He pointed out that some of these images were in science textbooks without any indication that the heights were not realistic, so students were being misled.

    2. Re:What is the height exaggeration? by wes33 · · Score: 1

      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).

    3. Re:What is the height exaggeration? by JetJaguar · · Score: 2, Informative

      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 all straight from the DEM.

      --

      Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!

    4. Re:What is the height exaggeration? by PhotoGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.)

      --
      Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
  20. movies ? by Spaham · · Score: 1

    Links to movies posted on slashdot !

    they're gonna LOVE us :D

    (I hope it's not running on some personnal equipment, or somethin...)

    1. Re:movies ? by sanso999 · · Score: 1

      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.

  21. Plug for Mars MOLA Viewer here by mmacdona86 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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/
    Runs in Linux and MS-Windows and it's open-source, as well.

  22. The second movie was a fake by kalaf · · Score: 1

    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.

  23. so when can we expect... by Cycon · · Score: 1


    ...Google Mars?


    ...or Google Moon for that matter?

    --
    Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
    1. Re:so when can we expect... by sxtxixtxcxh · · Score: 0

      did you try: http://moon.google.com/

      --
      for a minute there, i lost myself...
    2. Re:so when can we expect... by slinted · · Score: 1

      www.google.com/mars/ has been active for almost exactly a year now.

    3. Re:so when can we expect... by emurphy42 · · Score: 1

      That's not what the GP was looking for.

      moon.google.com : maps.google.com :: Google Moon : Google Earch

      Does this clear things up?

    4. Re:so when can we expect... by bmalia · · Score: 1

      I love the detail when you zoom in all the way on the moon

      --
      There's no place like ~/
  24. Still 2D by hack++slash · · Score: 1

    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.

    --
    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
  25. did u see that!! by drewsup · · Score: 0

    I'm not sure, but if you look closely at the crater rim you can see a freakin' face carved in there!!!!!

  26. Lens flare by lindseyp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And what's with the fucking lens flare? Isn't this supposed to be a demonstration of scientific interest? not Toy Story 3.

    I mean, if they wanted 'realism' they could have given the thing more motion blur, maybe had a few flecks of dust hit the camera and given it more wind shake.

    --
    j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
  27. Flowers? by tenco · · Score: 1

    Who read that "3D Martian Flowers Movies, too?