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[FINISHED+APK+DK2] Telescopic

drash
Heroic Explorer
Ahhh, finally done! Here's Telescopic:



ChallengePost page is here.

APK Download:
https://vrjam-submissions.s3.amazonaws.com/signed/6bd5fd75bc9b/pWhcRIlTEKyziXdy3cGE_TelescopicVRJam....

DK2 Windows Download:
https://www.adrive.com/public/znm3ZT/TelescopicDemo-DK2-Windows.zip

Controls:

This app uses the touchpad only.

* To use a button, gaze at it and then tap touchpad.

* To aim the telescope, slide finger on touchpad.

* To dismiss UI elements, use the Back button.


Mechanics:

Overall, the user may either freely explore and learn about the night sky, and/or choose to attempt challenges called "tasks" which are intelligently served to the user a few at a time.

The user can interact with the telescope by calling up the Scope to help with a rough aim, and then calling up the Telescope viewer to get a deep look at the target area. At all times, the touchpad can be used to refine the aim.

The user may also call up a UI, where the user can fiddle with tasks, view hints, adjust settings, and ponder the "unlockables" that will be available in the full version of this app.


Innovation:


  • If the user has a swivel chair, this app takes full advantage of that to reduce simsickness to a minimum by letting the user be fully responsible for their own rotation.

  • If the user does not have a swivel chair (or opts not to swivel), this app attempts to reduce "rotation sickness" by dimming the night sky, thereby reducing the size/intensity of the visual field that is rotating.

  • Viewing through a telescope without neck discomfort, but in a way that is still reminiscent of a real telescope.

  • Ability to use headtracking to easily and naturally compare what's in the night sky with the view through the telescope.

  • Ability to tap into lots of situational and supplemental information about the stars by looking left or right of the view through the telescope.


New GIFs:

Swiveling around:


Browsing the stars:


Navigating the menus:


------------------------------
Original Post below
------------------------------

This is my Mobile VR Jam entry:

Placeholder logo (definitely very obsolete now!):


Telescopic is a combination of a telescope simulator + observatory + planetarium that aims to make learning your way around the night sky fun.

This entry can also be found at ChallengePost here.

Motivation for making this app:

I'm primarily creating this app for myself, but if others eventually benefit from it that would be pretty awesome too. As profoundly amazing as the night sky is, it's overwhelming for me. I've used planetarium apps to find my way around, read night sky reports, etc. But, after all this time, I'm still only truly familiar with Orion and the Big Dipper. Because I don't get to see the stars every night, I forget most of what I learn. This app will hopefully change that by combining several motivational and memorization techniques to keep me engaged and help me retain more of what I learn.

What the player will experience:

In Telescopic, you start off in the middle of nowhere, sitting on a chair that has a big telescope attached to it, with a great big clear view of the sparkling heavens. In VR, this means it's just you and the telescope with no distractions. Rather than actually peeking into scopes and eyepieces, you'll be staying in your chair to interact with the telescope, and it's where you can manage your goals, achievements, unlockables, and fiddle with various options.

The Gear VR's touchpad is used to aim the telescope, and interact with UI elements. The player can switch between various modes: UI, scope, telescope, and sky rotation. The scope mode is used to generally aim the telescope, and the telescope mode is used to get a deep view of the target. Looking up at the sky from your chair, you will not see helpful constellations drawn onto the sky, no labels, no celestial compass. But, when you look into the telescope, you'll potentially see far more than any real backyard telescope can reveal.

Development challenges include:

1. Comfortably seeing what the telescope sees without the aid of positional tracking
2. Ease and intuitiveness of control
3. Efficient data retrieval from star catalogs
4. Goal/achievement storage and persistence
5. Well-defined goals that maximize engagement and encourages exploration

A note on development:

This will be the first time I've openly shared previews of an in-development VR experience. This Jam is also somewhat unfortunate timing for me as my time is really scarce right now, so I'm hoping to get as far as I can with this. I'll be posting screenshots and stuff along the way.

Milestone 3:

Progress Video is up @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3DiMYZPn8M



Soundtrack and high quality deep sky imagery isn't ready yet so I'll save that for next time.

And, the new telescope that I already posted before:



Milestone 2 images:

1.

Slightly updated platform model. Still a long way to go, and the telescope itself is still just placeholder cylinders and such.

2.

The new telescope viewer. Rather than killing one's neck to look through the actual eyepieces, I'm taking a different approach.

3.

This shows using the new scope mode without having to leave the chair. No matter what you're doing, the touchpad can always be used to aim the telescope.

4.

And this shows the new telescope mode. It's a big "visor" (shown in #2 above) positioned in front of the player designed for comfortable viewing, and it provides a place to supplement the view with additional information and UI. Tapping the touchpad reveals information about what you're looking at. Pausing to look at a point of interest will mimic a long exposure and let you see more than what a telescope would reveal in realtime. While in telescope mode, the player can still see the mode buttons below, and the sky above.


Milestone 1 Images: (Note, some of this no longer applies)

1.

The above screenshot shows a model of the chair and the telescope platform. The vertical stalk you see there is what the telescope attaches to. The entire platform will swivel around the telescope, making this a simple conversion to work with positionally-tracked headsets in the future (as you'll only need to get up and walk straight forward at all times).

2.

This shows basic aiming for the telescope (and thus the platform). As you get closer to the telescope, the aiming sensitivity goes from wild swings to fine-tuning. The telescope itself is still placeholder-ish with basic geometric primitives.

3.

Using the scope. This is tricky to line up the right eye to the scope at all times yet still give the player the freedom to look around, since the scope itself moves with the telescope when you aim it. At some point, I plan to make it an option to make the scope be on the left vs right side of the telescope.
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com
38 REPLIES 38

HelloMeow
Explorer
Have you tried experimenting with something like night-mode from Stellarium? It turns everything red, so your eyes stay dark adjusted. I wonder if it would work with a screen that close to your eyes.

That way you could use an app like this to figure out how to point your telescope, while actually using your telescope at night. 🙂 That would be awesome.
VRJam: Hexagon

Devster3
Honored Guest
"KoningStoma" wrote:
Have you tried experimenting with something like night-mode from Stellarium? It turns everything red, so your eyes stay dark adjusted. I wonder if it would work with a screen that close to your eyes.

That way you could use an app like this to figure out how to point your telescope, while actually using your telescope at night. 🙂 That would be awesome.


This would add so much extra usage! and make newbie telescoping a bit easier too

Seradin
Protege
Looking fantastic! Love the concept! And the lens effect you have looks great!
Artist at Dual Reality Games working oncolbypwahl.com

drash
Heroic Explorer
"ccs" wrote:
edit: I sort of answered my own question about black smear. My solution is to just to post process my baked textures in photoshop with the levels tool to change min level to around 5-10, and fix camera clear color to be exactly the same dark gray. Works nicely and kills the smear. Still interested in what your solution might be in this space. 🙂

ccs

That's pretty much what I am doing as well, just baking in the minimum color levels in all the art. 🙂 I agree, this works great!

"KoningStoma" wrote:
Have you tried experimenting with something like night-mode from Stellarium? It turns everything red, so your eyes stay dark adjusted. I wonder if it would work with a screen that close to your eyes.

Well, not turning *everything* red, but that is the precise reason a lot of my color scheme is red. I was originally planning on using a green color scheme (hence the ugly old logo at the top of the first post), but changed my mind on that. After the Jam, I'll have to think about a full-red option. That would be pretty wild actually. 😮

@Seradin, thank you!

--

Dev Update: Marching toward the final Jam deadline, things are going well. I am feeling good about most of it, but I think I will run out of time for certain things. I'm actually fine with this, because I've decided I'll be releasing the Jam build as a "limited demo" which means it is a free demo with a limited number of goals available, background info for a limited number of stars, a limited number of expansive deep sky imagery, and the unlockables will have to come at a later date. The Jam build (not available yet) should be enough to get a solid taste of what the full version of the app can offer.

In other news, this app has original music and audio composed by Jon Hillman, the talented musician that made the wonderful music for the Solar System portion of Titans of Space!
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

drash
Heroic Explorer
With one hour remaining until the deadline I can finally rest! Then, when I come back I'm going to play everyone else's apps and games. 🙂

Anyway, here is Telescopic:



The Milestone 4 submission page is here at ChallengePost.

APK Download here:
https://vrjam-submissions.s3.amazonaws.com/signed/6bd5fd75bc9b/pWhcRIlTEKyziXdy3cGE_TelescopicVRJam....

Good luck to everyone on getting to the finals. I can tell the competition is extremely stiff. I can't think of a better way for Oculus to spend $1M, because everyone wins!
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

ludotex
Honored Guest
Just tried it and it's pretty awesome. Great educative app again. Solar system was not enough for you you had to add 150.000 stars? 🙂

I actually sat outside and I was convinced by the lighting you made for the scene. It was great spoting orion and learn more about it.

One thing you might want to look into later on: I had problem focusing on the star at full magnification. My eyes would sometime cross to not double the star. Then again my eyes are pretty tired from the last night's of jamming (also I have a small ipd around 60mm).

I will definitively get it when it's available on the gear!
Vektron Revenge: 2015 vr mobile jam entry and DK2 Version Buddha Clubotron A virtual psychedelic dance club for the rift!

drash
Heroic Explorer
"ludotex" wrote:
One thing you might want to look into later on: I had problem focusing on the star at full magnification. My eyes would sometime cross to not double the star. Then again my eyes are pretty tired from the last night's of jamming (also I have a small ipd around 60mm).

Thanks for the kind words and feedback ludotex. I'm massively interested in what you're saying here because I made a rather odd decision to have those stars in telescope mode sitting 50 meters away from the player rather than way off in the distance. Going to have to think about the math behind this... unless anyone else has any ideas?
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

ludotex
Honored Guest
Ok i have tried again.

And i can focus if i really make an effort with my tired eyes.
I think one problem might be the grey circle that represent the lens of the telescope. It has a slight grey ramp on it. And this object is closer than the stars 50m away. I think my eyes have trouble focus because they are trying to focus on the grey banding as well. Maybe if it was pure grey or black and not have this ramp, it would be easier for me. Does it make sense?
Vektron Revenge: 2015 vr mobile jam entry and DK2 Version Buddha Clubotron A virtual psychedelic dance club for the rift!

drash
Heroic Explorer
"ludotex" wrote:
Ok i have tried again.

And i can focus if i really make an effort with my tired eyes.
I think one problem might be the grey circle that represent the lens of the telescope. It has a slight grey ramp on it. And this object is closer than the stars 50m away. I think my eyes have trouble focus because they are trying to focus on the grey banding as well. Maybe if it was pure grey or black and not have this ramp, it would be easier for me. Does it make sense?

I really appreciate that you went back to figure out what was going on! Good find. Those ultra subtle gradients don't play well in the Gear VR even with uncompressed textures, so I'll rework that for the next update.

Thanks again!
  • Titans of Space PLUS for Quest is now available on DrashVR.com

jamesscott
Honored Guest
Great work. Love it.
I agree with ludotex about the lens being distracting, but it's a very small issue in an otherwise fantastic project.
2013 Jam Project - [Finalist] Dragon: https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/v ... =51&t=3855 2015 Jam Project - [Bronze Prize] Atop the Wizard's Tower: viewtopic.php?f=77&t=23171&p=269384#p269384