The Universe At Large

There are several programs out there which can model planets, or even  solar systems, I've managed to have a play with some of them, well two. They both seem to be based on NASA's data that they've been collecting over the years so it all should be very accurate. All of these need a quick CPU and it's very preferable to have OpenGL acceleration as software mode really sucks, believe me even on a PIII 500 !!!

The latest program that I've been playing with is Open Universe it models the whole solar system, it allows you to move around and follow objects at will, including space shuttles and asteroids. Below are some screen shots they blow up to 640x480, they don't do the program any justice at all but it gives you an idea of what it does.

There is a full version of the program and addon's that are available for it, including enhanced texture's and other versions for differen't OS's at Open Universe the home page.

At Planet 3D there are several downloadable programs each coming with different geometry information, letting you render an image of the relevant planet that you choose. Once displayed you can rotate, zoom etc in on the planet to 11km x 11km, it uses actual NASA data, incorporating 1.79 million height points in most cases and produces graphics like below. You can use different colour charts to represent height, even gray scale it's all left up to you. Other configurable options is the level of detail and movement.