Maybe they figure if Spirit is not going anywhere for
awhile, it might as well be parked at an interesting spot.

Maybe it would be good to give different overlapping route-segments and sol-numbers differrent colors in sequence.. oldest blue, green yellow, red as youngest, maybe more intermediate colors.

This map is turning into a spaghetti trace!

I agree that it is becoming a 'cluster'; however, different colors won't help at all. What we need is something that may not be practical or at least expected--we need overlays that can be removed. It doesn't matter what color the route is; the lines and numbers obscure the terrain. It is difficult to follow where the MER team's interests are on the map. If less stuff was on the map, then objects of interest might be easier to see or at least imagine. It would also help to be able to add parts of the route as needed. That's why I suggest some sort of overlay system. However, that won't be easy to do well. And I would not ask anybody to do it just for my convenience.

I agree that colors won't help much; the clutter would still be there.
And about the overlays, the map in it's original format (PhotoShop-like) has a good number of layers. The problem is that those files are *big* (latest map is 4MB) and I want to keep the attachments here on this thread below my self-imposed limit of 512kB.

For the time being I will keep it as it is. My hope was (and still is) that Spirit would leave this area and move on to new places.


Like my prediction for sol 1521: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=92053

Colours, layers etc etc - it's all still rammed into a 25cm/pixel image. We need soething better. I think what we need is a map of Silica Valley based on Vert-Proj Navcam imagery

http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mer2-...avcam/site0125/

It's not great - they ran through there fairly fast on the way to Tyrone/LRH - but I think it might help improve things a little. I've done a very very quick, bad, dirty stitch of all the VP's I can find in that run through - and reprojected to 5cm/pixel ( i.e. HiRISE of 25cm @ 500% - VP's of 1cm at 20% )

There are four places where I think something like this is worth trying. Eagle Crater, Endurance Crater ( SW quadrant of ) at MP, and for Spirit, the Larrys Lookout-Methuselah area, and Silica Valley to LRH.

10cm/pix.

It's actually a 5x zoom compared with my previous version of route map (using a MOC image). When I did that change I thought it would be more then enough, but...

This could work better with terrain meshes, textures, then re-rendered from above...but that's a LOT of work

Doug

As far as the map getting more and more cluttered and not being able to see the terrain underneath, here's my suggestion. Find an older version of Tesheiner's map in this thread, say from a hundred or more sols ago. Open both the old and new maps. Then just flip from one to the other. The maps have covered the exact same area for a long time, so this is just like having an overlay or layer of rover tracks that you can toggle on and off.

I think the current "fading old tracks" system is probably about the best we can do given Spirit's current predicament mired in Silica valley. (I know, lot's of science here!)

I think a zoomed-in area will do together with maybe small shadows on earlier tracks by overlaid later tracks. A slight shadow will really help make it obvious which track overlays which other track.

Spirit should be finally (?) leaving Silica Valley.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...ll.html#sol1288


My updated route map for sol 1293.

Yet another update, now after driving on sol 1298.
This area around Silica Valley was so cluttered in the map that I decided to remove all these tiny movements and substitute them by a single fuzzy dot. If anybody wants to see all the moves backwards and forwards just keep a copy of the map for sol 1293 on the previous post.

Spirit route map, updated to sol 1300.

The latest rout map, corresponding to sol 1304.

Spirit route map, updated to sol 1306.

Spirit route map, updated to sol 1310.