The Game Made From NASA Satellite Data 32
An anonymous reader writes "Kickstarter's helped start all sorts of indie games, but few as unusual as Lacuna Passage, an adventure game set on Mars with a vast open world that's been painstakingly recreated from NASA satellite data. You're able to explore twenty five square miles of the Red Planet in all its barren glory as you attempt to solve the mystery of the first, vanished, manned mission to mars. A new piece today on the making of the game — which is being made by an elementary school teacher and a team of a dozen volunteers — looks at how it came about, and why their quest for authenticity led to even urine analysis being included in the gameplay."
Re:No vegetation (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually Mars is considerably smaller - a bit under 1/3 the diameter and a bit over 1/3 the surface gravity. The entire surface of Mars is roughly comparable in area to the landmass on Earth. And Earth's surface is mostly water.
Also if you want to get technical the detail is the same at one Plank-meter resolution. Earth just has a lot more vegetation masking the surface.