Cesium Moon Terrain Higher Quality Lunar Model

Hi,
The moon asset is great, and it facilitates a quick integration to Unity.
However, when we consider a VR experience, it doesn’t deliver a high quality for human viewing. For instance, below is a screenshot when we look down with the dynamic camera, assuming the camera is a user view.
Are there any ways to obtain a much higher quality for this purpose. It doesn’t have to be the entire moon, or readily-available highest resolution model. If we somehow allowed to access some patch as 3D or textures (height map, normal map, etc) we can try some post-processing.

Hi @Virtual_Moon, welcome to the community!

For the initial release of Cesium Moon Terrain, our primary data sources were about captured at about 60m resolution (terrain) and 100m resolution (imagery). But at the poles, we do have higher resolution data.

We are exploring options to include available higher resolution imagery/terrain for the moon, but we don’t have any updates available at this time. We’ve been working with other users who have incorporated higher resolution terrain assets from other sources within available moon terrain data. The best solution right now is to incorporate those higher resolution assets with the broader lunar context provided by Cesium Moon Terrain. This can be done with the help of the polygon clipping feature, explained in this tutorial: Clipping Tilesets – Cesium.

You may also be able to integrate built-in Unity features or ones available in the Unity Asset Store to help with this effort. For example, there is this lunar landscape that is listed for free:

That’s about what I can suggest for now! It would also help us if you could share more about your use case – any particular areas of interest on the moon, or the user interaction / movement capabilities you are planning to create. We like to learn more about what our community is making, and it can even inform our future roadmap. :smile:

Hi,

Thank you for your answer, I’ll explore the resources you shared.

As a computer science master’s student, I study this project for a postgraduate module. We work with Physics department and our goal is to deliver a VR experience for them to be used for illustration purposes within the University or events (hopefully, If it’s successfully implemented).

I’ll share our findings and update this forum :slight_smile:

Also, I want to confirm that the Unity Lunar Landscape asset that you share is for moon-like texture and particle effects but it’s not a 3D model based on real data, right?

Hi @Virtual_Moon,

Thanks for sharing your use case! Yeah, it would definitely help to get higher-resolution data for those VR use cases, or other scenarios where the user is standing on the moon itself. We’ll be on the lookout for sure.

And yes, the Unity Lunar Landscape I shared is not meant to accurately reflect the real-world data at that location. The idea is to combine it with Cesium Moon Terrain, and put it directly underneath / around the user to create a more immersive environment. It’s not ideal – at least, not over getting actual data itself – but I hope those kinds of tools are a decent alternative for now.