AI-assisted 1:1 Mars simulation in Godot
Project MARS is a game project that tries to recreate Mars at close to real scale. The terrain comes from a USGS blended height map, a DEM, sized 106,694 by 53,347 pixels. The source file is 11.4 GB, and the game reads only the needed region directly from that file instead of using pre-built terrain chunks.
Terrain3D keeps a 3-by-3 ring of terrain loaded around the player, with terrain points spaced about 100 meters apart. To keep movement stable across a planet-sized world, it uses a that resets the local point about every 205 km and handles the ±180° longitude crossing without a visible break. The sky is calculated from place and time instead of using a fixed image, including the sun, stars, Phobos, and Deimos.
Weather runs separately through a small GCM that creates clouds and dust storms from wind, dust supply, and real basin areas. Streaming, , and weather issues were fixed with help from The Fabler 5, and the footage is captured in-game.
Key points
- The project uses to build a near real-scale Mars world.
- Terrain is read directly from an 11.4 GB DEM file instead of pre-built chunks.
- Terrain3D keeps nearby terrain loaded in a 3-by-3 ring around the player.
- A helps avoid movement and coordinate problems at planet scale.
- Streaming, , and weather work were fixed with help from The Fabler 5.