NASA's Perseverance Rover in Mozilla Hubs

 

What better way to celebrate the (hopefully successful) landing of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars than by looking at it in Mozilla Hubs!

NASA wonderful model library at https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/ not only has a nice model of Perseverance but its also a) a reasonable size and b) in the .glb format preferred by WebXR apps likeHubs - this is great news if NASA is now standardising on this format. The model is about 4x the recommended Hub size, so mobiles may have issues, but it loads in 20s or so.

As this is a quick build we've just dropped the model into our existing "mars-like" terrain. We checked it for scale and it looks pretty much spot on. We've not added any interpretation boards - we may do that later. 

If you're in VR then you can have great fun getting on your hands and knees to look under the rover - although we couldn't spot Ingenuity.

The model is at: https://hubs.mozilla.com/o3c26nJ/perseverance-mars-rover with a room code of 817861 if you're using a headset.

Remember that since this is WebXR you can just click immediately on the link above to go to Mars in your browser, no need to download or register, and it works with or without a VR headset.

Have fun, and do let us know how you get on in the comments and/or post images on Social Media and share with friends.

And don't forget to also check out our SpaceX Starship Hub room to look at the next generation of Mars spacecraft. That's at https://hubs.mozilla.com/SMUKcDy/starship-test. 

Update: Here's a video of the rover from inside our VR headset:

World Space Week - WebXR Solar System playground

 

Normally at this time of the year we'd be down at The Hive in Worcester for the BIS World Space Day event - the largest of its kind in the UK. Of course with COVID19 that's not happening, so here instead is a little "work in progress" of a solar system playground in WebXR. You can't view this on the web, but if you have a VR headset that is WebXR compatible (most of them now) you can use the headsets web browser to go to:

• https://www.daden.co.uk/webxr

Then follow the Solar System Playground link from that page to the WebXR page, click on the Enter VR button, and immerse yourself in the Solar System.

This is a quick tour of what you should see and what you can do:

The main features are:

• Set sizes of planets to linear or log scale
• Set orbit sizes to linear or log scale
• Just grab hold of a planet to bring it up close to look at it, and turn it over in your "hands"
• Display labels on planets and/or audio naming as you click on them
• Randomise planet positions, sort them into order, and then have your solution scored
• Hide the floor (not for those with vertigo!)
• Move with joystick or by clicking on the footsteps
• Set sizes and orbit sizes to "real" values, scaled to the sun. This make things VERY small and VERY spread out. There's a guideline to help you find all the planets, and Pluto (and maybe Neptune) might actually be outside of the "star" bubble - feels very otherworldly that far out!

Note that this is still a work-in-progress and may have a few bugs, but with World Space Week happening and lots of us in some sort of lockdown we thought it a good time to get it out!

Any bug reports or comments for improvements in the comment or by email to wsw@daden.co.uk.

Enjoy, and hopefully we can meet physically for World Space Week next year!

Fieldscapes in Space!

We built a big star box for our Comet 67P visualisation a while back, and ever since we've wanted to put the whole solar system in it. So we've finally got around to creating a planets inventory which has a prop for each planet in the solar system, plus the sun and moon. In fact several planets have two models, so you can have one set where the planets are to true scale (with Earth at 1m Jupiter is huge!), and another where they just show as being a bit bigger or smaller (so Jupiter is only 2 x Earth).

You can set the planets spinning about their own axis by using the Auto-Rotate widget, and set different, realistic, speeds for each planet. You can't yet set them in orbit about the sun, but perhaps we'll work on that (most likely another set of props which include an invisible "radius stick" that you can set rotating - although it means a fixed size for the orrery.

Of course if you want different planets (or moons) you can just use the SetImage function to paste a whole globe image (real or imagined) onto any of these spheres to make you own planets or moons up!

We'll hopefully also add in the major planetary moons to a later release.

Do let us know how you use it - for instance we want to set up a solar system model along Carding Mill valley!

And of course you can see all this in VR too with Oculus Rift.

Daden releases Rosetta Mission in VR on Google Cardboard

We released our first Google Cardboard VR app onto the Google Play store today. RosettaVR lets you look at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and the Rosetta probe and Philae Lander. For the comet we have both the official ESA 3D shape model, and the textured model developed by Mattias Malmer. For the first release we've reduced the resolution of the models to make for a smaller download, but plan to make a "pro" release shortly with the full size models. The Rosetta and Philae models are from EGPJET3D, and the probe includes an animation mode so that you can watch the huge solar panels expand out.

We've used the release as a chance to try out some different interaction modes, and will continue this theme in future releases. With the limited controls of the standard cardboard, and the typical use case of standing in a crowded room, how best to do you move through a space or look "around" a model. For RosettaVR the main interaction is rotation control, you can set the featured object spinning around the X or Y axis at different speeds, and quickly stop and start it so as to get to a particular point. Then you can zoom in or out. All of this by just looking at the controls, and with the option of single button click confirmation. There is also an additional "drag" mode, so than by holding the button down you can "drag" the comet around a bit to optimise the view.

RosettaVR is currently available only on Android, but if there's the interest we'll do an iOS version (which also works with Cardboard) too - let us know. As mentioned we're also planning a "Pro" version with higher rez models. As well as helping to communicate about the wonders of the solar system and of space exploration the aim is also to use it as a demo to show people what can be done with VR, and to experiment with the different interaction modes. 

And of course whilst this app is all about Rosetta, there are no limitations as to what the objects you are viewing can be in an application like this. They could be products, show homes, cars, machinery animations, process animations, historical artifacts - almost anything. The immediacy and accessibility of the Cardboard also make it ideally suited to customer engagement at trade shows or in retail centres, and as something extra for your salesforce to have with them all the time. So if you have objects or places that you would like to put virtually into the hands of your customers just give us a call on 0121 250 5678, or drop us a line at info@daden.co.uk.

Download RosettaVR onto your Android phone today. (You will need a Google Cardboard to get the full experience).

Comet 67P Model in Daden Campus

To celebrate Philae’s successful landing on Comet 67P as part of the ESA Rosetta mission we’ve imported the ESA 3D model of the comet so that you can go take around around (rather than “on”) it. To access the campus (which loads in your browser) just follow the link to: http://www.daden-cs1.co.uk/demos/dadencampus/Daden...