DescentBB

Anyone use this program? I've taken a look at it a couple of times and it looks pretty good. What I would like though, is a program where you can rotate around the various planets and objects and actually locate and read about the different planetary locations. For instance, I would like information about places like Olympus Mons or the polar caps on Mar's ecs. In other words, a 3D view of what these places actually look like. Anyway, I noticed the digital download doesn't seem to have this feature but I'm not sure about the complete version would have it or not. :\ Anyone have any recommendations?

You can locate the viewer almost anywhere, including on the surface of a moon, ie Phobos.

3D views with lots of nooks and crannies on a distant moon is not going to happen. The program is designed to give you general views, not driving directions in the Martian canals to an alien 7eleven

You can accelerarte time, or even set yourself up at a fixed point in XYZ space. THe program is stable and impressive. It can teach you a lot, and has a book with lessons included.

My mom has used this program for years, and I've got a copy, but I never use it (one of many hobbies, tends to get buried...) But I'll say its a really nice program, lots of information and stuff in it.

But ya, no 3d maps - I'm not sure any program has that for anything but earth unless you're working for nasa or some science dept at a big college.

I remember my bro had a little program a LONG time ago that had videos and the like inside of it and it would circle around a given planet and you could ask it to talk about specific places on the planet. It wasn't like Starry Night but it was pretty cool. It functioned more like a movie and had planets that were rendered in 3D. My bro didn't really care for it but I liked it because it would pretty much fly around the surface of the planet.



I can't seem to locate the where the Kuiper Belt would be located. There should be something on it since Pluto is technically beleived to have once been a part of it that split off. :\

try Celestia, and have a look through all the things you can addon. Celestia has quite realistic bumpmaps, but it doesn't have actual 3D terrain. (ps: make sure you check out the high resolution texture plugins)

also look at Google Earth because there are some plugins for that that make it into Google-MOON. It wouldn't surprise me if there were also plugins for Mars as well.
Google Earth DOES have 3D terrain for earth, so i would think the Google MOON plugin/crack also ahs 3D terrain for the Moon.