ISS Demo Resurrected with Unity 5.2, Oculus 0.8, latest Leap

[crevver]

Download the Oculus Win64 DK2 Version here:
(Bluetooth Controller, Nod Ring, Leap Motion supported, but WASD mouse work too)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zck3psvy5svxh7x/WrenAR_ISS_Demo_WIn64_DK2_Leap_11_21_15.rar?dl=0

I scored a GearVR for my Note 4 about a week ago, and this inspired me to port an old ISS (space station) demo I made early this year to it to see what the hardware could do. The original plan was to make my GearVR support Leap, but after a lot of different configurations, and back and forth with the guys at Leap, I'm pretty sure this is a really difficult proposition with the GearVR1 (Note4 version). I should note however that the new GearVR(S6,Note5) has an additional micro USB port which has been purported to support Leap well. Instead I got a bluetooth controller hooked up and tuned the controls to make this a really fun experience. Gear is very limited on textures and shaders, and limiting lights, doing lightmapping, and basically turning things off as much as possible is necessary to get the framerate acceptable. In stripping down the Gear version I learned a lot about shaders and lights for this demo and decided to then turn back towards DK2 development and apply what I learned to a high end version. First step was to improve the Earth, so I updated ground textures added detail maps and normal detail maps to give it some tooth, and hugely improved the clouds. I also tried to adjust its size and position so that it was more in keeping with the actual orbit of the ISS. The framerate was butter smooth north of 60fps, this video does not do it justice, the DK2 feed was way smoother. So I found myself hanging out in the ISS for long stretches, some of them over an hour. I fixed up some geometry issues, and then decided I needed the entire ISS visible when you look out the Cupola, so I put it in, and it looks awesome!!! Using a brand new camera rig I built for the Gear setup, I then added in the Leap Motion controller so you can reach out and touch objects floating in zero-g. It's shaping up to be a really good project. Need to add some more interactivity in the next pass, more stuff to do, missions etc.

I've got GearVR versions of this too, but harder to share those (sig files etc)
Considering an "Oculus Share" version of both of these to make them easier to distribute.

If you've got no controller, WASD and mouse work fine, but mouse is a little sensitive, so go easy and don't barf.

Njoy.

http://www.wrenar.com

-C

[crevver]

Some nice updates today to this demo:
- Built out a day/night shader transition system (hooked to mousewheel temporarily)
- Tweaked the PC controls to make them more friendly (WASD/Arrows + Mouse)
- Added time controls to speed up or slow down your tour of the world (+/-)
- Enter/Esc to reset demo/reorient headset

Download the Win64/DK2 version with these changes:
(Leap Motion, Bluetooth Controller & Nod Ring supported but optional)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/auyrr946ygnmyt6/WrenAR_ISS_DayNightTest_WIn64_DK2_Leap_11_23_15.rar?dl=0

Njoy.
-C

www.wrenar.com

[TheoA]

@crevver Very interesting work. Do you have a vision as to where this work will take you?

Ditto with your work on visualizing Shackleton Crater?

[crevver]

@TheoA Thanks for checking it out.

The ISS project is with a former student of mine, he's doing all the great interior space station artwork in this demo. We're looking for a good fit for this as either an installation (NASA/Smithsonian) or as an educational tool for cardboard/gearVR etc. Who knows might turn into a zombie shooter before it's all done

The Shackleton game is finding its feet too, it was started with a non-profit looking to get middle/high school students interested in STEM and the Moon. It's been a vehicle for me to experiment with a lot of VR concepts: gesturing, interface, controllers, physics, graphics etc. It's sort of a frankenstein right now, part FPS, part RTS, part Simulation. While I've done most of the work to this point, there's a great group of students from UMBC designing and getting involved, so I think this project will hone itself and turn into something more concrete. Right now it's a hundred different prototypes in one package, it just needs some love and direction. I think it is moving in a "The Martian" direction in terms of survival etc with some real sciencey lean.

[crevver]

Tonight I spent some time figuring out how to get cool food and water globules to float through the air and be interactive on the space station. The results turned out better than I hoped, and really fun! I have some stability issues on these to work out with physics and data structures, but I'll post up a build with them soon. Next up: barf in space! www.wrenar.com

[TheoA]

@crevver

Are you Gellin?
What fun!

It's really nice to see an imagination running wild, simulations that connect with reality (not just games) and a link to STEM topics. Nice going. I'm intrigued by your proposed next investigation

Moon, Mars & STEM
We have similar interests.

Have a look at my Outer Space.

This project provides 3D height data for the entire surfaces of the Moon and Mars plus Three.js viewers with variety of specialties plus gazetteers, node scripts and more - all open source and in GitHUB CORS-enabled repositories.

I am looking for peeps who could have fun playing with the data and scripts - especially with ways of Leap-enabling this data viz.

I am happy customizing the data for particular uses and mentoring/encouraging users through some of the mysteries of 3D dev.

So let's do a Mars thing...

Theo

[crevver]

Awesome Theo! I may need to borrow some of that height data to map Shackleton properly

Today I had just about as much fun in VR as I've ever had, I fixed up the gels I made yesterday and made them pretty stable. If you've got a DK2, you can play with them!
Here's a build with the Gels to play with: (Win64 DK2 Required / Leap Motion, Bluetooth Controller, and Nod Ring supported)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/88dhnre6fbje89t/WrenAR_SpaceGel.rar?dl=0

Controls:
Movement: WASD /Arrows/Left Joystick
Rotate View: Mouse/Right Joystick
Look/Positional Track: Oculus DK2
Speed Up/Slow Down Time: +/-
Change Time of Day for Earth: Mousewheel

http://www.wrenar.com

[TheoA]

@crevver

Space Jello-O looks good. Very realistic looking.

Sorry, I don't have a DK2 and my DK1 is out on loan. ;-(

Any thoughts about building non-occulus versions?

[crevver]

Haha, yeah I can do that, I gave you a fake hand to play with these things sans-Leap (Note: it is a sad downgrade of the experience, but better than none at all). Also Note: If you had asked for a Mac version, it would be the end of our friendship.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mnswxafo313fwq/WrenAR_ISS_Demo_PC_11_25_15.rar?dl=0

Controls are the same (and gamepad still supported):

Movement: WASD /Arrows/Left Joystick
Rotate View: Mouse/Right Joystick
Speed Up/Slow Down Time: +/-
Change Time of Day for Earth: Mousewheel

-C

[crevver]

Post-turkey...Decided to experiment with some internet access on the laptops aboard the space station and it evolved a bit. Yeah it's VR, yeah that's hand gesture recognition with the Leap Motion, yeah that's my live website in my virtual environment, yeah I'm running a video by pushing a button with my finger in virtual space, yeah that's my live webpage on a piece of cloth I can spin around like pizza dough. I've got a few more control features to add in here and I'll post up a build soon for those interested.

Njoy. -C

http://www.wrenar.com

[crevver]

I think I'm at a good point to shift gears, my moon project is calling. Mars thing could be fun! Can you export heightmap data in photoshop RAW format? If so I think we can get a quick mock up together in no time! Let me know.

[TheoA]

@crevver

Surf the Web From Outer Space
You are hot! The interpipes live on a weightless cloth. Is that a first? Has anybody else done this? Is this just a Unity thing or could this be done with JavaScript?

Heightmaps

Can you export heightmap data in photoshop RAW format? If so I think we can get a quick mock up together in no time! Let me know.

Fascinating question. I will try to respond

I am getting Mars data from here:

http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/mgs/mola.html

And, more specifically, from this folder:

http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mgs/mgs-m-mola-5-megdr-l3-v1/mgsl_300x/meg128/

The data is in binary format with two bytes per number. Each number represents a distance from the center of mars. There are 128 data points per degree both north and south.

I am using node.js to translate the binary data over to PNG files. You can see the node files here

https://github.com/jaanga/mars/tree/gh-pages/utilities

I need to fix stuff here and add links and documentation - and will do so if you are interested.

The PNG files are pretty. Here is lat / lon 0,0:

Each pixel represents a height. PNGs are good because they have good lossless compression. are sent over the Internet at blazing speed and there are lots of JavaScript tools to manipulate the data.

Here's what it - and surrounding area look like in 3D

http://jaanga.github.io/mars/rover/128p/mars-rover-128p-multi-tile-r3-1.html#0#8#0#8

When I click the above link from the Forum page, all the tracking stuff seems to stop the link from working. You may be better off copy and pasting the link into a new tab.

Having said all that, I am wondering: why do you want PhotoShop RAW data? Yes, there is probably some Node utility that can convert binary numbers to RAW. But it would seem to me that there must be some simpler, faster way of doing this.

With Three.js I create a flat 256x256 XYZ mesh and then use the numbers from the PNG files to bump the heights. How would you do this in Unity?

[crevver]

http://jaanga.github.io/mars/rover/128p/mars-rover-128p-multi-tile-r3-1.html#0#8#0#8

That's cool. RAW format is black and white, and uses a grayscale values to denote elevation. your PNG format might be transferrable, we'd have to give it a try to see/experiment with bit depths to find the best result.

I took a screen of the sample terrain you provided, it looks great and resolution is good, while I'm sure the data points are valid, the radical spikes seem a bit extreme relative to their neighbors, I think maybe a low pass filter to connect points more gradually within the same neighborhood might yield more representative gradients on the topography. I'm not sure how to do this without making it inaccurate, because at some level there is some educated guesswork involved.

I went through the ODE site, their formats are all DB values, which I think we can export into a RAW file, but not sure if this can be done through the site.

If you can get me a high rez PNG I'll give conversion of that a try.

[TheoA]

Hi @crevver

Sorry for the delay in replying. I seemed to have overlooked your response.

RAW format is black and white, and uses a grayscale values to denote elevation. your PNG format might be transferrable,

Gray is good, but typically this means that all three RGB values are identical - ie RGB( 111, 111, 111 ) or RGB( 200, 200, 200 ) - which is fine. The heightmaps I made for the moon use these values. The downside is that using gray only give you just 256 values. OK, so there is the possibility of using 16 bit TIFF image gray values but that opens its own cans of worms.

Thus the files currently are using color - which gives you the full 16 million values - which is more than enough given that earth goes plus or minus 10K meters and Mars something like twice that.

the radical spikes seem a bit extreme relative to their neighbors

Much of the height issues are because of the extreme scaling I set as the default. When you set the height scale to 'realistic' it all becomes flat as pancake and nobody wants to look at it.

Move the height slide and you will see this.

So I set the default to look normal for people who are gamers and deal with things on other planets and outer space and the such. ie students. Does that make sense? The data is all bona fide NASA data - so I would not play with that - but do argue with me about my exaggerated defaults.

If you can get me a high rez PNG I'll give conversion of that a try.

The current files PNG files on GitHub are 128 pixels per side per degree. As far as I know these are the highest quality currently available for the entire planet. There is 256 pixel data - if I remember correctly but only for certain area.

So is your priority whole planet or certain areas only (eventually we can do both, but let's start with one.)?

In any case, I think I can get the data into any format you want - with fast turnaround (when I read your messages ;-). Node.js is my friend.