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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Chit Chat _ "Mapping the Surface of a Video Game Moon"

Posted by: jrdahlman May 16 2012, 02:23 AM

While surfing on the net, I found something that something that some of you may get a kick out of. Lots of us have been taking spacecraft data and using it to create a 3D rendering. This person did the same sort of thing... to moon in a video game.

I'd never heard of it, but it's called Kerbal Space Program, which the article describes as "an awesome little space flight simulator set in an alternate reality where everyone is just slightly incompetent." Apparently it's more than just a "game"--more Minecraft than Angry Birds. You have to design & build your own spacecraft to fly to the "Mun" (moon) in the game.

Anyway, the writer explains how he wanted to get topographic data of the Mun (without breaking into the game). He explains about the script for the virtual radar orbiting it that generated a CSV data set. There's a neat color height map that builds with each virtual "orbit", then a rendering of the 3D virtual globe from it.

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/14/mapping-the-surface-of-a-video-game-moon/

(Hackaday.com --a "Hack-A-Day"--is an absolutely nutty site that's wonderful for anybody who likes to build things. Electronic things, physical things, vehicles, 3D printers, the Arduino, science explanations, the whole "maker" crowd.)

Posted by: Astro0 May 17 2012, 12:54 PM

Topic re-opened.

Posted by: djellison May 17 2012, 05:58 PM

I'm utterly addicted to Kerbal. Infact - right now I'm mapping Mun using this very addon. Running at 2x speed in a 4.5 x 45km orbit - I've gone about 31 orbits so far. You can see a few sections where I tried 10x speed, but the spacing became very bad ( call it, errr, low data rate season? )

Once this mapping cycle is finished - about another 15 orbits or so - I'll go to a high orbit, at 10x speed, to have a more scattergun approach and leave that running for a while.

D

Posted by: volcanopele May 17 2012, 08:54 PM

Looks like the assumed tri-axial radii might be a bit off with the c axis greater than what is assumed.

Posted by: Ian R May 17 2012, 11:20 PM

Heh!

Speaking of moons, there's a long-awaited sequel to http://www.texmurphy.com/ in the works, if it can get enough funding . . .

Posted by: JohnVV May 18 2012, 12:42 AM

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