HP releases VR simulation of life on Mars

HP Inc. and a global community of creators have unveiled a groundbreaking virtual reality (VR) simulation of what life on Mars could look like for a human population of one million people. The HP Mars Home Planet program, led by HP Inc. and NVIDIA, is the culmination of a year-long engagement with the creative community to simulate life on the Red Planet.

The program attracted over 90,000 creative professionals, architects, engineers and students spanning more than 150 countries. The most innovative ideas were brought to life through a VR experience created by Technicolor that premieres this week at SIGGRAPH, the world's largest conference on computer graphics.

Xavier Garcia, Vice-President & General Manager, Z by HP, HP Inc., says, “The ultimate power for fully-immersive VR experiences comes from the creative community and the computing process delivered by HP and our partners. HP’s technology leadership, rich history of product innovation and understanding of the creative workflow is bringing amazing ideas to life.”

The HP Mars Home Planet VR experience takes users through a Martian Community Onboarding Center, showing innovations in areas such as architecture, engineering and transportation that enable humans to make the leap to Mars. Technicolor developed the stunning visuals for the experience in Epic’s Unreal Engine, resulting in the first-ever six-degrees-of-freedom VR piece built for motion-enabled chairs, using HP Windows Mixed Reality headsets. The environments and key assets from the VR experience will be released back to the creative community through an Unreal Engine download this fall.

According to Dr Darlene Lim, Principal Investigator, NASA Biologic Analog Science, “We are living in interesting times when technological advancement is being met by a broad array of foundational space science and planetary research – a confluence that will optimistically serve to accelerate our path toward human exploration and settlement of Mars. Today, people around the world are dreaming and innovating towards this future, and the amazing entries from the HP Mars Home Planet project’s creative community give us a virtual window into what life on Mars could be like for a million members of humanity.”

Universities and schools worldwide also took on the universe-changing effort of reinventing, designing and experiencing life in an urban area of Mars Valley in VR. Supported by HP technology and leaders in higher education, these institutions created teams as part of the Education League for HP Mars Home Planet. Ten universities in Europe and two universities in Australia competed in the project, with Japan conducting a separate contest with 110 submissions – judged separately – to select winners who submitted entries to HP Mars Home Planet.

Additionally, HP announced enhancements to its game-changing commercial VR products and end-to-end VR solutions for workflow transformation. Details on HP’s advancements include –

* HTC Vive Pro will be added to HP’s head-mounted display (HMD) portfolio this September. Designed for demanding users, the VIVE Pro is a premium VR headset, offering a complete package of top-tier graphics, high-resolution audio and optimized ergonomics.

* PixoVR provides VR training solutions for the construction, manufacturing, energy and utilities verticals. Its fully immersive and interactive training helps boost learning retention and performance while reducing on-the-job errors and accidents through VR scenarios that can be both repeated and randomized.

* StarVR is adopting HP’s powerful VR hardware and its VR Backpack to showcase the new StarVR headset. This HMD with an industry-leading 210-degree field of view, integrated eye tracking, advanced optics and custom AMOLED displays is a premium VR headset built from the ground-up for enterprise and professional entertainment.

* Addressing a range of cumbersome aspects of VR, the kit has been created to accelerate decisions by dramatically streamlining VR adoption, development and deployment for design visualization.

The expanded HP solutions are part of the company’s continued momentum in the commercial VR category. Recent examples include location-based entertainment activations with Dave & Buster’s Jurassic World VR experience and Noitom’s Alice Space Lunar Mission; an alliance with DiSTI to provide VR training solutions; and collaboration on a clinical trial with First hand Technology to help patients manage pain.