A review of Virtual Worlds projectsat NASA Ames carried out by DigitalSpace, RIACS and other partnersVirtual Iron Bird Workshop (03/31/2004)I. BrahmsVE/SimHabII. ISS-PSAIII. ISS-SimStation OnlineIV. Mars Planetary Fractal ModelV. DriveOnMars (VizOpps)

I. BrahmsVE/SimHabA virtual environment platform for discrete

agent work practice simulation

Begun in 1999, models of activities aboard Mars Analog Habitats FMARS and MDRS (SimHab)Humans in future mission concepts, modeled from captured habitat crew activities

I. BrahmsVE/SimHab-InspirationSTS-61, Hubble Repair training (JSC 1993)

Architecture of BrahmsVElight weight, web, standards, open source

I. BrahmsVE/SimHabModeling process

Video and other activity capture

Geographic model: waypoints

Brahms agent model

Object, gesture and agent 3D models

BrahmsVE/SimHabPlanning meeting, EVA prep, EVA water tank

filling

BrahmsVE/SimHabPlanning meeting

BrahmsVE/SimHabEVA prep

II. ISS-PSAHumans and Robots aboard a Virtual Space

Station

NASA ISS PSA Design SimulationA robot assistant aboard the Space StationHuman Centered Computing (HCC) project

ISS-PSA

ISS-PSA

ISS-PSA

ISS-PSA

III. ISS-SimStation Online

Online Instance of SimStationA rendition of SimStation project of Shirley, Cochrane et al,

goals for online collaboration and document linking,early development phase

ISS-SimStation Online – A Mirror World

Web-based plugin (Adobe Atmosphere) with PHP/MySQL and Constructor parses XML component connection model to assemble station, components link to:

•online documents•close-out photography•video•Notations•multi user collaboration•voice loops•Future: construction/EVA viz

ISS-SimStation Online - view

Commissioned by Geoff Briggs, Summer 2002Used the MOLA 1/128 dataset as terrain sourceMOLA data translated into .DEM by 3DEM, seamlessly stitches a terrain patch. Outputs elevation profiles of any path, allows verification of elevation, latitude and longitude or areaStep to mimic the actual colors and textures of the Martian surface using orbital photos of surface and atmospheric images. Artistic license employed: thinning the clouds, adding stars, etc. Artistic license of surface simulation.

IV. Mars Planetary Fractal Model

Locale modeled

Mars Planetary Fractal Model Rendered landing at Gusev

Mars Planetary Fractal ModelRendered landing at Gusev

Apollonaris Volcano and Gusev Crater

Mars Planetary Fractal Model

Mars Planetary Fractal Model Apollonaris and view of Gusev

MER and FMARS Analogue Habitat on the surface

Mars Planetary Fractal Model

Goals:Build on the positive experience from Pathfinder/1997

and offer a high fidelity yet low bandwidth 3D interactive experience of the MER/2004 surface operations and support a wide range of public outreach goals.

3D virtual terrain to be included modeled from real MER data, simulation of vehicles making traverses, driving the virtual rovers through alternate traverses.

Create a direction for proposed mission visualization (Mars Drill)

V. Drive On Mars

Drive On Mars

Adobe Atmosphere player (~1.4MB web plugin) wide distribution, multiple platformsViewpoint format for animated objectsHavok physics in Atmosphere for realistic terrain followingShadow casting, dynamic lighting (Mars “sols”)JavaScript web-based scriptingHigh degree of compression, worlds/rover in demo <1MB uncompressed, less compressedWeb-based, fully distributed, multi user chat server optionFuture: integrating pancam 3D mesh data (VizOpps project)

www.DriveOnMars.com

www.DriveOnMars.com

www.DriveOnMars.com

www.DriveOnMars.com

www.DriveOnMars.comRover live 3D rendering

Conclusions

Work is in an early stage development but based on a decade of prior workUse of lightweight web-distributed environments a significant development in collaborative modeling and simulationDevelopment is much more rapid (10% compiled binary components, rest script and database) and agent and 3D models can be developed in a fraction of the time.BrahmsVE is funded to product introduction in the Fall of 2005Seeking proof of concept projects (contact damer@digitalspace.com, 831 338 9400)

Acknowledgements

I. BrahmsVE/SimHab: Maarten Sierhuis, William Clancey, RIACS and Digital Space teamsII. ISS-PSA: Charles Neveau, Maarten Sierhuis, William ClanceyIII. ISS-SimStation: Mark Shirley, Tom CochraneIV. Mars Planetary Fractal Model: Ken Heidenreich & students, Ruth Fry, Ken Musgrave, Pandromeda, DS team for FMARS habitat, Geoff Briggs for inspirationVI. DriveOnMars: Michael Sims, Larry Edwards, John Callas, Carter Emmart, DS teamFind all project materials at: www.digitalspace.com