MarsVR - Virtual Reality Platform To Support Exploring Mars

MarsVR Update on Mars Talk Podcast
almost 5 years ago – Sun, Jun 30, 2019 at 04:47:40 AM

Greetings CrowdExplorers,

In case you missed it, I did an extensive monologue about our MarsVR project and its current status starting at 2:38:23 during one of the recent episodes of the Mars Talk podcast.  I helped the Mars Society start this new podcast earlier this year, and we've been publishing it every two weeks.  This particular video was Episode #5 with two guests from the Link Observatory in Indiana.

Here's the direct link to my update on MarsVR: https://youtu.be/ymCvp1ZDyAA?t=9503 

In about 8 days, I will be recording the next episode of Mars Talk and we will go much deeper on our future plans for MarsVR.  We'll be covering some of our partnerships as well, such as with the Mars Society's Scandinavian chapter led by Ali Zareiee who will be a guest on the podcast.  He leads the prestigious VR Oslo business cluster, which the Mars Society is a member.

Check out the video above to get the latest on MarsVR and if you are able to respond to the call to action I mentioned, please reach out to me at [email protected]

Thanks and I'll see you on Mars!

-James Burk

Director & Program Manager, MarsVR Program

The Mars Society

1 Year Since Phase 1 Kickstarter
almost 5 years ago – Sun, Jun 02, 2019 at 11:13:42 PM

Greetings CrowdExplorers,

It's been a whole year since we successfully ended the MarsVR Phase 1 Kickstarter.   I'd like to provide you some updates on where we are and our future plans.

• We successfully captured all the buildings at the MDRS using photogrammetry in June 2018.
• We flew a drone several times to acquire a square mile of terrain around the MDRS during June/July/August 2018.
• Our initial development team processed the data and created a Unity project in summer & early fall 2018.
• I demoed an early build of the rooms at the Mars Society Convention in fall 2018.
• We delivered the Early Access build to our backers in November 2018.
• We continued working on the final Phase 1 build, which includes all processed & cleaned up assets -- buildings, rooms, and terrain.  That's still where we are with the project.

We ran into some problems with the scanned versions of the tunnels, which have necessitated us removing the original tunnels that were captured with photogrammetry and replacing them with 3-D models.  That work is nearly complete.

I showed the Early Access build at several events including Space Expo 2019 at Seattle's Museum of Flight, the Seattle VR Meetup at Pacific Science Center, and also regularly at our monthly Seattle Chapter meeting.  Other chapters have also shown the build at events in Southern California and Norway.

I showed a more recent build last month at Seattle's Pluto VR as part of the Seattle VR Meetup.

We are hoping to complete the Phase 1 release this summer, which will include a large PR push and our first public release of the Unity project on Github.

From there we will begin Phase 2 planning and add additional capabilities to the core application.

If you are interested in helping us during this final push, and into Phase 2, please do reach out to me -- [email protected] or 206-601-7143. 

Thanks and I'll see you on Mars (in VR!)

-James Burk

Program Manager, MarsVR

IT Director, The Mars Society

The Early Access Build has been sent out to Backers!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 11:29:51 AM

Greetings CrowdExplorers!

It's been a quiet couple months on our end but I am pleased to provide you (the MarsVR Kickstarter backers) with an update on our progress with the Phase 1 Environment, a high-fidelity capture of the real-life Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, Utah.

Today we sent the first pre-Beta, Early Access Build to around 20 of our Kickstarter backers that chose that reward level (or higher).  Our core developer team has done a lot of great work, and today we are beginning to expand that team to include additional volunteers and members of the VR community that will be assisting us to close out Phase 1 and begin work on future Phases of MarsVR!

The build contains our 1 square mile of terrain, as well as all exterior buildings and most of the interiors.  Notably missing from the build are the airlock, upper deck, and lower deck, but those scans are done (the airlock was in our convention demo as well) and we are working to clean those up & re-integrate.  We are also working to clean up and finish the exterior building scans and the tunnels that connect the facilities.  The tunnels in particular have been quite a challenge to get accurate, but we are making progress.

I recently returned from the Mars Desert Research Station where I participated in Crew 197 along with Shannon Norrell (our Director of Engineering for MarsVR), and some of our key MarsVR backers.  During our rotation, we scouted terrain that we hope to capture for Phase 2 (additional EVA locations), and we also planned out our mission scenarios in detail.  You can read our Final Mission Summary. 

I also participated in the Space Expo 2018 event last Saturday at Seattle's Museum of Flight where our Early Access Build was shown to around 200 members of the general public.  The feedback was universally positive, and (even better) the experience validated for me the power of virtual reality to tell the story of the human exploration of Mars to the general public, which is one of the main goals of our MarsVR Program.

We are striving to complete Phase 1 as soon as possible, so that we can release & open source a Beta release and a Final release.  This will allow a wider group of the general public to experience MarsVR. 

If you would like to assist us with Phase 1 endgame which would include helping us cleanup the VR assets in Unity, please contact me and I can add you to our Slack group and provide access to our private Github and Trello resources.  You can also continue to purchase our Kickstarter rewards to fund Phase 2, using our Backerkit Pre-Order Store, or the Mars Society Official Store.  If you purchase the Early Access build at the $100 level, you can receive that today!

Also, at this time, all physical rewards have been sent to our Kickstarter backers. If you have not received your physical rewards (Metal Medallion, Mission Patches, or Stickers) please let me know.

Thanks again for all your support, and I'll see you on Mars!

James Burk
Program Manager, MarsVR

Videos from Mars Society Convention Demo & VR Panel
over 5 years ago – Wed, Sep 05, 2018 at 01:35:50 AM

Two videos from ther recent Mars Society Convention where MarsVR was featured have now been posted to Youtube. 

The four-day International Mars Society Convention brought together leading scientists, engineers, aerospace industry representatives, government policymakers and journalists to talk about the latest scientific discoveries, technological advances and political-economic developments that could help pave the way for a human mission to the planet Mars.

MarsVR was featured extensively at this year's convention.  In addition to holding a special demo event and a Panel discussion on VR, I staffed a floor demo over all four days and talked about the project to everybody that came by.  I'd estimate over 350 people saw the demo firsthand or were attendees at one or both of our events below.

First Video: MarsVR Demo at Saturday Night Banquet

This demo of our Phase 1 MDRS Crew Training Sim was presented to 260+ attendees at our Saturday night banquet. The demo was very well-received, as you can tell from this video!  Lots of oohs and aahs as we showed the six finished interiors at MDRS as well as our initial Terrain Model.  This is just a taste of our final VR environment but you can see the direction we are heading in, it's pretty exciting!

We also showed the Matterport Scans of the MDRS which we previously shared with our backers in June: http://mdrs.marssociety.org/matterport-scans/

Second Video: Virtual Reality & Mars Panel

This Panel featured the Mars Society's MarsVR project and Texas A&M's SpaceCRAFT VR project.  Our partners at Texas A&M have been doing a great job of helping us build 3-D models and assist with mission designs.

Panelists included:

• (me) James Burk, Program Manager, MarsVR & IT Director, the Mars Society.
  
• Shannon Norrell, Director of Engineering, MarsVR & Co-Founder of HP’s Mars Home Planet. (Note: we are not affiliated with HP.)
  
• Erik Stowers, Texas A&M & SpaceCraft-VR.com
  
• Jeff Dillon, Senior Engineer, Unity

Enjoy these videos as we march towards our first Beta release!  Thanks again for all of your support, we couldn't have gotten here without you!

Until next time, I'll see you on Mars!

James Burk
Program Manager, MarsVR

MarsVR Video Update: Our Virtual Reality environment takes shape!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 03:39:16 PM

Greetings CrowdExplorers!

I just posted to Youtube our latest program video update, where I provide details on our recent activities.  Featured in the video are the recent work of Shannon Norrell, Director of Engineering for MarsVR, Az Balabanian (photogrammetry expert) and Ben Skogen (drone pilot and terrain modelling expert.)

Check it out!

https://youtu.be/1y3QWpKFJEY