PlanetScape  Program

The main purpose of the program to make virtual excursions on different bodies of the Solar System to study the landscape (more exactly planetscape) of this bodies in 3D/Stereo and get information about them.
 

PlanetScape Navigator

The Navigator makes posssible to choose a planet,  to navigate on the planet  or moon choosed, to set options, to save the Navigator image and to start the image processor (only for Mars for the time being).
The navigator window contains a menubar, two toolbars, and image splitpane an under the image splitpane a message line.
The right side of the splitpane is an image panel for the globes of the planet/moon and the left side has a tree for navigation by features  of the planet. The tooltip of the tree elements has some information about the given feature of the planet..

Choosing a feature will center the globe around this feature in the low and middle resolution mode and put a cross on the feature in the high resolution mode. The high resolution mode the latitude and longitude data will be put in the boxes concernd.

Choosing a Planet or a Moon

One can choose a planet from the menu "Planets". Only Mars has the data files to fully use the program.  For other planets (Moon, Venus, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede) the only possibility to navigate and save the image.
The most unfortunate thing, that there is no topographical data measured by a laser altimeter for the Moon .

Navigation

The  PlanetScape Navigator gives the possibility to chose a place of the investigated planet.

The different possibilities as follows:

  • Navigate by tree: to open a folder double click, to choose a tree element click!
  •  Navigate with the Go East, West, North and South buttons: the step regulated in degrees by the slider
  •  Give the exact latitude and longitude and press the refreh button
  •  Click on either sphere of Mars and the clicked point will be the centre of the main Mars sphere. (The spheres     are generated from the file *.jpg under the .../globus/ directory of the specified planet. They can be configured by the  planet's property file. Use them depending on the speed of your computer and real estate your display.)
  • Saving the Image

    The image can be saved as a .png file with the use of "Save" menu item under the "File" menu.

    Choosing the option for the image processor, resolution and the globes

    It is important to say, that the user can add its image the ../globus directory and edit the planet's property file to change for new images. The added images shoulde be jpg files
     
  • The option chooses the colors for surface colouring:  So every surface point will have the color code for that point or the surface color . The actual file for the surface will be generated in the image processig.
  • One globe with its two side or two different globe with the same side and
  • Resolutions: The high resolution is always in one globe mode.

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    Activation of the Image Processor

    The "Load" button loads the images around the centre choosed in the navigation process. If the processor is not active, it will be activated.
     
     

    PlanetScape Image Processor

    The processor window contains a toobar, two image plate and a message line.  The toolbar has the following actions:
  • Save button: it saves the two images together in .png format
  • Enlarge button makes a twofold enlargement on both images
  • Export button writes the information about the choosed territory into the file planet.dta . The Surface Viewer program will use this file to generate different view about the choosed territory
  • Elevation Plot button:  Choose a line on the topographical image with the second mouse button (dragging it and click the icon.
  • Refresh button: It refreshes the images with coordinates from latitude, longitude text field. (It is meant for moon observers: choosing a named place on the moon one can refresh the images around this place)
  • Comment line: The user can add a line of comment to the surface picture. This line and the information about the choosed territory (which is visible in the title) wil lbe added to the planet.dta file.


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    Actions on the topographical images:

  • Moving the mouse pointer in the topographical image will write the elevation information of the place into the message line.
  • dragging with the left button pressed will chose a territory to export.
  • dragging with the middle button pressed will give a yellow line for elevation plotting
  • Clicking with the right mouse button into the left (topological) image, a popup menu comes up.

  • popup menu for right button

    Zooming will enlarge twofold the images: it uses a simple linear interpolation so for a better surface you can use the blurring. However the blurring will change the value of the original points too. We need a better interpolation for the enlargement. The  "Parameters" menu changes the threshold parameter which can be between 10 and 230. In the beginning the parameter 10 and  clicking on the menu element will add 10 to the original value. After 230 it will be 10 again. It is a very temporary solution. The "Save" menu element will save the topological image in png format.
     
     
     

    Do not forget to place the sgt_v2.jar file into the jre/lib/ext directory from the PlanetScape/lib directory

    Under the elevation plot there are three button for

  • the regeneration of the original plot (One can choose an area on the plot with the left  mouse button to enlarge)
  • edit the attributes of the plot and
  • print the plot.
  • PlanetScape  Surface Viewer

    The "Surface Viewer " window contains a horizontal and vertical toolbar and an image plane.

    The vertical toolbar has the following buttons:

  • Viewpoint up
  • Viewpoint down
  • Increase viewing distance
  • Decrease viewing distance

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    The horizontal tolbar has the following:

  • Refresh button
  • Viewpoint left
  • Viewpoint right
  •  Slider for tuning the steps of viewpoint's change in horizontal
  • Zoom in (2x enlargement)
  • Zoom out
  • Open a .dta file to make the image (to keep the planet.dta rename it)
  • Save the image in a .png file
  • Stereo checkbox: if it is checked you can see the image in stereo with 3D glasses
  • Shading checkbox: if it is checked, the image will be generated with shades