jackgraham wrote:

Ashoka is very close to the Viking lander site, which can be found on many maps of Mars.

Viking 1 or Viking 2? :D

for some reason my mental image of mars always looks like it did in Exo Squad. not from telescopes, vikings, orbiters, rovers, or total recall. or even space 1889 or edgar rice burroughs. I mean, i know olympus mons isnt really a big spire of a volcanic core, but i always picture it that way. effing cartoons.

I took the liberty to make a KML file for Google Earth: http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/EPMars2.kmz This includes the places mentioned in Sunward, including some of the major highways. Some guesswork included, of course. To use it, just download it and run Google Earth, answering yes to the question of whether you want to use Mars rather than Earth. I noted that the TQZ is actually quite big, and that the white zone on the Sunward map is not correctly aligned with Amazonis Sulci, which is further to the east.

You can save it anywhere, just open it in Google Earth. Love to include the trains, but there is no information on how the network looks.

Demonseed Elite wrote:

wow, yeah, the TQZ is pretty huge.

Some pretty interesting places in there too. The bottle-shaped Orcus Patera has always fascinated me.

Quincey Forder wrote:

btw, regarding the TQZ, it seems that the base of the triangular zone is missing.

Odd. It worked fine on my desktop computer, but it is missing here on my laptop. Will investigate.

Quote:

And do you plan to add the settlements in Hellas and Eos? how can I add my own cities and settlements?

I think I will maintain an "official" KML file of stuff that is actually canon, and then add a plausible number of settlements to fill out the map. Adding things to Google Earth is easy, just click the "add placemark" icon on the top. Then make sure you move the entries you get in temporary places into a folder and save it. This way you can add adventure-specific stuff for your game, for example.

I think the problems might be due to old versions of Google Earth, try updating to the latest. One can add 3D buildings and landmarks to KML files, so it should be quite feasible to make domes and sprawls. I doubt I have the time to do so over the next few weeks, but it would be a worthwhile project for someone. An interesting issue is the average population density for a Martian city, since this will tell us the area. Presumably it would be higher than on Earth, since there are economies of scale to building pressurized housing. Assuming 50,000 people per km^2, Valles-New Shanghai would be 740 km^2 (about Las Vegas size), Noctis 260, Elysium 180 and Olympus 60 (assuming a pre-Fall size of 3 million). Separated domes would sprawl things out a bit.

I've decided that Google Earth, although interesting, isn't really the best way to do a really good large scale map like this. Does anyone know of any alternatives? It occurs to me that perhaps an OpenStreetMap instance could fill the bill, if it could use existing images as a background. I also want something that can switch to different parts of the spectrum. I want to be able to show an IR or radar view of the area to be investigated, for example. And yes, the TQZ is very large.

Yes, I didn't mean to imply that Google Earth couldn't do that. In fact, I'm using several Mars overlays right now, for elevation, IR and high-res imagery. I merely meant that I wouldn't want to give up that feature in order to get others. Google Earth can show annotations on the map in the form of points, lines, areas and volumes. Unfortunately, creating, editing and managing these objects leaves much to be desired. In fact, it's apparently impossible to create an area in the latest version; it probably worked in earlier versions, but that doesn't help any. The more I think about it, the more OpenStreetMap appeals to me. With OSM you can have a very flexible set of metadata about the objects you create. The best you can do with Google Earth is put things in the description. Both will have problems printing proper maps, but at least OSM already has everything in a printable projection, unlike Google Earth. I imagine OSM is a beast to set up though.

Google Earth is driving me bonkers! I tried to trace a route around the TQZ.What I'm thinking is a road that is used for two things: -linking the M5-West to Olympus City via a segue freeway with the M4 south of the M5 (the longest way), and M5-East going North -offering a monitored road to he Rangers to patrol around the borders of the 'Zone. I called that road Dantes Road, because it lies right outside of Hell. Several small habitats grew around outposts and relays along the hundred miles of the road. Haven't had numbers, names or localisation for these yet. I got a question, tho Do you know where the Ebb 6 habitat can be found?

Circling it completely, actually I think a lots of bridge and tunnels were dug (sorry if it's not the right past form, strong verbs were always my weak points when I learned English). Some habitats were built within the peaks. Remember, in Enterprise, the headquarters of the Xindi council? I bet there are stuff like that there. And it wouldn't be totally out of question that some geeky oligarch who grew up in the early 2000s built a life sized replica of Hogwarts and Hogsmead there. Before the fall, it must have been quite the tourist attraction up there, with augmented reality skinning, and ecto-wands... ohh! that's good idea for my fanfic, that! *takes notes* Nowadays, going up there could indeed be a forbidden journey. on another subject, where would be located the Kim S. Robinson sites? I mean, it would also be sight-seeingable locations, wouldn't it? tour operators already have themed tours in several cities. Paris and London for Da Vinci Code (and Harry Potter, for London), Rome has some tour of her own, with Angel and Demons. Why would the Red-Green-Blue Mars trilogy have some tour of its own?

Already got that map, but I was wondering where the sites would be located on "our" Mars. By the look of it, several of the RGB Mars are dead in the TQZ There were part that I skipped. However... that trilogy is where I heard about the rep system for the first time Back then, I didn't understand how it worked