ODAA6
In this session, we invite participants to share their experiences and insights into leveraging virtual realities for planetary sciences outreach. Through case studies and examples, we will explore the diverse applications of these technologies, from designing immersive environments to facilitating skills development and training initiatives. Additionally, we will address challenges and opportunities related to intuitiveness, inclusiveness, and the future directions of virtual reality in outreach efforts.
Session assets
In the era of climate change concerns, global pandemics, decreasing funding availability and increasing restrictions on travel, the issue of online access to events has become an important topic of discussion. The importance of online access is rarely disputed, with surveys taken during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrating the substantial increase in diversity across factors such as geographical location, gender, race and sexual orientation. However, the online experience is still usually considered subpar compared to attending a physical venue, and hybrid events that combine both groups often struggle to offer online attendees the same level of experience as the in-person crowd. Part of the answer to this challenge may be found in the utilisation of 3D virtual spaces, which can add a far greater sense of presence to an event, and also offer experiences that are not achievable at a physical venue.
To explore the possibility for improving interactions between people online, we developed a virtual exhibit focussed on radio astronomy science and technology in the context of the CSIRO ASKAP radio telescope. As with many instruments in planetary science and astronomy, ASKAP consists of cutting-edge technology with a large physical footprint that cannot be transported to events for demonstrations. Moreover, the ASKAP site at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, is located in a remote area with restricted access to protect the telescope from radio interference. Bringing visitors onto the site is therefore rarely possible, presenting a problem in common with remote observatories as to how to share the experiences of scientific investigation.
We demonstrated the virtual exhibit at a booth equipped with two virtual reality (VR) headsets at three primarily in-person scientific conferences: the 2023 Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Science Meeting in Sydney, Australia (ASA2023), the 2023 Asia Pacific Regional International Astronomical Union Meeting in Koriyama, Japan (APRIM2023) and the 2023 Union Radio-Scientifique Internationale General Assembly and Scientific Symposium in Sapporo, Japan (URSI2023). The aim was to showcase the capabilities of a virtual space in communicating science in an impactful and innovative way, and to demonstrate the strength of virtual platforms to connect and meet with people.
The virtual space was hosted on the VR social network platform, “Spatial”. Spatial can be accessed from the Meta Quest VR headset, computers, and smartphones, providing cross-platform access that allows nearly any person with an internet-ready device to join the space. Visitors joining from their computer can access Spatial from the web browser, further lowering the barrier for entry by not requiring a dedicated application to be installed.
From the left: examining the PAF inside the virtual exhibit, stepping into the 360 degree view of the ASKAP site, at the in-person booth at the URSI conference (final image from CAPjournal, in press.)
The virtual exhibit design resembled a museum, with several rooms containing exhibits with accompanying written and audio information. This was a design choice chosen to give a feeling of familiarity to visitors who may not have previously tried virtual reality. Walking through the exhibit, visitors could chat to one another or receive a guided tour from our team. Only one member of our team was physically on-site at the conference venue, with other team members joining from their home country to meet with exhibit visitors. This emphasised the huge advantage of virtual spaces in bringing people easily together, regardless of their physical location.
Visitors join the exhibit as an avatar, whose location within the virtual space allows for directional audio and audio fall-off. This enables a large group of people to potentially be in the space at the same time and easily hold simultaneous and overlapping conversations as in a physical event hall. Walking through the virtual exhibit moves you naturally between conversations, promoting interactions and networking.
The virtual exhibit included a number of displays that would either be very difficult or not possible in a physical exhibition space. These included animated models of the ASKAP radio antenna and a full-scale model of the Phased Array Feed (PAF) receiver that increases the antenna’s field of view by a factor of 36. Upon approaching the PAF, the receiver expands outwards to reveal the internal components, and a holographic animation of a CSIRO staff member appears next to the model and describes the now visible parts. Visitors could also step inside a 360-degree view of the ASKAP site, providing a view of the antennas as if they were a scientist visiting on location.
This year, we have extended on the initial project, developing an immersive multi-room virtual venue for online and hybrid conference applications. The venue includes galleries for displaying posters, interaction spaces, and exhibit halls, designed around providing familiar and personal experiences that will facilitate effective networking. The virtual venue is planned for use at three conferences to be held in 2024, including the Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Science Meeting and the International Astronomical Union General Assembly, and is intended to enable online participants, via a greater sense of presence, to engage more organically with meeting content and other attendees.
This contribution will present an overview of our experience with the design, construction and demonstration of the virtual exhibits and spaces, with an emphasis on the current technological readiness of virtual reality approaches to augment interactions such as those that take place in conferences and exhibit halls. It is our goal to emphasise that the creation of this kind of virtual experience is not limited to experts in technology, but can be realised similarly with a modest amount of technical expertise combined with readily available hardware. The use of VR for online events has the potential to bring an audience together to share experiences that have the social strengths of a physical location, but provide sights and opportunities that go “beyond being there”.
How to cite: Tasker, E., Moss, V., Rees, G., Hotan, A., Ekers, R., Kobayashi, R., Kerrison, E., and Amos, K.: Virtual spaces for real connections, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-941, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-941, 2024.
The Mars Yard has been created in 2022 at the Cité de l’espace (Toulouse) to host the live animation “The Rovers take the stage” (“Les rovers entrent en scène”). It is built as a ~900 m² arena able to accommodate ~250 persons at a time (Fig. 1). The idea behind that set was to propose an immersive environment faithfully replicating a Martian geological outcrop. To that end, the Mont Mercou outcrop explored by the NASA rover Curiosity in Gale crater has been chosen. Mont Mercou is a ~7m-high stratified dune formed within an ancient river. Studied by Curiosity in 2021, it features one of the most scenic environment of the mission, and was therefore a suitable model for the Mars Yard (Fig. 2a).
When entering the Mars Yard, the visitors enter a scene built as a “mini-crater”, to provide an instantaneous sense of immersion with the Martian set as their immediate landscape. They are facing two walls sculpted and colored to replicate the size, shape and structures typical of the Mont Mercou outcrop with a variety of smooth and cross-stratified series (Figs. 2 and 3). Several small details such as exaggerated renditions of LIBS laser shots have been placed to further this feeling (Fig. 3). On top of the rocky setting, a giant outdoor screen has been installed to provide visual support to the exhibition.
As part of the animation, the visitors get to see four full scale replicas of Martian robotic explorers (Fig. 2b). Two of them are animatronics: the NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, and the CNSA’s Tianwen-1 Zhurong. Both rovers are fully functional and perform movements and simulations of their science activities (e.g., wheel motion, LIBS laser shot, sampling). Two additional replicas are also present: the helicopter Ingenuity and the pioneer rover Sojourner. All of these replicas are presented and/or operated within the Martian setting offered by the Mars Yard as if they actually were on Mars.
These rover operations are taking place as part of a ~40 minutes-long live animation presented by a duo of scientific guides. During this presentation, the visitors are given general but visual information about Mars, its geologic robotic exploration, and therefore the mission of the rovers in front of them. They are also presented with activities like feeling the Martian wind, of the effect of SuperCam’s laser on rocks, using a low-powered laser and a balloon. Recent news from the missions are also given since the animation is regularly updated with the latest notable material. This includes latest images sent back to Earth by the rovers that are displayed on the giant screen.
This exhibition and animation is a joint effort between Cité de l’espace, French Space Agency CNES and the IRAP laboratory in Toulouse.
Figure 1: General aerial view of the Mars Yard (© Cité de l’espace), with full scale replicas of the Zhurong, Sojourner and Perseverance rovers, before installing a giant outdoor screen above the rocky setting.
Figure 2: a) General view of the Mont Mercou outcrop on Mars, that was the main inspiration for the setting of the Mars Yard. This ~7m-high scenic outcrop displays a variety of cm- to dm-scale cross-stratification formed in a fluvial setting (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Thomas Appéré). b) General view of the Mars Yard setting, with full-scale replicas of Perseverance, Sojourner and Zhurong rovers, and Ingenuity helicopter (© Cité de l’espace).
Figure 3: Details of the structures and LIBS laser shots markings reproduced on the Martian setting (© Cité de l’espace).
How to cite: Caravaca, G., Maurice, S., Lasue, J., Lesty, A., Penot, X., Pujol, S., and Seroussi, F.: The Rovers take the stage!: an immersive live experience of Mars exploration, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-739, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-739, 2024.
When coupled with 3D techniques such as photogrammetry or stereoscopy, Virtual and Augmented reality provide new means to investigate planetary surfaces [1]. These immersive rendering systems can be used for either outreach, education, or scientific investigations. We have tested several use cases including orbital flybys derived from high-resolution images and DEMs, or in situ investigations either by humans (Apollo sites) or rovers.
Figure 1 displays an example of a VR scene that we have created with the Unity3D environment in order to fly over the Aristarchus Plateau on the Moon, using mainly Kaguya orbital imagery as input. The scene can be explored on a PC, or using a standalone wireless headset such as the Oculus Quest 2 or 3. The immersive rendering allows a close investigation of the crater morphologies (impact melt on the floor and ejecta, landslides on the crater wall, …) and of the multiple sinuous channels such as the Schröeter Valley, using a free flyover mode at several scales, from global to local.
We have also carried out a detailed investigation of in situ imagery acquired by human or robotic missions. In particular, we have recreated the station 6 geologic waypoint of the Apollo 17 mission, using photogrammetry techniques applied both to Apollo photographs of lunar boulders and to laboratory photographs of lunar rock samples retrieved from these boulders [2, 3]. 3D models of three rock samples have been replaced at their original position on their parent boulders in a Virtual Reality simulation, giving their exact context. They can be freely manipulated in a collaborative SteamVR environment (Figure 2), accessible from this address: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2676700770). This can be useful for example to investigate rock alteration surfaces due to space weathering effects. More evolved analysis such as paleomagnetic studies could even be envisaged with such a photogrammetric approach allowing the precise localization/orientation of the samples.
Finally, the same photogrammetry technique has been tentatively applied on images of the Chinese Chang’e 3 lunar rover to setup another VR simulation, which allows to walk from the landing station up to the “Dragon rock” area (Figure 3). In this case, the 3D reconstruction is made challenging by the fact that the conditions of illumination have significantly changed during the image acquisitions. Indeed, two 360 degrees panoramas were taken in 22-23 and 24 December 2013 and two others in 12-13 January 2014 with an opposite sun angle compared to the first series, creating very different shadows. The merging of the two sets needed to increase the surface coverage therefore locally produce residual artifacts.
Both in the case of a flyover or an in situ ground investigations, one of the main advantages of using a VR system is to facilitate the data handling, to get a better sense of the scales and relationships between different units, and to freely select any point of view to investigate geomorphologic features of interest, from global to local scales. Several rendering and data integration systems can be used, such as simple web-based platform such as Sketchfab (i.e. https://sketchfab.com/LPG-3D), the steamVR workshop, or dedicated systems based on game engines such as VRExplorer.
References : [1] Caravaca et al., Planet. Space Sci, 182, 104808, 2020. [2] Le Mouélic et al., Remote Sensing, 12 (11), 2020. [3] Le Mouélic et al., Planet. Space Sci., 240,105813,, 2024
Figure 1: The Aristarchus Plateau as imaged by Kaguya and integrated into a Virtual Reality simulation allowing to freely fly over the landscape.
Figure 2: Virtual Reality simulation of the Apollo 17 Station 6 boulders and rock samples on SteamVR [3].
Figure 3: Virtual Reality simulation of the Chang’e 3 landing site derived from a photogrammetric analysis of rover images. The users can freely walk from the landing platform (left) up to the “Dragon Rock” (right). A strong opposition effect (brightening) is seen around the shadow of the rover mast (Left).
How to cite: Le Mouélic, S., Caravaca, G., Guenneguez, M., Mangold, N., and Seignovert, B.: Virtual Reality to investigate the surface of the Moon: From the Aristarchus Plateau to the Apollo 17 and Chang’e 3 landing sites, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-432, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-432, 2024.
Recent orbital and rover images of the surface of Mars provide exceptional high-resolution views of the martian landscapes and its surface geology. These extensive datasets provide remarkable resources to teach undergraduate and graduate students about geological concepts and planetary geology. However, despite the panoramic aspect of many of these image datasets and their often very high resolution, the data are generally studied by students on small laptop computer screens or low-resolution projection systems in a classroom setting. This limits the ability to easily explore and interrogate the martian surface. Here, we describe how we use a large visualisation system at Imperial College to enhance student learning about the modern surface of Mars and its ancient past through group-based exploration of geological data returned by probes. Essentially, we take students on ‘fieldtrips’ to Mars.
Imperial College Data Observatory
Imperial College's Data Science Institute houses a remarkable facility, the Data Observatory (DO). This expansive, semi-circular display, spanning approximately ~ 6 m in width and extending from the floor to the ceiling, offers a truly immersive experience [https://www.imperial.ac.uk/data-science/facilities/data-observatory/]. With 313 degrees of visual coverage, it boasts over 132 million pixels provided by 64 fine-bezel, full HD screens. Figure 1 showcases the Data Observatory, featuring a control panel that empowers the presenter to select the desired demonstration, with a rendering of the London map on half of the visual canvas.
Scalable-resolution display environments, including immersive data observatories, are evolving into potent tools for joint data exploration and decision-making. However, effective operation of these platforms depends heavily on specialized middleware. Existing solutions often fall short in this domain, particularly in supporting scalable data visualization rendering effectively. To address these challenges, the Digital Output team developed the Open Visualization Environment (OVE), an innovative, modular, open-source middleware designed to overcome these limitations and enable groundbreaking advancements in large-scale data visualization.
Leveraging OVE as the core rendering engine, we have introduced two instrumental tools to enhance user interaction and streamline workflows. The first tool, next-ove, offers a visual editor that simplifies the design and implementation of large-scale demonstrations, facilitating efficient management of complex projects. The second tool, ove-jupyter, is a Jupyter Notebook extension that allows easy visualization of notebook cell outputs on a Data Observatory with just a couple of lines of configuration code, integrating seamlessly into users' existing workflows and significantly boosting the visualization capabilities within these advanced display environments.
A field- trip to Mars in the Imperial College Data Observatory
Whilst many planetary educational strategies highlight Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality as learning tools these are commonly solo activities. The very large-scale display system in the Imperial Data Observatory enables a combination of self-exploration and guided learning for up to ~20-25 students in a collective environment – much like a real-world fieldtrip on Earth. OVE enables rapid processing and display of very large image datasets in the Data Observatory. Typically, a learning session will involve a preliminary lecture introducing a planetary topic or case study, for example aeolian processes on Mars. This provides essential background enabling common entry to all students to the topic we will explore in the Data Observatory session. Subsequently we make the ‘trip’ on campus to the Observatory with students bringing their field notebooks and rucksacks much as they would on a real fieldtrip. During an educational session we typically explore 4-5 individual image mosaics depending on the learning activity and its goals. Students are then ‘allowed’ to explore the image of a geomorphic feature, for example a barchan dune or a sedimentary rock outcrop by themselves (Figure 2). They are strongly encouraged to explore and discuss jointly with their peers if they so wish. Typically no point-by-point task list or worksheet is provided. On questioning students have explained how they really appreciate the chance to look for themselves with no detailed instructor guidance on tasks. Typically, we allow 15-20 minutes per image (depending on image/topic complexity) for students to explore, make annotated sketches in their field notebooks (Figure 3) and draw interpretations and conclusions from their observations, just as they would in the field. We then discuss our findings in a group setting with students offering their observations, and as a group we develop and discuss interpretations and limitations.
A big advantage of the very large scale of the Data Observatory display system is that rather than zooming in and out of an image as you would do on a computer screen, , the large display allows students to ‘walk around’ the martian rock outcrop, looking up close at details and being able to step back to get the big picture. This ‘big picture’ context is often lost when interrogating the up-close details of a martian outcrop on a smaller screen. Whilst exploring a 2-D panorama is relatively simple compared to being able to view outcrops in 3-D in VR and AR systems, the simplicity of focussing and analysing a single panorama and collaborative nature of the learning activity, enhances the student experience. Significant value can be attached to group discussion with their peers.
In summary, ‘field excursions’ to the Data Observatory at Imperial enable the possibility of partially simulating the field experience in a remote place and in the case of Mars not currently accessible to humans. Here, we are able to navigate from the orbital scale down to the rover-derived outcrop scale enabling students to contextualise their observations. Virtual field trips to the Observatory not only provide a new extra-terrestrial experience for students, but can also act as a ‘primer’ for fieldwork on Earth. Virtual ‘fieldwork’ enables initial development of observational and data capture skills allowing valuable time in the field to be spent on more advanced learning activities. Finally, the DO offers accessibility for students who are unable to readily participate in fieldwork, and provides students the opportunity to gain a sense of actual fieldwork – without the rain!
Figure 1 Overview of the Data Observatory
How to cite: Gupta, S., Ovidiu, S., Caley-Davies, B., Barnes, R., and Jones, A.: Fieldwork teaching on Mars using a Large-Scale Visualisation System, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-814, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-814, 2024.