A review of Virtual Worlds projects at NASA Ames carried out by DigitalSpace, RIACS and other partners Virtual Iron Bird Workshop (03/31/2004) I. BrahmsVE/SimHab II. ISS-PSA III. ISS-SimStation Online IV. Mars Planetary Fractal Model V. DriveOnMars (VizOpps)

I.BrahmsVE/SimHab A 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-Inspiration STS-61, Hubble Repair training (JSC 1993)

Architecture of BrahmsVE light weight, web, standards, open source

I.BrahmsVE/SimHab Modeling process Video and other activity capture Geographic model: waypoints Brahms agent model Object, gesture and agent 3D models

BrahmsVE/SimHab Planning meeting, EVA prep, EVA water tank filling

BrahmsVE/SimHab Planning meeting

BrahmsVE/SimHab EVA prep

II. ISS-PSA Humans and Robots aboard a Virtual Space Station NASA ISS PSA Design Simulation A robot assistant aboard the Space Station Human Centered Computing (HCC) project

ISS-PSA

III. ISS-SimStation Online Online Instance of SimStation A 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 2002 Used the MOLA 1/128 dataset as terrain source MOLA 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 area Step 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

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 platforms Viewpoint format for animated objects Havok physics in Atmosphere for realistic terrain following Shadow casting, dynamic lighting (Mars “sols”) JavaScript web-based scripting High degree of compression, worlds/rover in demo <1MB uncompressed, less compressed Web-based, fully distributed, multi user chat server option Future: integrating pancam 3D mesh data (VizOpps project)

Rover live 3D rendering

Conclusions Work is in an early stage development but based on a decade of prior work Use of lightweight web-distributed environments a significant development in collaborative modeling and simulation Development 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 2005 Seeking proof of concept projects (contact )

Acknowledgements I. BrahmsVE/SimHab: Maarten Sierhuis, William Clancey, RIACS and Digital Space teams II. ISS-PSA: Charles Neveau, Maarten Sierhuis, William Clancey III. ISS-SimStation: Mark Shirley, Tom Cochrane IV. Mars Planetary Fractal Model: Ken Heidenreich & students, Ruth Fry, Ken Musgrave, Pandromeda, DS team for FMARS habitat, Geoff Briggs for inspiration VI. DriveOnMars: Michael Sims, Larry Edwards, John Callas, Carter Emmart, DS team Find all project materials at: