Explore Mars in VR with This Rover Simulator
Earlier this year, NASA retired its Opportunity rover, which had driven around the planet for 15 years. But now, a video game simulator can allow people on Earth to experience its historic run from the comfort of their PCs or VR headsets.
Red Rover, as the simulator is titled, came out last year. The simulator "takes satellite and terrain data from NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) Mars orbiter and incorporates it into a driving simulator," according to creator Alan Chan's description on Steam. HiRISE has taken hundreds of pictures of the Martian surface in the highest detail yet available. There's no game to it; it's just driving.
Previously, the simulator just had a generic "ridiculously overpowered rover" guiding the player through the planet. Now, Chan has added a recreation of Opportunity.
“I added this update because I was saddened to hear about the end of Opportunity’s mission. When NASA announced the end-of-mission for Opportunity this past February, I went back and took at look at our Victoria Crater game level map, and wanted to retrace Opportunity’s steps around the crater," Chan tells Digital Trends.
"This led to finding a really great detailed model of the MER rover on NASA’s website and, after some tinkering in Unreal engine, I was able to rig it and apply some simple path-following A.I. to allow Opportunity to follow its original traversal path.”
The rover's historic run is certainly worth celebrating, since it made scientific history again and again amidst its many discoveries. Chan has added markers noting where Opportunity made its finds. But while players will be able to experience the joy of piloting the rover, it's a skin-deep experience.
“Unfortunately," Chan says, "it does not drill or do any science thing."
Source: Digital Trends
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