Paul's in Class Activity

Activity Set Up

Start up PaperSpace and click the button below while inside of your PaperSpace machine.

Mars Visualization in Unity (Steam VR)

This will bring you to a Google Drive folder where you should click "Download All" in the upper right corner (if you aren't signed into Google Drive) or right click the folder path and select "download" (if your are signed in)
Once downloaded, extract the folder to the Desktop on your PaperSpace machine
Connect your headset to the machine through virtual desktop and start Steam VR
Run the program titled "Steam Mars Visualization.exe" once your Steam VR has loaded in
- If it gives you a warning about not knowing the safety of the program click "more info" and then "run anyway" to force the machine to run the program
You should now be placed inside of a Scene depicting some locations on Mars

In Game Controls:

You should be able to look around freely (if it is laggy in the beginning let it load for a moment and it should improve)
The left joystick can be used to move around, with forward being the direction you are facing
- There may be some rumbling/vibration in your controllers in the beginning which should go away after a bit
Pointing the right joystick left or right will rotate you sharply in the given direction
***NOTE***: If you are prone to motion sickness I do not recommend moving off of the black bridge (each little bump is like going up a stair)
There is currently no support for teleporting or flying, but I am planning on adding it in the near future

Environment and Program Info

The left side of the bridge is Olympus Mons, the highest point on Mars, and to the left is a portion of Hellas Crater, the lowest point on Mars
Olympus Mons is 30,000 meters tall so you are not human sized inside the environment. Instead you are thousands of meters tall
Some of the craters are particularly steep. If it doesn't look like you can get out of a crater using a sequence of one stair moves, I do not suggest entering the crater at all
- If you do happen to fall into a crater you will have to exit the program and restart it to go back to the start
***NOTE***: Although everyone should be assigned a color they will not match up across devices yet
- This means that if you are pink on your screen you may not be pink on your peer's screen. I am working on synchronizing the colors across devices, but it requires some tricky global data structures

Your Task

Explore the highland Mars portion (left of black bridge) and the lowland Mars portion (right of black bridge)
- Think about what differences you see in terrain such as: number of craters, smoothness, elevation, mountain/ranges
- Think about things you wish you could do inside of the program
Take a screenshot of one interesting feature in the highlands and one interesting feature in the lowlands and it to the Google Doc with all of the other screenshots
Finally fill out this Google Form so I can improve it before it is due:
- Mars Visualization Feedback Form