OHM Uranian Moons for Orbiter 2016 1

[Mr Martian]

Mr Martian submitted a new addon:

Uranian Moons for Orbiter 2016 - Semifictional Uranus moons with topography, spaceports, MFD maps, and surface markers

View attachment 38449

This addon includes semifictional surface textures (up to level 8) with elevation (up to level 5), surface bases, surface feature markers, and MFD maps for the five main Uranian moons. The beuatiful surface and elevation maps were created by Astra, and the original files can be downloaded from their deviantart page...

Read more about this addon...

 

[Buck Rogers]

Very nice!
"My people need a place to go!"
Finally more alien soil to leave footprints in, all bases, maps working and looking good, yes please more!

 

[Boxx]

Hi, can you elaborate on the "fictional" parts? i.e. how You or Astra extrapolated colors and non-imaged parts...

In anyway, I think it's a good idea to get inspired by Celestia addon developers.

 

[Mr Martian]

Hi, can you elaborate on the "fictional" parts? i.e. how You or Astra extrapolated colors and non-imaged parts…

Hi Boxx, Unfortunately I can't really elaborate much. I know that Astra hand-painted the images in blender and edited in Gimp. I assume they just painted any features that aren't know based on how the rest of the moons' topography appears. I have reached out to them on the forum but have yet to recieve a response. Trying on Deviantart now. This is Astra's original post, and that's about all the information they give. I can only presume the "fictional" parts are entirely the product of Astra's imagination, as those areas have not been imaged in any capacity at all. The real areas also appear to be hand-painted, but the topography remains accurate, and the labelled features all line up (more or less). I did spend extensive time in Orbiter setting the date and time to Voyager's photography dates and comparing the images, and they do line up nicely. Side note: these texture maps also appear to be those used by Space Engine.

 

[Boxx]

Nice to know, thank you! I was hoping that some I.A.-engine could have filled the gaps, based on the known parts and extrapolating somehow... but no, still a thorough manual editing, though. Impressive, then.

 

[francisdrake]

Thanks a lot!
I always wanted to explore the ice giants and their moons.
Now we have credible - if fictional - moon surfaces and bases to explore!
_____

Just two small comments:
- Can you provide some scenarios, to start the exploration?
As an example, below is a simple scenario with a ShuttlePB landed on Oberon.

- As in Buck Rogers screenshot above, the base building are flat white, missing textures.
The texture paths point to a "basetex" folder, which is not included in the download.

 

[Mr Martian]

Just two small comments:
- Can you provide some scenarios, to start the exploration?
As an example, below is a simple scenario with a ShuttlePB landed on Oberon.

- As in Buck Rogers screenshot above, the base building are flat white, missing textures.
The texture paths point to a "basetex" folder, which is not included in the download.

Thanks for the feedback @francisdrake , I did mention in the orginal readme that the textures used will likely be released as part of a base texture expansion pack I'm slowly developing. That being said, excellent point about scenarios, I did not think of that! I have attached here an expansion pack which includes scenarios and the base textures. Let me know what you think, if this is what you had in mind, I will go ahead and release it properly. Enjoy!

 

[francisdrake]

Great! Everything works!
The scenarios are fine, the base textures also work, when modifiying the base.cfg as described.
The surface artwork by Astra is amazing!

I learned two things when flying the scenarios:

- The moons are small and a brisk takeoff can easily exceed escape velocity.

- The sun is only a large star far out.
_____

Just a question on the brightness (or dimness) of the moons' surfaces:
Titanias surface is fairly bright, the surface features are good visible.
The other moons appear much darker.

Are they really darker? (I have no idea on the albedo of Uranus moons.)
I just thought after putting so much work into these surface, they would deserve to be a bit brighter,
so their features are good visible from orbit.

 

[Mr Martian]

Great! Everything works!
The scenarios are fine, the base textures also work, when modifiying the base.cfg as described.
The surface artwork by Astra is amazing!

I learned two things when flying the scenarios:

- The moons are small and a brisk takeoff can easily exceed escape velocity.

- The sun is only a large star far out.
_____

Just a question on the brightness (or dimness) of the moons' surfaces:
Titanias surface is fairly bright, the surface features are good visible.
The other moons appear much darker.

Are they really darker? (I have no idea on the albedo of Uranus moons.)
I just thought after putting so much work into these surface, they would deserve to be a bit brighter,
so their features are good visible from orbit.

Good to hear! Astra really did an amazing job. I learned exactly the same regarding their mass, you really only need a small boost to get off the surface. Regarding the darkness, my understanding is all of Uranus's moons are quite dark. In fact I think the composition of the entire system is pretty dark, much like Uranus's rings. This article cites Umbriel as being the darkest, which is clearly reflected in Astra's maps, but also mentions Ariel is the brightest, whereas in Astra's maps Ariel seems pretty dark, I'd say Titania appears the brightest.

Astra's original file download is here, if you want to play around with the brightness. It's relatively easy to convert the images to surface tree files with plsplit64 and texpack (replacing Surf.tree will not mess up the elevation maps).

 

[francisdrake]

Just a question on Uranus in the background: Do you use any planetary texture for it?
In my default Orbiter installation it looks like pale green ball, with no weather features.

 

[francisdrake]

A map of the Uranus moon system, for those who are not so familiar with their sequence (like me) and would like to fly the Grand Tour:


The illustration is taken from:
The Science Case for Spacecraft Exploration of the Uranian Satellites: Candidate Ocean Worlds in an Ice Giant System
This documents is informative, and points to possible cryovolcanic and tectonic features.

 

[Buck Rogers]

As francisdrake asked, what textures are you using for Uranus (screenshots look nice)?

Most confusing was the rel. Inclination (Uranus on it's side), on a moon the map says I'm at the equator but looks like I'm at the pole?

May I suggest you include the alternative mars base.cfg as an extra file in the download.

 

[Mr Martian]

As @francisdrake asked, what textures are you using for Uranus (screenshots look nice)?

Hi @Buck Rogers , the Uranus textures are I have are Christiano Corti's Level 8 Uranus addon. He also made Neptune textures too (here), but I think the new consensus is that Neptune is actually colored more similarly to Uranus (see here).

And yes navigating the Uranian system takes a minute to get used to!

And for the Olympus base file, I did consider that, but I wanted to keep the expansion pack file solely for the Uranian system addon. At a later stage I will likely release more base textures as part of a package, and might include a series of modified bases with that.

 

[Buck Rogers]

Uranus textures are I have are Christiano Corti's Level 8 Uranus addon

Thank you, much better!

Uranus from Miranda with the new terrain (Cressida and rings just visible)

Neptune is actually colored more similarly to Uranus

I downloaded Tuneyourplanet to take a look but I couldn't get it to run

Looking forward to new destinations

 

[Buck Rogers]

The base tex are great!

and the terrain (Miranda) from space too!

 

[Mr Martian]

The base tex are great!

and the terrain (Miranda) from space too!

Thank you @Buck Rogers I'm glad you like the textures! your screenshots look great!

 

[misha.physics]

Hi @Mr Martian,
I've just tried this addon with OpenOrbiter and it seems to work good (and D3D9 micro-textures too). I looked at Miranda.

Have you tried to use the D3D9 micro-textures with Earth? I've tried, but I haven't noticed any effect. I understand that craters aren't very good for the Earth surface, but it would be interesting to see what it might look like.

Your addon uses the Elev.tree file. Are you using some tool for converting an elevation data for a planetary body to the *.tree format?