Surface structures

Structures are game objects anchored to a body's latitude and longitude. The Mars landing pad uses the same placement record in flight, the planetarium, and Cinema. ADR-0040 describes ownership and persistence.

Place and inspect

The harness accepts degrees and meters. World records use radians.

ir.structures()
ir.placeStructure({
  id: 'second-mars-pad',
  assetId: 'mars-pad',
  bodyAddress: 'g:milky-way/s:SOL/b:3',
  latitude: 0,
  longitude: 0,
  height: 2,
  heading: 30,
})
ir.visitStructure('second-mars-pad', 120)
ir.removeStructure('second-mars-pad')

Use ir.targets() to obtain the body's exact address before placing an object. visitStructure moves the planetarium camera. Placing, moving, and removing a structure change the world and are included in its next save. ir.moveStructure(record) replaces an existing placement atomically. Reusing an ID with placeStructure is an error. Removal remains in effect after loading.

The facility mars-basin-pad is seeded in every new Milky Way game, whichever system it starts in, at 34.560341698° N, 85.053877851° E, and into a save written before structures existed when that save loads. It sits two meters above the local terrain. This is a basin surveyed in the game's relief, not a named real-world landing site. The record is MARS_PAD in packages/universe/src/structures.ts, beside the asset it places; initialStructures(galaxy) there is the one list a new session and a migrating save both seed from, so the two cannot disagree.

Add an asset

Define the asset ID, footprint, and optional deck support radius in packages/universe/src/structures.ts. Keep URLs and rendering classes in the browser adapter. The support radius describes a flat circular deck; it does not create wall or ramp collision.

Author the mesh in Blender at one meter per unit. Export glTF with +Y up and the contact deck at y=0. Retain the editable master under design/structures/ and a repeatable generator or export script under apps/ingest/models/. The game reads data/models/; these are generated assets, not hand-edited files. Join material batches for export while retaining editable parts in the master.

The pad producer is reproducible:

blender -b --python apps/ingest/models/build_mars_pad.py
pnpm vitest run marsPadAsset

The asset test checks metric bounds, the landing datum, materials, and the realtime geometry budget. The reusable browser loader preserves the authored origin and rebuilds glTF materials as WebGPU node materials.

Mars landing in Cinema

Open /cinema/mars-landing, or use the director:

ir.play('mars-landing')
ir.pause()
ir.seekCutscene(720)

The 46-second scene runs at 24 fps. It opens on a ground telephoto, widens during the braking burn, and holds after touchdown at 41 seconds. Entry heat, drive intensity, and dust derive from the sampled playhead, so a seek gives the same effect state as playback. The scene chooses the Rocinante without changing the player's ship preference.

The deck and cinematic poses share the placement resolver. The sunset presentation instant holds Mars, its terrain, and its light together while the scene advances. The Sun is three degrees above the site's horizon, and the dome follows its actual direction: a Martian sunset, with a cool blue-gray halo of forward-scattered dust around the Sun and a dim tan sky everywhere else, darkening to brown-gray at the zenith. The flare is the flight lens's own. Leaving Cinema returns control to the player's world.