Digital Trends Live: Zoom’s privacy, YouTube Shorts, NBA2K, and more
On this Digital Trends Live, we discuss the top tech stories, including Zoom’s privacy struggles, and more.
Digital Trends Live: Xbox specs, ‘cloud raves,’ no TikTok for TSA
On Monday's episode, we discuss the hottest topics in tech, including the passing of NASA's Katherine Johnson.
Digital Trends Live: PlayStation 5 leak, Zuckerberg goes to Congress, and more
On this episode of Digital Trends Live, we discuss the biggest-trending tech topics, including a leaked PlayStation 5 photo, Mark Zuckerberg's plans to testify in congress, Virginia's snack-delivering drones, NASA's inflatable habitats, and more.
NASA Icon Coverage And More – Live In VR This Week
Welcome to Live in VR! Our weekly roundup of everything that’s happening in headsets!
It’s definitely a quieter week on the live in VR side of things. But if you’re a space junkie (like a real one not a fan of the VR game) then you’ll want to turn into Bigscreen for sure.
Bigscreen
NASA: Icon Mission Channel – October 10 12:25am PT
Follow along with the launch of NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) with friends in Bigscreen. ICON’s mission is to study the frontier of space, examining where our atmosphere meets the black abyss. It sounds like a sci-fi treat, so it’ll be fitting to watch it unfold in VR.
AltspaceVR
I.M. Possible – October 9 2pm PT
Want to share some virtual success stories? I.M. Possible is your chance to talk about defying the odds in the virtual realm. Join others at the Ravenhall Forum and embrace the good times.
—
Want to have your VR event listed in a future edition of Live In VR? Reach out to Jamie at jamie@uploadvr.com!
The post NASA Icon Coverage And More – Live In VR This Week appeared first on UploadVR.
Middle School Students Can Now Learn About Microgravity Through VR
A new Microsoft Garage project, Microgravity Lab, presents teachers with a new and interactive way to teach middle school students about complex physics concepts in microgravity.
The experience will allow students to explore physics principles, including conservation of momentum and Newton’s 3nd and 3rd law, through the context of microgravity on the moon. Microgravity is a concept that is hard to explain and simulate on earth, and therefore easier to teach through a platform like VR.
The Microgravity Lab was developed by a Microsoft intern team in Vancouver, in collaboration with NASA. It simulates the conditions experienced by astronauts while in space, making it easier for students to understand these complex physics concepts.
“The concept of microgravity is often misunderstood by students who learn about astronauts on the International Space Station,” said Matthew E. Wallace, an education specialist for NASA. “Providing a virtual reality world for them to explore the phenomena of life on orbit is an excellent way to engage students and solidify their comprehension of concepts related to force, mass and gravitational acceleration.”
The experience is part of a wider collaboration between NASA and Microsoft that features to a collection of middle school lesson plans.
Teachers that are interested in using the Microgravity Lab in their classroom can request an invite through Microsoft. There’s also an extensive lesson plan that goes along with the experience, which takes place across four, 50-minute classes.
You can read more about the development of the experience in this Microsoft Garage blog post.
The post Middle School Students Can Now Learn About Microgravity Through VR appeared first on UploadVR.
Mars lander simulator lets you take Opportunity rover for one last spin
NASA called it quits on its 15-year-old, record-setting Mars rover Opportunity earlier this year. Thankfully, a new update for a Mars rover simulator lets you take Opportunity for another spin.
These are the 10 most important tech news stories of 2018
From Facebook scandals to unprecedented space travel, 2018 has been a year of important, turbulent, exciting, worrying, and delightful tech news. We count the 10 tech stories that will be influencing the future.
The post These are the 10 most important tech news stories of 2018 appeared first on Digital Trends.
Life in 360°: Fuelling A Storm
Hello everybody and welcome to another week of immersive tech content here at VRFocus. There is, as always, plenty to discuss this week regardless of the type of ‘Reality’ you are personally interested in. But before we get to any of that we need to start things off with Monday’s edition of Life in 360°.
The last few years it certainly feels like we’ve seen more and more extreme weather, and stronger and stronger instances of ‘regular’ weather. Just over a year ago, from September to early October 2017 the island of Puerto Rico (as well as Dominica) was hit by the devastating Hurricane Maria. A hurricane that led to the island’s infrastructure being effectively annihilated and a death toll now believed to be in the thousands.
But how did Maria become so strong, and so very, very fast? Well, in this video from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio and it’s Goddard Space Flight Center they combine an array of data into a 3D model to explain.
“Two days before Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the NASA-Japan Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite captured a 3-D view of the storm. At the time Maria was a Category 1 hurricane. The 3-D view reveals the processes inside the hurricane that would fuel the storm’s intensification to a category 5 within 24 hours.
For the first time in 360-degrees, this data visualization takes you inside the hurricane. The precipitation satellite has an advanced radar that measures both liquid and frozen water. The brightly colored dots show areas of rainfall, where green and yellow show low rates and red and purple show high rates. At the top of the hurricane, where temperatures are colder, blue and purple dots show light and heavy frozen precipitation. The colored areas below the dots show how much rain is falling at the surface.”
Life In 360°: Probing the Sun
It’s Friday so we start the day as we always do with a 360-degree video from the world wide web. As we’ve had a space themed sci-fi week it would be rude not to continue, but rather than space volcanoes or balloons slowly making their way through the atmosphere it’s time to embrace NASA’s attempt to ‘touch’ the Sun.
While the space agency is well versed in sending probes to other planets and the out reaches of our solar system, heading towards the Sun is another matter entirely. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will be its first attempt to travel directly into the Sun’s atmosphere about 4 million miles from the surface.
The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, was fitting to a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket which lifted off from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida this August. Parker Solar Probe will employ a combination of scientific investigations to improve our understanding of the corona and expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar wind.
The 360-degree video not only showcases the launch from several angles but goes behind the scenes, into the cavernous buildings where NASA assembles these giant machines prior to lift off.
Check out the video below and return next week for another one of Kev’s Life In 360° videos.
NASA Use Microsoft HoloLens for Assembling New Spacecraft
When building something that needs to take human beings into space, getting it right first time is completely vital. This is very challenging when building a completely unique device, something which has never been built before. Lockheed Martin engineers working on building the latest NASA spacecraft have turned to the HoloLens mixed reality (MR) headset in an attempt to improve the process.
Previously, aerospace organisation including Boeing and Airbus have used complex manuals to try and convey instructions to workers. These manuals can run to over a thousand pages, and difficult to consult during the construction process. Lockheed Martin are using MR and augmented reality (AR) to help engineers do their jobs more efficiently.
One spacecraft technician, Decker Jory explained about his use of the HoloLens for working on the Orion spacecraft, the craft meant to be mounted on the NASA Space Launch System, the successor to the Space Shuttle program: “At the start of the day, I put on the device to get accustomed to what we will be doing in the morning.”
The headset lets workers see holograms images which shows models of parts and labels overlaid on already assembled pieces of the spacecraft. Information such as torquing instructions can be displayed right on top of the areas where they are relevant.
The virtual models are even colour-coded to the role of the person using the headset. For Jory and his team, who are in the process of creating a heat shield for the Orion, the technology takes the place of a 1,500-page instruction manual.
Lockheed Martin is expanding its use of AR after seeing positive results during testing. Technicians using the technology need much less time to become familiar with a new tasks and to perform new processes.
The company says someday it hopes to be able to use AR/MR technology in space, to help astronauts maintain the technology.
For future coverage on AR and MR use by NASA and other firms and organisations, keep checking back with VRFocus.