Mars Navigator

The Mars Navigator displays the virtual Mars through generated maps and a globe.

The Mars globe shows a cross hair box that marks the area covered by the generated map. Green dots on the globe represent settlements and white dots represent rovers not parked at settlements. The latitude and longitude of the center point of the globe is also displayed. The globe does not respond to mouse clicks or drags at this point.

The navigation arrows can be mouse clicked to rotate the globe. The far arrow points are for rough control with 30 degree rotations while the near arrows are for fine control with 5 degree rotations. The globe will not rotate North or South past 90 degrees. Clicking on the "Center Map" button in the middle will generate a map for the center point the globe is at.

The map is the primary means of viewing the virtual Mars. It displays a surface or topographical (depending on mode) map of Mars rendered at a given center point. The map is at a scale of 7.4km/pixel. Settlements and rovers are displayed on the map and it is updated approximately every second to reflect positional changes in rovers. Mouse clicking on the map will recenter it and the globe at the position clicked. Clicking on a settlement or rover icon will open up a info window for that unit instead of recentering the map. The map doesn't currently support mouse-drag operations.

Directly below the map is a legend displaying distances for the surface map and topographical scale for the topographical map.

To the left of the legend is the "Options" button. Clicking this will show a drop down set of checkboxes with the following options:

• The "Topographical Mode" checkbox will switch the map and globe to topographical viewing and back.


• The "Show Unit Labels" checkbox can be used to show settlement and rover labels (default) or not.


• The "Day/Night Tracking" checkbox will enable the shading of nighttime on the globe and map.


• The "8x Surface Map Zoom" checkbox will enable the surface map to zoom in 8x. This option requires an active Internet connection and works best with fast connections. The 8x zoom does not work well near the Martian poles.


• The "Vehicle Trails" checkbox will enable dark green trails to be displayed behind vehicles.


• The "Show Landmarks" checkbox will enable blue landmark indicators to show up on the map.


• The "Show Mission Navpoints" checkbox will enable rover mission navpoint flags to show up on the map.


• The "Show Explored Sites" checkbox will enable the explored sites to show up on the map.


• The "Show Minerals" checkbox will enable the mineral layers to show up on the map.

Latitude and longitude can be typed in as integers or decimals. The "Go There" button will recenter the map and globe at the specified latitude and longitude if they are valid.