NASA’s interactive “plug-in free” 3D Guide to the Galaxy
The Challenge
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab’s PlanetQuest website is charged with making astronomy understandable and accessible. One of the unique challenges of galactic astronomy is to make visible that which cannot truly be seen. The massive scale of the Milky Way makes it impossible to visualize using photographic means. As a result educators have traditionally relied upon the “artist’s conception” painting. What these 2D visualizations lack, is the ability to place one’s self in context of the image in order to understand the true scale and unique form of the Milky Way as well as it’s motion through the universe. Product Visualization Services (PVS) was asked by NASA’s JPL to develop a 3D visualization that would act as an interactive “3D Guide to the Galaxy”. As if this wasn’t challenging enough, JPL’s PlanetQuest site is mandated to provide web-based content to as broad an audience as possible, running on all modern web browsers on all platforms, making most Internet 3D presentation solutions unusable.
The Solution
Product Visualization Services created a model based on data and conceptual imagery provided by the JPL and exported it as X3D, taking advantages of X3D’s multiple texture layers to create a Milky Way that was both photographically compelling, and easily navigable. The X3D file was imported into Demicron’s WireFusion’s drag-and-drop authoring environment, where the bulk of the presentation content was added. This content included photographic and audio data, as well as supplementary 3D models and image based overlays. WireFusion underlying scene graph is stored using representations of the X3D nodes and fields.
WireFusion‘s Java 1.1 compatible presentation format allowed the media-heavy immersive presentation to be delivered “plug in-free” and fully cross platform, meeting NASA’s stringent accessibility requirements. When a visitor wants to explore the interactive 3D Milky Way, there is no plug-in to download and the content can be played by virtually any visitor using any browser. The technology behind the experience remains completely invisible to the site visitor.
2D and 3D content can be streamed on-the-fly in WireFusion significantly increasing the amount of content that can be delivered to the end-user without long delays. WireFusion further reduces file sizes by offering automatic 3D normal-generation and camera interpolation for animations.
WireFusion’s unique content layering approach allowed supporting media to be displayed in-frame with the base 3D model. This novel feature allowed P.V. Services to put smaller-scale data in context relative to the galaxy as a whole, without requiring the user to switch focus between 2D and 3D views. Quickly cutting and pasting image and code elements created an effective in-scene menu created, allowing users to browse the Milky Way’s features.
The combination of X3D and WireFusion is helping to give visitors a view of the Milky Way that no still image, television news report or panorama can possibly match. The end result is an extremely immersive experience that feels more like exploration than education