All Things 3D | Finally "Ascent: Eagle Has Left the Moon" VR Demo is Here! @allthings3d | Uploaded 4 years ago | Updated 5 hours ago
Even though I promised the release of the "Apollo: 'One Small Step For...' VR Experiences" by 4.11.2020, I could not meet this deadline and I am sorry for not being able to live up to this date, which was also the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13, which if you have been following my video trailers for "Lunar Wars," had different explanation for its "accident."
Progress has been slow as I have worked to make Ascent & Lunar Wars more realistic in both its visual experience, but also push the Unreal Engine past its limitations of fairly limited worldspace. Now, with the help of a custom world offset function, you can frankly travel millions of nautical miles without 32 bit floating errors solved by other "space" experiences by using a 64 bit floating point system or transitions. I also took advantage of Unreal's new UDIM virtual texture capability introduced in 4.24 and refined in 4.25 which this VR demo is based on by allowing HUGE NASA LROS based 200M per pixel textures covering 2 million square miles on a custom curved mesh to match that of the real lunar surface, giving the user an unprecedented experience never before seen (or heard) in a digital simulation. To add to the realism a simplified propulsion and maneuvering system was created to closely mimic the actual systems put in place 50 years ago. So much so that the entire programmed flight path in this VR demo experience falls within the original flight specifications allowing the user to experience what both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin saw and heard as the traveled across the 64 Nautical miles of the lunar surface to reach a escape velocity in a highly elliptical orbit that took four hours with successive RTS corrective burns to reach the 60 kilometer, circular orbit that allowed them to dock and return back to mother earth.
This demo only allows for the handsfree programmed flight mode to reach insertion with only the ability to start the mission, or abort/reset it. You can also turn off the music if you want to experience it as Neil & Buzz experienced it. When released, not only will you be able to pilot the craft in a LNC assisted mode, but also in the "seat of the pants" manual mode. In both cases you will be still limited to 2 million square kilometers, but it will be a fun way to navigate the area around the sea of tranquility or about an 1/8 of the lunar surface. As mentioned you will also be able to experience what it was like to dock with the CSM, Columbia in programmed, LNC assisted and manual mode from the 60 kilometer circular orbit as seen from earlier demo videos.
Finally, all this will lead you to Lunar Wars that will take your new orbital skills and use them to survive in your mission to succeed as the Apollo 14 commander and return safely to mother earth avoiding or disabling the Soviet Union VK-4 "ATAKA." with some of your own surprises dreamed up by the "Propellerheads" back at NASA or in the Apollo 15 mission on the lunar surface fending off the "Luna Volki," which in Russian means wolves, for the eight wheel autonomous lunar crafts that will hunt and destroy your lunar rover before you can make it back to the safety of the LM and your exit from it the lunar surface. But like your modified LM, your lunar buggy is not without its own surprises for your new Soviet pets.
Ascent VR Demo can be downloaded here: bit.ly/ascentdemo .
Unzip into a location where you have about 5 GBs of free space, read the ReadMe file and run it by double clicking on the ascentRTS.exe. It has been tested on several systems, but highly recommend a system with at least a GTX 1070 and i5, but for the best performance a GTX 1080 or RTX 2070 Super is highly recommended. It is native to Steam VR, Oculus, or Windows Mixed Reality. Performance varies to the VR environment you are running, with the WMR seeming to be the worst performing, but that could be due to being run on a Samsung Odyssey Plus and a three year old i7 based laptop with a NVIDIA 1070.
Enjoy the Ride!
Head out to https://1smallstepfor.space for updates and release information on the release on Steam, VivePort and Oculus, as well as new test demos.
#MASA
Music by Stellerdrone
Voice Recording from the NASA archives
Moon imagery from NASA LROS
Lunar surface objects and Lunar Module either purchased, open source or custom created to match those from the original mission.
Even though I promised the release of the "Apollo: 'One Small Step For...' VR Experiences" by 4.11.2020, I could not meet this deadline and I am sorry for not being able to live up to this date, which was also the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13, which if you have been following my video trailers for "Lunar Wars," had different explanation for its "accident."
Progress has been slow as I have worked to make Ascent & Lunar Wars more realistic in both its visual experience, but also push the Unreal Engine past its limitations of fairly limited worldspace. Now, with the help of a custom world offset function, you can frankly travel millions of nautical miles without 32 bit floating errors solved by other "space" experiences by using a 64 bit floating point system or transitions. I also took advantage of Unreal's new UDIM virtual texture capability introduced in 4.24 and refined in 4.25 which this VR demo is based on by allowing HUGE NASA LROS based 200M per pixel textures covering 2 million square miles on a custom curved mesh to match that of the real lunar surface, giving the user an unprecedented experience never before seen (or heard) in a digital simulation. To add to the realism a simplified propulsion and maneuvering system was created to closely mimic the actual systems put in place 50 years ago. So much so that the entire programmed flight path in this VR demo experience falls within the original flight specifications allowing the user to experience what both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin saw and heard as the traveled across the 64 Nautical miles of the lunar surface to reach a escape velocity in a highly elliptical orbit that took four hours with successive RTS corrective burns to reach the 60 kilometer, circular orbit that allowed them to dock and return back to mother earth.
This demo only allows for the handsfree programmed flight mode to reach insertion with only the ability to start the mission, or abort/reset it. You can also turn off the music if you want to experience it as Neil & Buzz experienced it. When released, not only will you be able to pilot the craft in a LNC assisted mode, but also in the "seat of the pants" manual mode. In both cases you will be still limited to 2 million square kilometers, but it will be a fun way to navigate the area around the sea of tranquility or about an 1/8 of the lunar surface. As mentioned you will also be able to experience what it was like to dock with the CSM, Columbia in programmed, LNC assisted and manual mode from the 60 kilometer circular orbit as seen from earlier demo videos.
Finally, all this will lead you to Lunar Wars that will take your new orbital skills and use them to survive in your mission to succeed as the Apollo 14 commander and return safely to mother earth avoiding or disabling the Soviet Union VK-4 "ATAKA." with some of your own surprises dreamed up by the "Propellerheads" back at NASA or in the Apollo 15 mission on the lunar surface fending off the "Luna Volki," which in Russian means wolves, for the eight wheel autonomous lunar crafts that will hunt and destroy your lunar rover before you can make it back to the safety of the LM and your exit from it the lunar surface. But like your modified LM, your lunar buggy is not without its own surprises for your new Soviet pets.
Ascent VR Demo can be downloaded here: bit.ly/ascentdemo .
Unzip into a location where you have about 5 GBs of free space, read the ReadMe file and run it by double clicking on the ascentRTS.exe. It has been tested on several systems, but highly recommend a system with at least a GTX 1070 and i5, but for the best performance a GTX 1080 or RTX 2070 Super is highly recommended. It is native to Steam VR, Oculus, or Windows Mixed Reality. Performance varies to the VR environment you are running, with the WMR seeming to be the worst performing, but that could be due to being run on a Samsung Odyssey Plus and a three year old i7 based laptop with a NVIDIA 1070.
Enjoy the Ride!
Head out to https://1smallstepfor.space for updates and release information on the release on Steam, VivePort and Oculus, as well as new test demos.
#MASA
Music by Stellerdrone
Voice Recording from the NASA archives
Moon imagery from NASA LROS
Lunar surface objects and Lunar Module either purchased, open source or custom created to match those from the original mission.
