Drain the Oceans

[hhomebrewer]

Just got finished watching a two-hour presentation on National Geographic Television (natgeotv.com) about what we would see if we drained all the water out of the Earth's oceans. The computer animation was generated using a program called Fleidermaus. It was awesome. Imagine what kind of flying we could do in a world where canyons are so large they make the Grand Canyon look like a little ditch and mountains are so high they make Mount Everest look like a small hill. The graphics were eye-popping in this show. The mountains and canyons were presented as if they were above water, which they were considering the oceans were drained away. If you get a chance to see this show, watch it. I'm waiting for the day when we can buy scenery add-ons to fly in this surreal world. Imagine the airports that could be designed for FS. We could make Lukla look like child's play...

[ShaneG_old]

May I suggest you try the flight sim in Google Earth, while in Google Mars mode.  [smiley=thumbsup.gif]


Flying through it's canyons and over it's craters, with the HD photo terrain, is an unparalleled sight for sim flight.

Google moon is another fun one to fly around, but not really as colorful as Mars or Earth. 

[hhomebrewer]

I had no idea there was a Google Mars. Sounds like a hoot. I saw on TV several months ago a show about two little rovers NASA or JPL or somebody has up there. Beyond fascinating. One rover had one of its six wheels come off, scrape through the dust and discover ice where the conventional thought was that none existed. There was also a portion of the show that had the rover get stuck and somehow, from 40-some million miles away-- they rescued it. This kind of stuff absolutely fascinates me.

[stephan]

I'm not sure if Microsoft has thought 'bout it or not.If not,they need to.Haven't seen it on market yet.That being a detailed sub sim.There arent any homes and such in the deep.But,using the 'drained ocean' prgm NOAA and others have to obtain detailed terrain topos,imagine what Microsoft could do with those topos!Add some fish,corals and such and we'd have somewhere else to go without leaving!Hey...Microsoft...get on the stick!

[Webb]

The highest mountain, Everest, is 29,035 feet (8,850 meters) above sea level.

The tallest mountain, Mauna Kea, is 32,808 feet (10,000 meters) above its base.

[Jetranger]

Ya,,,, and maybe, with any luck, we'd find Flight 19 and all their Aircraft that got lost that Day off the Florida coast ! 

We could also all go Visit the Ancient Ship wreck of the TITANIC , might have to do some foot hiking to get to it tho !!

and we could go visit that Boeing 377 propliner that crashed into the Pacific back in the 40's,,,

OK Sign up here for the Trip - Tickets now being Sold in Advance 

get em' while their Hott, while supplies last !   ::)

[pegger]

Pr3pared i believe has added bathymetric data, and thus created some underwater worlds in an FSX environment. I don't know how much of the worlds oceans they have done this for however.

As far as it goes with fsx, water is simply a polygon over the ground. If you cut a hole in the water , the ground is right there at the same elevation (this is how you would make an island in the middle of the ocean if you were so inclined). There is no depth to the water in fsx.

Thats not to say that it wouldn't be possible to remove all the water and add the beds of the ocean in fsx, but this would require enourmous amounts of DTM work. It would be interesting to say the least. I wonder what would happen to the flight modelling at -30,000' MSL?