The latest QuickMap client update is now live across Lunar/LROC, Mercury, Mars, and Venus.

This is primarily a client update rather than a mission-specific release. The maps continue to have their own data catalogs, terrain, projections, and mission context, but they now share a more consistent interface and a set of improvements to 3D navigation, imagery handling, and data exploration.

A celestial sphere for 3D views

One notable addition is a body-aware celestial sphere in the 3D viewer. The starfield is oriented to the planetary reference frame rather than treated as a fixed visual backdrop, so it remains coherent as the map moves through different views—including polar terrain.

The starfield is optional: it can be shown or hidden in the 3D settings. It is now available across the Lunar/LROC, Mercury, Mars, and Venus QuickMaps.

More dependable navigation and tracking

Several changes focus on the practical parts of moving around a map:

• Zooming to a feature or layer behaves more consistently across map, feature, and inspector workflows.
• Transitions between 2D and 3D views are steadier, with fewer unwanted camera shifts or scale changes.
• Near-ground panning and tilting are more terrain-aware.
• Where a map includes moving spacecraft, following and first-person views have more precise camera controls and more reliable orientation handling.

These are mostly incremental changes, but together they make longer exploration sessions less fussy—especially when working with terrain, moving targets, or changing projections.

Better support for imagery and data work

The client also improves several common data workflows:

• GeoTIFF handling is more robust for polar regions, antimeridian coverage, complex coordinate systems, masks, and 3D display.
• A metadata viewer makes it easier to inspect GeoTIFFs before working with them.
• Layer-feature imports now support CSV files, while shapefile and remote JSON imports have been made more reliable.

A quieter interface update

The interface has been refined in the places that tend to see the most use: layer panels, catalog filtering, feature and object inspection, and map controls.  The overall UI has received a round of typography, consistency, and stability work.

Laying the groundwork for what comes next

Alongside the updates available today, this release includes meaningful behind-the-scenes groundwork for future QuickMap capabilities: persistence and bookmarks for returning to work, richer support for instrument data, and collaborative workflows around shared mapping and data.

Availability will vary by QuickMap and release channel. All of these capabilities are still being developed, and others may be introduced selectively before they are broadly available.

If any of this is relevant to your work—or you have a workflow you would like to see supported—please get in touch with the QuickMap team. Your input could help shape what comes next.

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