Solar System Treks is a JPL web portal that provides NASA data from various planets, asteroids, and moons. This data is used by scientists, research partners, and the public, including students and teachers. The data includes satellite photography and 3D terrain models.

Collaborative visualization, especially in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), can be helpful in generating new insights, as a team of researchers or students can examine the data together and collectively generate and discuss new ideas and hypotheses.

A prototype of VR capability called “Trek VR Room” was developed by a CSULA graduate student for the Solar System Treks Project. The Trek VR Room Demo video can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MdpyAgMW0vN89YHzEY1A3nFve6b__Mk8. It is a VR client which connects to Trek back-end servers to display Mars data contents based on Mars Trek (https://trek.nasa.gov/mars). This is built on SteamVR using Unity, and it only works with HTC VIVE headsets. It allows users to search, view and manage Mars data layers. It provides simple tools for distance measurement and elevation profile generation. It also includes a tool that supports highlight/spotlight an area for detailed examination of the data.

There are two types of VR systems: Standalone and PC VR. Oculus Quest 2 is standalone. It runs on Android, with no wired connection, and no external motion sensors. The Oculus Rift and HTC VIVE are PC VR which require a PC with a good GPU. The latest device from Meta is the Oculus Quest 2.

We propose a project for next year’s CSULA student capstone team to upgrade the prototype with the latest toolkit to support multiple VR devices, by updating or rebuilding the Trek VR Room prototype with Unity and OpenXR to support both Oculus products including Oculus Quest 2 and HTC VIVE headsets. JPL will provide VR devices for the student team to use for their implementation.

The student capstone team will have the ability to analyze and learn from the prototype, and work with JPL Solar System Treks team members to design and implement the modification needed for the upgrade.

After this initial upgrade is done, later cycles of development could focus on making it functional for different planetary bodies starting with the Moon.

This project would create useful tools that would support collaborative visualization of NASA solar system data. This research and development would also enable a variety of future projects that could examine a variety of interesting topics involving virtual reality, augmented reality, visualization, and analytics.

Implementation Phase Teams

Project Lead: Ly Jacky Nhiayi

VR Trek Utility Team: Lucca Andrade, Enrique Guardado, Justin Vuong

User Interface Team: Fabio Carrasco, Bryan Lopez, Ayush Singh

OpenXR Team: Ruben Heredia, Ari Jasko, Rizwan Vazifdar