Nice work, algorimancer. This route map is quite familiar and strongly recall also "official" JPL maps...
Anyway, in order to have a better surface visibility in each vertical projection, I suggest you to "equalize" illumination in the various directions. Moreover, Sol914 projection show the horizon and probably needs a tilt correction (this is partiall true also for Sol916).

Thank you. Equaling illumination is a good idea, I suppose I was being lazy. The problem with the horizon on Sol's 914 and 916 is apparently related to the reset that occured around that time, throwing-off the rover's orientation quaternion. I'm not sure that there's anything I can do about that, as my technique is entirely dependent upon that information (I have no means of adjusting per the horizon, I'm completely dependent upon the camera pointing information and rover orientation quaterion, unlike your POV-Ray approach). It appears to only affect the images from the northeast quadrant, which I don't understand. Anyway, I would be inclined to trust Phil Stooke's and Tesheiner's pre-Sol 917 positions more than my own. You might try a planar projection using POV-Ray for the Sol 919 position, and see whether you come up with an equivalent position.

[edit]Upon further investigation I'm beginning to suspect that the projection went awry on (at least) the Sol 914 and 916 sites, perhaps the others as well. Looks like it picked-up some tilt from somewhere (in my code I think). Doesn't seem to invalidate the Sol 917+ positions, but the projections are definitely problematic.

[edit again]Nope, my code seems fine. Looks like the problem is either that the rover is sitting on a 1 1/2 degree slope on those two occasions, or the rover orientation quaternion is off by that much on those occasions. Conceivably I could add a correction based on measured horizon elevations at particular azimuths.

An updated route map for sol 929.



Note that I corrected the route path since (and including) sol 914 drive. Those points were all strictly based on the own rover's movement data and were day by day drifting from what we could calculate by triangulation.
Now that Oppy is right beside Epsilon Emma Dean, it was quite easy to "stretch" the route to fit with the real position as of sol 929. I double-checked the "new" positions for those earlier driving days with the polar projections for the respective sols and they match quite well.

Now I think it's time to shift the map.

This post has been edited by Tesheiner: Sep 5 2006, 08:42 AM

guess there's a little typo on your map: "920" should be "930".

Oooops, thanks for the info general.
I've just updated my previous post with the corrected driving sol, which btw was 929 and neither 920 or 930.

Hey Tesheiner - I've just realised that when you shift the map we won't need your blue line any more!

How long have we been following your blue line!

Thanks for your work (and others) keeping us up-to-date with the route.

Castor

Here is a preview at half-size. I would like to use as background a non-annotated version of that nice hi-res image (S11-00471) used by Tim Parker but afaik it won't be released until October.



And about the path in cyan, of course it doesn't make sense to be kept after reaching the rim.

BTW, why don't you also correct the Beacon position on the F.. R.. ?

Can you update the right part before shifting the map?

I usually update the right part only when shifting the left one because it takes me a lot of time.
The reason is that the picture and the whole route you see on the right is a 1/4-size snapshot of the complete route map I have on a separate and *huge* Photoshop (like) file which my computer can barely handle, so I don't change it so often.

What I can do is to keep posting the "pre-shift" version until reaching the rim but with the right image updated exactly as you can see on the "post-shift" version.

Tesheiner,

It's a pity that the join between the two MOC images is very close to the crater rim that the rover will reach soon. I can see you've tried to stitch the images along a line near the crater edge. Perhaps it would be better to use one image alone rather than stitch two together for this next section, although I'm sure you know better than I do about what is most suitable.

Maybe even that labelled, but higher res, image that JPL have released would be more useful for now until we can get a clean copy in a month or two.

Castor

Just for a bit of fun, an aerial view of the travel of Oppy on sol 928. You can see the tracks and the rover near Epsilon Crater . And the vertical projection by Indian3000.

Woah!

That's really great! We're so close!

I love it.. nice work guys!

Nico

Yes, that would be great.

See, with your current method when you have a lot of info on the left, there is not enough on the right.
But when there is a lot info on the right, finally, you shift the map, and we get very little on the left.

It would be great if you'd update the right side just before shifting the map. That way we'd get at least one picture with lots of info on both sides.