| Catalin Vasile's Mars Viewer. |
This informative and entertaining computer program allows the user to rotate his viewpoint of the surface of Mars and to flood the Northern Plains in order to simulate a Boreal Ocean. Mars may have had such an ocean in its remote past and, if the planet is ever terraformed, it may return in the future.
Written by Catalin Vasile of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania, under the guidance of Viorel Badescu.
Download and user instructions in the email below...
22.05.2001
Hello Richard, Hello Martyn,
As a gift for you, Mars lovers, you'll find as attached file an archive
containing a number of files related to a nice program prepared by my
student Catalin Vasile. This program is able to display the surface of
Mars and its properties: albedo, topography and thermal inertia, at
your choice. Also, for Richard and his JBIS ms, there is a possibility to
see how the Mars Boreal ocean is growing. Below you'll find some
instructions.
All the best, Viorel
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Mars Viewer v0.1
(alpha version)
22 May 2001
1 - INSTALLATION (Windows 95/98):
Unzip the archive into an arbitrary folder.
You should now have this files:
albedo.dat
inertia.dat
topo.dat
marsw01.exe
mars.ini
all3934.dll
Now you can run marsw.exe and enjoy the view.
2 - HOW TO USE IT
Mouse - rotate the view
Arrow keys - rotate the view
PgUp/PgDn - zoom in/out
1 - display topography
2 - display thermal inertia
3 - display albedo
P/O - increase/decrease water level (default 0 meters)
End - Global view
Home - Surface view (experimental)
ESC - Quit
3 - TROUBLESHOOTING (FAQ)
Q - The program asks for a DLL
A - Try to find that particular DLL and copy it where you unzipped the program.
(the DLLs usually resides in WINDOWS\SYSTEM folder)
Q - I only see green lines. What's wrong??
A - When you start the program, you view the planet from it's centre.
Zoom out a little bit (using PgDn).
Q - It runs so sloooooowly...
A - Try to enable hardware acceleration by editing mars.ini and setting
use_hardware=1
If it doesn't work, you have to get an OpenGL driver for your
video adapter
(check your video card provider web page)
Catalin Vasile
Undergraduate Student
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering
Polytechnic University of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
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