Microsoft Uses Oculus Rift To Let People Experience The Universe Via Worldwide Telescope

Microsoft Research is always known for exploring new possibilities. Here is an another interesting thing they did at this year’s TED conference. They are using Oculus Rift virtual reality viewer for exploring large imagery in World Wide Telescope. Worldwide Telescope is for Sky like how Bing Maps is for our own Earth. You can explore the Sky using Worldwide Telescope, for example you can locate tiny craters in Mercury, etc.

At this year’s TED conference, currently taking place in Vancouver, B.C., the results of Eyewire are on display in spectacular fashion via a virtual reality tour that uses Oculus Rift. It is the result of a months-long collaboration between Eyewire and Microsoft Research’s Worldwide Telescope (WWT), and it allows users to experience 3D models like never before. The below video demonstrates what TED attendees are seeing this week, albeit in 2D form.

How was this collaboration born?

Initially, Robinson wanted to display 3D neuron models on a large computer screen and allow users to manipulate them with their hands. But in September 2013, Robinson attended the .Astronomy conference – an annual event held by the astronomy community – and saw some technology that she had to take advantage of.

At the conference, Jonathan Fay, principal software architect for WWT, was demonstrating WWT for attendees. WWT collects all the data that we know about the universe from sources such as NASA, JAXA, the ESA, and many other university contributors and makes it accessible to anyone online. While products like Bing Maps have detailed views of Earth, WWT can show you detailed maps of other planets. “We have a map of Mars that’s similar to a map you can get of Earth. We can zoom into tiny craters on Mercury,” Fay explained.

Read about the whole story from the link below.

via: Next at Microsoft