NASA Is Building a Virtual Mars For VR Viewing

An anonymous reader writes: NASA will release a free virtual reality program this year that will simulate exploring the surface of Mars. "Players will be able to walk on the Red Planet as well as drive the Mars Rover..." reads the official announcement at UnrealEngine.com. The Mars 2030 Experience will be available on Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, and Samsung Gear VR, and will also "expand" to Sony PlayStation VR and HTC Vive, with additional versions for Android and iOS devices, and it will even be streamed on Twitch. NASA plans to reveal more details at this year's South by Southwest conference in March.

Re: Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

it's an alcoholic beverage.
Prefered by alcoholics who like to pretend they aren't alcoholics.

I only drink a bottle a day they say.

Much easier than the real thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said Nasa didn't have a plan for Mars?

Sending manned missions and robot rovers is a thing of the past and dangerous, the future is in VR missions.

Re: Much easier than the real thing...

[sims 2]

Careful now we wouldn't want a repeat of the moon landing now would we?

Simulation

[KeensMustard]

Anybody going to Mars is not going to spend much time wandering around on the surface (owing to the radiation). It might be better therefore to simulate cowering underground in a cave hoping that the airseal doesn't blow out and kill you. Perhaps they could kill of every 3rd participant to really simulate the experience of living with the hazards of Mars.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[NotDrWho]

Matt Damon!

Re:

[KeensMustard]

By All means, let's never actually talk about what living on Mars will actually be like so as to not spoil the fairytale of Mars as a winter wonderland where the days are spent ice-skating and cavorting on the frozen canals, snacking on delicious local delicacies.

New vehicle DLC

[stealth_finger]

They could put something a bit nippier than the mars rover in. What about tooling around mars in the batmobile or mad max's car? What about an F-14? That would be sweet!.

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[Trogre]

Yes, I agree it would be interesting to model exactly what would happen to an F-14 in a martian atmosphere and gravity.

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[portwojc]

What about X-plane? www.x-plane.com/adventures/mars.html

Sounds like it would be interesting to try but you have a lot of problems to deal with.

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[jthill]

What about an F-14?

You can do that now [google.com].

Well, no, not quite. It's an F-16 [google.com].

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[NotDrWho]

Fuck it, too hard. Can't I just pay someone to implant the memory of vacationing on Mars in my head?

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[stealth_finger]

Sure, I can't possibly see any problems arising from that.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Vapourware

[bill_mcgonigle]

It was the same back in the 90's. NASA had QuickTime VR images of Mars and some scoundrels put up a site where you could pay ~$30 to "control" the rover camera (with no rtt latency, surprisingly enough). Twenty years later, we're paying tax money for StreetView Mars for no sound reason.

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[Rei]

Oh geez, if any group ever wants to hack a website "for the lolz", they should totally hack NASA's server for this service and insert some ancient ruins or a monolith or something. ;) The prank would hit twice - first by the people thinking it was proof of aliens, and then when NASA corrected it, people thinking it's a coverup ;)

virtual mars better than a virtual fantasy world?

[sittingnut]

a realistic virtual mars may be interesting to explore for most people, and even useful to a few. but interest and usefulness will be limited. most people will find it boring after few minutes.
compare that to a virtual fantasy world with stuff to do. that is also interesting and can be useful. and if creators were truly innovative, less boring.

so what it the news?

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[Rei]

Why not combine the two? Use their virtual environment as a frontend for a collaborative colony-building simulation (with our "best knowledge" data on the likely distribution of minerals and such incorporated), everything from mining, refining, production, goods transportation, installation/assembly, etc. People could contribute modules that accomplish tasks, with varying levels of design maturity (everything from stub modules that simply take a given set of inputs and yield a certain set of outputs, to a

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[NotDrWho]

You don't find an barren desert of rust exciting?

Isn't this a repeat?

[roc97007]

I'm pretty sure I saw this article here a month or two ago.

Drive the mars rover.

[sims 2]

Drive the mars rover. Thats about like desert bus but slower right?