About

Druantia is an attempt to create a full resolution, realtime and client-server based 3D virtual trip to Mars, Licensed under GNU GPL.
The project is still in early infancy, however the important materials like datasets have already been acquired and pre-processed.
Also, number of algorithms was chosen to base the visualisation on and OpenSceneGraph was agreed to be the visualisation engine.

There is a significant difference between Druantia and NASA's Worldwind project. Worldwind allows you to view the planet from above. Druantia will allow you to set your foot on it... in a virtual way ;)

The main project goal is to create a 1:1 scale (in terms of both size and resolution) working model of an entire planet. With server-side global events management and client-side local events management. Please understand, that this is NOT yet another MMORPG game, and the world we're talking about needs to be as close to original as possible. This means no "zone loading", no "teleportation", and no other nasty tricks :). We have to work in 64bit resolution XYZ world where every vertex of the terrain is shell mapped on a sphere that has radius of 3396 km. It will require vast amounts of computing resources and insane amounts of data storage. We do have the infrastructure in place.
We also have a set of climate modelling algorithms available that will be used on a dedicated 4-way server to simulate climate on a planetary scale. The goal is to be as scientificaly accurate as possible. This would include climate modeling and possibly research on terraforming later.

Druantia needs YOUR help!
If you're C++ programmer and have good knowledge of GNU/Linux, please join our project. We heavily depend on the tasks mechanism provided by SF. Therefore please check out the current tasks if you would like to participate.

We've simulated the water level. The test rendering is available here (5MB, divx, 640x480, 500 frames, 15fps).

Rendering utilised 16bit MOLA data (064 dataset) and our modified colour data. Povray 3.6 was used. The sphere is isosurface modified by MOLA data. The water sphere is scaled 0.998 on the Y axis. Total memory needed to render one frame was 2.8GB (Opteron based systems were used to render).

Below you can find some preliminary visualisation screenshots. Please note, that they still operate at 1 meter vertical resolution, which is referenced by 16 bit shell mapping of the original MOLA data. The visualisation engine will use 24 bit data, which will be derieved from the original datasets using spline interpolation and Perlin noise enhancement. Therefore the stairstepping will be removed later on.

Previsualisation of 3.617 by 3.617 meters grid map with 1 meter vertical resolution (16 bit). This is only RAW data and no fractal enhancements have been made. The previsualisations have been made using P. Lindstrom's SOAR reference implementation.



Another previsualisation of 3.617 by 3.617 meters grid map. This time, the vertical resolution has been increased from 16 bit to 32 bit and saved using floats (not integers). This is only RAW data with interpolation and no fractal enhancements have been made.