Planetary Exporation Program

3D Menu

PEP starts out with a 2D map view. If you'd like to fly around Mars click on the Create option. PEP will take around a dozen seconds to create a virtual Mars.

Automatically Load Global Data

By default, the 3D view tries to give you a very good view of Mars. Whenever you fly low enough and stop, PEP tiles the scene with global Viking imagery and a higher resolution version of the surface topology. Also, when global data is loaded into the map view it is also automatically loaded into the 3D view. If you don't want this to happen, perhaps because it slows down you computer too much, use this option to turn it off.

Pan Map To 3D View and Teleport 3D to Map View

The 2D map view and the 3D virtual spaceship view are independent. You can pan the map in one direction while you fly the opposite way. However, there might be times when you want to the two views to be synchronized. These two menu options make it easy to synchronize one view to the other.

3D View

When the 3D view is created two windows appear. The above window shows the view out the front of the spaceship. You're free to fly this view anywhere around Mars. There are two ways to control this view: a joystick and the window below.

Using the six buttons at the top you of the Flight Controls window you can fly a virtual around the planet. Each of these buttons behave differently if they are pressed while holding down the shift key. With the shift key down the Forward, Backward, Higher and Lower buttons all move the virtual spaceship faster. With the shift key down, the Left and Right buttons slide the spaceship left and right rather than turning left and right.

The Flight Controls panel also display your virtual spaceships current latitude, longitude and altitude and compass heading. (The compass heading is particularly virtual since Mars doesn't have a magnetic field any more.)

By default, the 3D view displays the global Viking imagery and the background elevation data as gray images. You can color these images based on one of several sensors. The above 3D screenshot has colored the globe based on elevation values. You could similarly color the globe based on thermal inertia, albedo, gravity variation, pyroxene or false color to make the image more realistic.

By default, the topography is exaggerated by a factor of five. This means the mountains appear 5 times higher then they actually are and valleys 5 times deeper. This is done so changes in altitude are easier to see. If you'd like to see a more realistic scene you can reduce the factor of elevation exaggeration. If you're exploring a particularly flat area you might want to increase the exaggeration factor so the small amount of relief is easier to see.

As you're exploring you may want to pitch the view up or down to change the region you're viewing. Simply move the Pitch Modifier slider to look lower or higher.

After you create the 3D window some indicators are drawn on the map. These indicators show both where your virtual spaceship is and where the location of the center of your field of view.

In the above image the virtual spaceship is at the triangle facing north. The center of the view in the 3D region is roughly at the cross hairs. These icons are particularly useful when trying to correlate something you see in the 3D view with the features on the map. Remember that the map view always has north at the top while on the 3D view any direction can be at the top of the window.