Astronaut VR, One Small Step for Virtual Reality

For a lot of people, Google Cardboard will be there first experience with VR. From the time that I spent with it I think it is a great starting point for someone to determine if VR is for them. I started by downloading the app to register the device and get my phone set up for using it then I was taken to a short tutorial that taught me how to use the button on the headset and to get accustomed to moving my head. The first thing that I noticed is that it felt natural to look around in the virtual space, there wasn’t any notable lag or hiccups that muddied the experience for me. Flying over the ocean with a couple of birds did make me secure my footing though. After getting done with the tutorial I checked the Google Play Store for VR compatible apps and stumbled across Astronaut VR.

What is it like?

The app is a first-person space simulation experience that lets you explore digital renderings of famous space machinery. It was created by Muchoviento.net who have only one other app listed on the Google Play Store which is an ocean tide predictor app. Astronaut VR has five different space themed experiences to choose from: Astronaut Pool, Space Station, ISS EVA, Hubble EVA and Cupola. Once you are in one of the virtual spaces you can maneuver yourself around and explore by moving your head in any direction. It is intended to be a seated experience which means that this app uses three degrees of freedom. It is a simple experience that won’t overwhelm those who are new to VR. Their isn’t a set goal to achieve, rather the player can freely experience the scenery for as long as they want.

Does It Work?

Houston we have some problems

The first thing that I noticed when I started was how moving around made me a bit disoriented. It wasn’t because of the head tracking as that was pretty smooth, but it was the way the character moves in accordance to your head motions. Looking down causes you to continually spin until you look in another direction, then you continue to spin in that direction. This leads to constantly trying to correct course by moving your head everywhere which puts quite a bit of strain on the neck. There is also a delay to when you start moving which is a bit jarring at first. There is no sense of momentum with the way you move and it makes movement feel a little clunky. All of this combined with finding myself twisting at weird angles just to move around made for a less than optimal experience that would often harm my immersion.

The good stuff

There were some redeeming qualities to the experience though, like the level of detail put into the Space Station from laptops floating around to seeing Earth when looking out of the windows. Imagery was displayed on computer screens and wires ran from the servers to each device, all this helped add to the immersion and pull me back in when it started to lose me. The visuals were very nice for a free mobile app, not so much in the realistic way but more in a stylized sense. I was playing on a Samsung Galaxy S9 and noticed there was an increase in battery drainage and heating but that is understandable for this kind of app. Another thing I liked about it was how it used audio to make you feel like you were in a 3D space. When a vent was making noise it would become louder as you move closer. The areas felt much more real when I plugged in my headphones.The experiences that I spent time with were the Space Station and the Hubble. The better of the two in my opinion was the Space Station mainly because there was more exploring to be done as you weave in and out of corridors where the Hubble places you in the middle of open space next to a satellite and a ship.

S.L.A.M. Implementation

The user’s head orientation is tracked using the phones gyro sensor which is then reflected on screen. There is very little latency when performing this action which is great for keeping the user immersed. The application only allows for three degrees of freedom which means that no stationary tracking systems are needed since all movement is done through head positioning.

Summary

Astronaut VR is clearly aimed at an audience who don’t have much experience with VR and I think it does a good job at capturing that audience. It is a nice stepping stone to get into XR experiences with a little more depth and I would recommend it to those who just started out with Google Cardboard or other entry level devices. It does have it’s downsides but you can still have some fun while playing it. A link to the app can be found below for those interested in trying it out for themselves.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.muchoviento.vr.astronaut&hl=en_US