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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."

2 of 69 comments (clear)

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

    It's the Excel 97 easter egg.

  2. 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.