Between 26-29October, the corner of Canal and Varick streets in New York City was bustling with space enthusiasts, virtual reality bloggers, media influencers and experience seekers vying for a spot to land on Mars. Once inside the Mars Experience, recruits climbed aboard the cable coaster virtual reality simulator and traversed the landscape of Mars prior to officially touching down.
"The cable coaster is a 6 degree of freedom rig which means it creates dynamic movement well beyond a traditional 3 degree rig. The Traditional 3 D rigs have three axes of motion: Up/Down, Left/Right, Backwards/Forwards. With our 6 degree of freedom rig, we take the same axes of motion from a 3D rig but we add an additional three; Roll, Pitch, Yaw. With six independent axes of motion our rig has the same motion characteristics of an airplane or a helicopter." shared Ben Gasper, TAIT's project manager, who worked closely on this project over the past five weeks.
"Once we strapped the recruits in, they put their VR headsets on, which were accompanied by audio, and they were completely immersed in the world we provided. We were able to give not just the sense of flying: but also gravity, acceleration and reverse thrust. It was more than just 'flying' to Mars, it was the full Mars Experience."
The cable coaster itself is a TAIT product that has been used in different capacities; however, as noted by Jim Shumway and Alex Serrano, TAIT's technical leads, the 6 degree of freedom rig (cable coaster) had never been combined with an immersive VR experience.
TAIT, who was contacted by Production Glue to assist in National Geographic's immersive installation, has spent the past few years assimilating VR into their innovation process for internal purposes and external purposes.
(Jim Evans)
