Yes, those are two really good points. What we do is first we have to find a middle ground on color, contrast, brightness between all Viking photographs. Because there are differences between each. Then we make a decision of what an average color looks like.
Filling in an average color for the overexposed areas is what we'll do for version 1.0 coming in a few days. Running locally it does already look quite nice. Hope it will turn out well on the web app!
Thanks! That's right. We did look into more open alternatives, but went with ArcGIS and spent our time on the image processing instead. Could be cool to build an alternative site eg. with Leaflet.
They are great! We use their public beta CTX images. When we contacted them, they said the blended CTX images will be out of beta by end of the year :)
Good point. Google has two Mars Maps. Both are okay-ish. But not good enough really. Let me explain.
Google Mars Maps[1] shows images from the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC)[2], which produces grey scale and up to 1.5m per pixel. Not quite what we aim for nor what we think is enough.
Google Earth Pro is another one. I appreciate you bring it up, and I'll add a remark to the blog post.
What I like about Google Earth' Mars map is that it offers multiple layers of different quality images, similar to NASA's Mars Trek[3]. Besides, it presents a globe view. Both helps conceptualize the whole experience.
However, Google Earth is missing a lot.
First, we built a web app. Easy access for everybody.
Second, we want to present the real Mars. An image just like you would stand in front of it, like Google Earth for Earth: True color, no jumps between image tiles.
NASA does a better job than Google at that. However, neither show natural color, combined with high resolution.
Google Earth uses a blend of Viking imagery, just like we do. However, they use MOC instead of CTX imagery for that. Which results in somewhat high-res too, but they managed to make it look cut up and unnatural. Their CTX map is low coverage, and of course grey scale.
Our solution: We merge natural color photographs with high-resolution images to offer one combined image. And we'll add elevation in 2-3 days.
Yes, we are hosting an WMTS server which serves images corresponding to a user's current coordinates and zoom level. One image of the whole surface in full-res would be about 150 GB.
Nice idea! We'll add a feature layer with points of interest.
Clicking the Twitter symbol should show you somebody's tweet on that position. Works in Chrome, and we'll add support for Firefox (soon) which currently blocks it
Well, it's technically possible to serve any feature layer via the API.. I'd assume there isn't that much traffic though. Although I've heard air traffic is picking up lately, even some nuclear-powered rovers