1. James Burk
IT Director
PRESENTED AT:

2. Picture this…

3. Mars Desert Research Station
Program started in 2001.
195 Crews
1200+ crewmembers
2 week rotations, 6-10 crew per rotation.
Geology, Biology, Astronomy, Human Factors Challenges
More at: mdrs.marssociety.org

4. Phase 1 – MDRS Training Environment
Train the crews using VR before they come to the station.
Environment will work on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, or just a computer.
5+ Training Missions covering EVAs, Airlock, ATV procedures and facility acclimation.
Steam key for general public

5.
Google “MarsVR”

6. Open Source Environment & Assets
We will license the core VR environment built in Unity as GPLv2.
We will provide the actual Unity project to build & customize the environment.
We’ll also share via Creative Commons our MDRS terrain models and all 3-D Models of the base & facilities.
Eventually we will also open source the Mission Content.

7. Technologies We’ll Use
Unity & C# will be our development platform
Photogrammetry
3-D Modeling tools
Headsets: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift
Github for software distribution
We’ll have Wikis, Youtube videos and other training materials.

8. A Serious Research Tool
MDRS is all about the human factors challenges for the first human landings on Mars. MarsVR supports the work already happening.
MarsVR can pilot the methods of “CrowdExploring” allowing people back on earth to assist the astronauts with landing site exploration.
We’ll be creating an engineering-grade VR environment that ultimately can be used (in later phases) to show real Mars terrain via returned data (using MOLA, MOC, HiRISE, CRISM, and other datasets)

9. A STEM Education Platform
Our project is building everything with STEM Education in mind.
Teachers can use the environment to teach about Mars & geology.
Students can use it to learn C# programming, 3-D modelling, game development, and VR development.
We are going to have training for Unity, and tutorials of how to open and customize our environment.

10. A Public Outreach Tool
MarsVR is being designed as a public outreach tool, to instill the vision of humans to Mars via a visceral and realistic environment.
Others have done Mars environments (JPL, Hololens, HTC Vive, various Mars games such as Mars2030) but there have been barriers to broad usage and distribution.

11. The Team Shannon Norrell, VR Expert & Software Developer
Az Balabanian, Photogrammetry expert
Dr. Greg Chamitoff, former astronaut, professor of engineering Texas A&M, founder of SpaceCRAFT VR
Jeff Dillon, senior engineer at Unity Technologies
Robert Madsen, Studio Director of Synaptix Games
Stuart Spence, a Unity expert and educator, creator of Martian Agora

12. Kickstarter Levels $5 – Digital Certificate & Thank you
$10 – Digital poster of Final MDRS Render
$25 – Embroidered patches
$30 – Steam Key to unlock mission content
$50 – Metal Medallion (limited run of 250)
$100 – Early Access
$400 – Become a core developer
$5000 – Become an MDRS Crewmember on Crew 197 in October 2018.

13. Phase 2 & Beyond
Start with the globe of Mars. All named features and landing sites tagged.
“Click” (point) at a location and zoom all the way down to surface level.
Walk around among the real terrain that’s been 3-D rendered using MOLA data and overlaid with orbiter imagery.
Courtesy NatGeo

14. www.Marspedia.org A joint project of Governing Council formed
The Mars Society
The Mars Foundation
The Moon Society
Governing Council formed
Categories Locked
Areography section next
Everybody can help!

15. How can the space groups work together?
Find common projects like VR, online encyclopedias that everybody can participate in.
Find shared goals (public outreach, areas of research)
Helping the chapters with common resources
Space Chapter Hub
Promoting & attending each other’s Meetups
Facebook – share button

16. Follow our progress at: MarsVR.io
THANKS!
Follow our progress at:
MarsVR.io

17. APPENDIX

18. About Me
cell:
facebook.com/james.burk
twitter.com/jamesburk
linkedin.com/jamesburk
Current
IT Director
Manager, Program Management
Vice President
Webmaster
Past
Senior Program Manager
Founding Vice President
Founding Member