Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/724677
www.postmagazine.com 35 POST SEPTEMBER 2016 REALITY virtual Currently, the digital crew consists of approximately 20 or so individuals whose roles span everything from technical development to generating actual design elements for the experience. Authenticity for the project is para- mount — after all, this is not a video game, Reyes points out. "It feels as if we are virtually rebuilding a mission to Mars. We have the highest consideration of what is actually being considered in such a mission, and we want to get all that infor- mation inside of our VR experience and have it as accurate as possible," he says. "That is why we have been trying to push so hard on the graphic capabilities of VR, to be able to translate the research in not only a technical way, but visually as well." One person who joined the project is Dave Flamburis, lead CG artist and creative consultant, who brings a host of realtime experience from working on Triple-A games. "Julian asked me where I would like to take this and I said, 'I don't know, but I am in,'" he recalls. Exactly how does one go about creat- ing a realistic version of an actual planet? Flamburis was given a primitive proto- type with some height map-based terrain — not much in the way of a detailed landscape, he adds. "We decided to figure out what it would be like standing there, and started by breaking down the environment into its essential pieces," says Flamburis. Flamburis and Reyes devised a sub- stantial list of questions for the scientists at NASA. "They answered all my technical questions, and then I started asking a lot of common questions, like if I was on Mars and bent down and dusted off the red soil, what would I find? We started getting deeper and deeper into things, like what is the essential makeup of all the rocks that you see everywhere? I was trying to nail down the variety of rocks I was seeing, the scale of everything and figure out what color the planet really is," he says. Some information we know about Mars came from imagery sent back from the Viking 1 in the 1970s, when technology was not as advanced and the process- ing of white light proved difficult. That is where we got the notion that Mars is bathed in red, thus the nickname "the red planet." However, the majority of our cur- rent information comes from the Curiosity rover. From this recent data, scientists now know that the planet is more of a butterscotch color. PLANETARY FORMATION According to Reyes, Mars 2030 is a cross-discipline collaboration involving space exploration research, advancements in realtime 3D rendering for VR to achieve the most realistic visuals and physics, and multi-dimensional audio, working with a team at Source Sound to fully immerse users within the experience. "Mars 2030 combines those elements: the latest in scientific research to visualize the future, the most bleeding-edge graphics, and pushing the envelope in VR and multi-di- rectional audio," he says. In terms of the visuals, Epic's Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) became the development habitat for the project — the fact that the project team had years of experience working with the engine was definitely a plus, but more so because "the graphical output of UE4 is superior," says Reyes. "It is a powerful engine, and we are striving for a level of realism in VR and wanted an engine that would let us get there." "We are pushing graphic boundaries to show what it is like to actually be on Mars and let people experience being there," Flamburis adds. When Flamburis came aboard this past January, the terrain already had been processed using remote surface imaging data and height maps that were stitched together. The information is based on elevation data from imagery taken by the Mars Orbiter Mission space probe, resulting in an eight-by-eight kilometer swath with an accuracy of approximately one foot in height, generated by technical designer Justin Sonnekalb. Because an ac- tual region has not been selected yet for the real Mars One venture, the Mars 2030 team honed in on an actual area on Mars with features that would make it a viable landing spot, and then re-created that as the locale for the virtual experience. It was then up to Flamburis to add realistic geol- ogy, including rocks and Martian soil. "I spent about a week of research, thinking about things and talking to Martian geologists at NASA," says A group of game developers and CG experts, under the moniker Fusion, are creating the VR experience Mars 2030, which enables users to get an accurate feel for what it is like living on 'the red planet.'