Are the texture maps of the planet available in "simple cylindrical" projection? My searches of the forum and the wiki haven't found any, but maybe I'm searching for the wrong things.

@Redrobes,

In the thread World Pictures, ravells posted pictures of the planet which I understand were created by you using Fractal Terrain. Can that program be persuaded to export the corresponding surface textures?

Free 3D viewers are available which can make it possible for anyone to view the world interactively. It would be quite easy to do with Celestia, for example, showing the planet orbiting an appropriate star.

Celestia can display surface textures (ground coloration), bumpmaps or normalmaps (shading mountains, valleys and craters), specular maps (showing sunlight reflecting off the oceans and rivers) and emissive maps ("nightmaps", showing city lights, forest fires and volcano eruptions on the dark side), as well as clouds and their shadows. These are all drawn in real-time while the user is changing the viewpoint.

Its AltSurface feature can be used to display a variety of surface texture images on the same planet, like climate or political maps. "Virtual Textures" make it possible to have very high resolution textures covering part or all of the planet's surface.

One could, for example, zoom in and use AltSurface with VirtualTextures to display the regional maps which individuals have been creating.

I would be glad to provide Celestia catalogs to implement some of these features, either here on the forum or on the Wiki.