{"id":18756,"date":"2017-10-19T21:34:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T13:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/virtual-reality-takes-you-on-a-trip-to-mars-with-nasa-rover-and-to-alien-worlds-too\/"},"modified":"2017-10-19T21:34:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T13:34:51","slug":"virtual-reality-takes-you-on-a-trip-to-mars-with-nasa-rover-and-to-alien-worlds-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/virtual-reality-takes-you-on-a-trip-to-mars-with-nasa-rover-and-to-alien-worlds-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual reality takes you on a trip to Mars with NASA rover \u2013 and to alien worlds, too"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_370892\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-370892\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-370892\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171019-rover-630x438.jpg\" alt=\"Access Mars screenshot\" width=\"630\" height=\"438\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171019-rover-630x438.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171019-rover-768x534.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/171019-rover.jpg 945w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-370892\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u201cAccess Mars\u201d provides 3-D views of the Red Planet as captured by NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover. (NASA \/ JPL Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>NASA has been offering virtual-reality tours of Mars for years&nbsp;\u2014 but now, with Google\u2019s help, the space agency has come up with one of the most accessible tours yet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAccess Mars\u201d lays out a 3-D terrain for five of the spots scanned by NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover, ranging from its landing site to the place where it\u2019s hanging out now, more than five years later.<\/p>\n<p>The tour can be experienced via a desktop browser, on mobile devices as a head-tracking display seen through a Cardboard-style viewer, and on virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets.<\/p>\n<p>You can jump from one spot to another, teleport between the five tour stops, or check out explanatory placards that are accompanied by audio narration. There\u2019s even the sound of wind in the background to give you an eerie sense of Martian aloneness.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Access Mars Web VR: A Virtual Walk on Mars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0DvF5J6Evx4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>NASA says the experience was adapted from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u2019s OnSight software, which is used to help scientists visualize the rover\u2019s surroundings as they plan its route. The software was developed using WebVR, an open-source standard, with support from Google\u2019s Creative Labs team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been able to leverage VR and AR technologies&nbsp;to take our scientists to Mars every single day,\u201d Victor Luo, lead project manager at JPL\u2019s&nbsp;Ops Lab, said today in a NASA news release. \u201cWith \u2018Access Mars,\u2019 everyone in the world can ride along.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NASA\u2019s other forays into VR and AR include \u201cMars 2030,\u201d an immersive VR experience created in collaboration with Fusion Media Group; \u201cDestination: Mars,\u201d a mixed-reality presentation that NASA and Microsoft put together for NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center in Florida; and ProtoSpace, a Hololens application that JPL is using to tweak the design for NASA\u2019s 2020 Mars rover.<\/p>\n<p>But wait \u2026 there\u2019s more!<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re hankering to roam beyond the solar system, check out the 360-degree YouTube video created by Engine House VFX and \u201cWe the Curious,\u201d an interactive science center in the English city of Bristol.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Take a Virtual Reality tour of six REAL exoplanets (4K, 360\u00b0 VR experience) | We The Curious\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qhLExhpXX0E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The 11-minute video takes you on a tour of six extrasolar planets, ranging from Osiris, a storm-ravaged \u201chot Jupiter\u201d that orbits a star 154 light-years from Earth, to Kepler-62e, a potential water world that\u2019s 1,200 light-years away and is thought to have a super-ocean.<\/p>\n<p>Like \u201cAccess Mars,\u201d the exoplanet tour can be experienced on a desktop, a mobile phone or with a headset in head-tracking 3-D. There\u2019s a running commentary that\u2019s provided by planetary scientists from the University of Exeter Astrophysics Research Group. Funding was provided by the University of Exeter.<\/p>\n<p>We won\u2019t really know what these exoplanets look like until we create telescopes big enough to get a snapshot. But the views come close to scientists\u2019 conceptions&nbsp;\u2014 so close that NASA used the imagery of WASP-121b to illustrate a report about the weird planet\u2019s stratosphere in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAccess Mars\u201d provides 3-D views of the Red Planet as captured by NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover. (NASA \/ JPL Illustration) NASA has been offering virtual-reality tours of Mars for years&nbsp;\u2014 but now, with Google\u2019s help, the space agency has come up with one of the most accessible tours yet. \u201cAccess Mars\u201d lays out a 3-D terrain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[559,5315,5316,367,190,21,4636,5317,4637],"class_list":["post-18756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-exoplanets","tag-google-cardboard","tag-google-cardboard-vr-viewer","tag-mars","tag-nasa","tag-space","tag-virtual-reality","tag-visualization","tag-vr"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}