My Mars Flyer iPhone app ($3.99) is now available on iTunes. The app allows you to take an aerial tour of Mars on your iPhone or iPod Touch (OS 3.0 required). The mission begins with a detailed topographic map of the planet, which is used to set start and end points of a flight route. High resolution color photographic imagery of Mars is then used to show the planet in rich, exquisite detail as you fly around. You can even queue up a soundtrack of songs from the iPod music library to enhance the visual experience. Note that this is not a game, so don't expect Marvin the Martian to crawl out of a crater and start shooting a ray gun , but do expect to be blown away by the scenery if you're interested in Mars -- it's a really cool planet with a lot of interesting terrain to explore. The app's website is located here if you want more info: http://hunter.pairsite.com/marsflyer/ And the iTunes listing is at: http://itunes.com/apps/MarsFlyer Finally, here's a blog about the app's development: http://hunter.pairsite.com/blogs/20090628/ I have some promo codes I'd like to hand out -- PM me if you're interested. thanks, Craig
Very nice, I've been a big fan of space for as long as I can remember. Will keep an eye on this, before I purchase. Looks very well made. Edit: Ok after about 15 minutes of exploration, I have decided this is an awesome app, the interface is slick, presentation is sharp, Mars looks beautiful, ipod support is a very nice feature. There is something oddly refreshing about listening to Pink Floyd while flying over Olympus Mons. Thanks for this great app!
If you have anymore I'd love to test it out. Looks like a cool app. Does it have good pictures of Cydonia?
I am out of codes for now, but may have a couple extras once all my press/review/PR codes are allocated. The imagery over Cydonia is decent, but features like the face are just specs, and you have to know where to look for them to recognize them. I am hoping to boost the image resolution in a future version, especially now that the 3GS can handle the computational requirements.
Craig, Is there a way to set way points, or use the marked pins as way points? The app is really well done with a slick interface.
This app is way cool, if only for the fact that it allows me to do this: The scenery is so nice I'm glad there is an option to remove the flyer as it ends up looking cartoony in comparison.
Right now, it's a single-segment route along a fixed heading, so there are no waypoints, just start/end points. I was thinking about adding multi-segment flights for a future 0.1 release.
I know what you mean -- and that's after I fussed over the graphics quite a bit. I wish I had a more realistic way to draw/render the airplane.
BTW, if any of you guys like the app enough to write a review on iTunes, please do -- the app listing is awful lonely looking right now.... Thanks.
I posted a quick review on iTunes the other day, weird. I'll post it again, maybe I did something wrong.
Alta219. Will put a brief review up in the iTunes Store. Phenomenal Graphics. It would be very interesting to know how high above the surface the view is from? And what is the scale of the map that we are moving across?
At the equator, the are 32 pixels per degree of latitude or longitude. That works out to about 1.85 km per pixel (the iPhone screen is 160 pixels per inch, so that really becomes 296 km per inch as you see it). At the furthest latitudes away from the equator shown in the map (~ ±60°), the resolution is 0.92 km per pixel, or 148 km per inch on the screen. This change is due to the Mercator projection used when unwrapping the spherical planet surface into a rectangle -- stuff away from the equators gets scaled up (exaggerated). I have a terrain data set that doubles the resolution, but it would make the app weigh in at over 200MB, so I held off on that for 1.0! Maybe for the next version, when the iPhone 3GS is more prolific. By then, even better data will probably be available, from more recent NASA/ESA missions. Thanks for adding a review, I really appreciate it.
Wow... Many people don't know all the continents on our planet and they all have a chance to see Mars?? <lol> However a great idea! Good luck on the App Store for producers!
