{"id":19181,"date":"2016-11-03T17:14:30","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T09:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/museum-of-flight-lets-you-walk-on-mars-in-virtual-reality-for-spacefest\/"},"modified":"2016-11-03T17:14:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T09:14:30","slug":"museum-of-flight-lets-you-walk-on-mars-in-virtual-reality-for-spacefest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/museum-of-flight-lets-you-walk-on-mars-in-virtual-reality-for-spacefest\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum of Flight lets you walk on Mars in virtual reality for SpaceFest"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_286842\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-286842\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-286842\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161103_Museum_of_Flight_171-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Alan Boyle explores the Mars Curiousity Rover in VR at the Museum of Flight (Photo by GeekWire\/Kevin Lisota)\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161103_Museum_of_Flight_171-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161103_Museum_of_Flight_171-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161103_Museum_of_Flight_171-1240x826.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/20161103_Museum_of_Flight_171.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-286842\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerospace and science editor Alan Boyle, explores NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover and its surroundings on Mars in virtual reality at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I\u2019ve been to Mars to kick the tires on NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover&nbsp;\u2013 and you can take that trip as well.<\/p>\n<p>Not in reality, of course, but in virtual reality: The tours of Curiosity\u2019s surroundings near Mount Sharp are being provided courtesy of Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight during this weekend\u2019s SpaceFest gathering.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a whole program of activities, built on the theme of \u201cLadies Who Launch.\u201d&nbsp;Speakers include Nathalia Holt, the author of \u201cRise of the Rocket Girls\u201d; South Korean astronaut Soyeon Yi; women from Boeing, Vulcan Aerospace, SpaceX, Planetary Resources and Blue Origin; and&nbsp;Amy Shira Teitel, who\u2019s the author of \u201cBreaking the Chains of Gravity\u201d&nbsp;and the blogger behind Vintage Space.<\/p>\n<p>The virtual reality tours are sure to be a hot ticket as well. In cooperation with Valve, the VR\/gaming company based in Bellevue, Wash., the museum made the Mars experience available during last year\u2019s SpaceFest. Hundreds took turns wearing an HTC Vive headset and pacing carefully around a virtual Red Planet.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe put 300 people on Mars before NASA did,\u201d exhibit designer Peder Nelson joked.<\/p>\n<p>This year, three stations are being set up, and museumgoers can get time-stamped tickets for a 10-minute taste of virtual reality. In addition to the Mars scene, you can play around with a 3-D virtual painting program and sample other VR goodies.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Mars VR experience at the Museum of Flight\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fl4KM8Ajrzg?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>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Virtual reality is a hot technology, for museums as well as Mars. National Geographic built an \u201cExperience Mars\u201d exhibit in New York that relies heavily&nbsp;on VR. It\u2019s&nbsp;also offering a set of simple VR games online for Google Cardboard and similar smartphone-based VR viewers. This all ties in with National Geographic\u2019s big \u201cMars\u201d miniseries. (We\u2019ll have more about that later this month.)<\/p>\n<p>The visitor complex at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida offers guided VR walk-throughs on the Red Planet, facilitated by Microsoft\u2019s HoloLens headsets. This year NASA also unveiled an immersive Red Planet experience called \u201cMars 2030.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Closer to home, the Museum of Flight has teamed up with Microsoft to offer VR tours inside the cockpits and compartments of airplanes ranging from the B-17F Flying Fortress to the Boeing 747. Some of the museum\u2019s historic planes are so delicate that VR provides the only way for the public to peek inside.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cScanning the cockpit of planes like the B-17 is actually preserving the artifact,\u201d Nelson&nbsp;explained.<\/p>\n<p>The airplane tours are designed to be taken sitting down, or at least standing stationary. This weekend\u2019s Mars tours, in contrast, let you click Vive controllers to jump from one spot to another, or walk around within the confines of a roughly 10-by-10-foot area.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Visit Mars in VR with the HTC Vive\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YZDW51qF8BE?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>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Because the virtual scene is rendered from imagery collected by Curiosity, the rover itself serves as the focal point of your wanderings. You can sidle right up to the SUV-sized machine&nbsp;and get a close look at the hardware.<\/p>\n<p>Your own body isn\u2019t shown in the VR field of view, so it\u2019s as if you\u2019re a ghost roaming around the Red Planet.&nbsp;I actually did try kicking the rover\u2019s tires, but my unseen foot just flew through empty space.<\/p>\n<p>Tales have been told about how disorienting 3-D VR can be, but I didn\u2019t feel even a smidgen of queasiness&nbsp;as I carefully padded around the simulated surface. If&nbsp;you get close to the boundary of your VR sandbox, a grid of thin green lines pops up to show you just how much farther you can go. (The system is known as Chaperone.)<\/p>\n<p>You have to keep from getting tangled up in the wires leading down your back from the headset to the computer running the VR software, but in this regard, the museum\u2019s guides act as living, breathing (but unseen) chaperones.<\/p>\n<p>When my 10 minutes were up, I didn\u2019t want to come back down to Earth. And you probably won\u2019t, either.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Museum of Flight\u2019s SpaceFest begins tonight with a four-hour window for virtual reality experiences, from 5 to 9 p.m. VR tours are for ages 10 and up. Free tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>SpaceFest continues on Friday and Saturday. VR experiences will be offered from noon to 5 p.m. on Friday, and 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. Check out the full schedule on the museum\u2019s website. General admission is $21 for adults, with discounts for seniors, kids, AAA members, Boeing employees, military personnel and veterans.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aerospace and science editor Alan Boyle, explores NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover and its surroundings on Mars in virtual reality at Seattle\u2019s Museum of Flight. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota) I\u2019ve been to Mars to kick the tires on NASA\u2019s Curiosity rover&nbsp;\u2013 and you can take that trip as well. Not in reality, of course, but in [&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":[367,4450,5131,4636],"class_list":["post-19181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-mars","tag-museum-of-flight","tag-spacefest","tag-virtual-reality"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19181"}],"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=19181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}