Tag Archives: GTC 2016

Journey To Mars 2030 VR Experience @ GTC 2016

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April 6, 2016—Bringing to life the first steps of visiting our neighbouring planet, Mars 2030, an interactive virtual reality experience, debuted today at the GPU Technology Conference. Created by NVIDIA and FUSION Media, Mars 2030 transports people in VR to the Red Planet, where they are immersed in the simulated life of one of the first arriving NASA astronauts. They can explore deep space, live in a realistic Martian habitat, drive across the planet’s surface and drill into the surface of its ancient lake beds.

Speaking at the GTC opening keynote, NVIDIA CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang introduced the experience to personal computing pioneer Steve “Woz” Wozniak over a video link powered by Cisco TelePresence. Wearing a VR headset, Woz, an advocate of Mars travel, said, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be incredible for whoever actually gets to travel to Mars!”

Mars 2030 was developed using scientifically accurate satellite imagery and data gathered in years of exploration missions. It boasts a level of graphics fidelity that is only possible with NVIDIA VRWorks technologies.

“One in a billion people alive today will get to visit Mars, so this is for the rest of us,” said Zvi Greenstein, general manager of the GeForce business unit at NVIDIA. “Mars 2030 is being created as a true to life experience, while aiming for the highest visual fidelity possible in VR today, something only NVIDIA technology can deliver.”

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NASA is providing technical expertise to FUSION through a Space Act Agreement to make the first Mars surface VR experience based on actual operational and hardware concepts that the Journey to the Red Planet: ‘Mars 2030’ VR Experience Debuts at GTC agency is currently studying. Mars 2030 incorporates VRWorks’ Multi-Res Shading, which renders each part of an image to best suit the pixel density required by a headset. It also includes VR SLI, which can assign multiple GPUs to a specific eye to accelerate stereo rendering.

“As a part of FUSION’s commitment to innovative storytelling, we are always looking for unique ways to take our audience to interesting places,” said Julian Reyes, lead VR producer at FUSION. “We are thrilled that NVIDIA’s latest technologies, combined with what NASA has planned for the next frontier of space exploration, will allow us to push visual boundaries, convincing users that they are 141 million miles away from home on the surface of Mars.” GTC attendees can experience the first mission in Mars 2030, an exploration of an enormous Martian lava tube, from April 4-7 in the San Jose Convention Center.

Expected to be commercially available in the fall, Mars 2030 is optimised for NVIDIA GeForce and Quadro GPUs to give the environment an unparalleled level of authenticity.

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NVIDIA Iray VR Introduces Interactive Photorealism

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by Phil Miller

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang on Tuesday showed how our Iray technology can create interactive virtual worlds with unparalleled fidelity.

Imagine being able to see any combination of options for a car interior you’re thinking of buying — in photorealistic detail — and from any angle. Or being able to experience the feeling of a new building’s interior — from any corner of a room — before it’s built.

Iray VR capabilities will allow us to create environments that let users strap on a headset and peer around photorealistic virtual environments. With Iray VR, you’ll be able to look around the inside of a virtual car, a modern loft, or the interior of our still unfinished Silicon Valley campus with uncanny accuracy.

“It’s utterly beautiful,” said Huang during a keynote address at our GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., as he showed attendees still-to-be constructed interiors of the campus. “Iray VR is going to be unbelievable for people designing cars, for people architecting buildings and many other areas.”

Yet despite their realism, none of these environments exist outside of our computer models.

It’s the next step with our Iray technology, which taps into the power of our GPUs to let users quickly generate immersive experiences of their designs with amazing accuracy.

 

Iray Brings Reality to Virtual Reality

[adrotate banner=”4″]Iray lets users refine their designs faster thanks to its host of rendering capabilities, such as interactive ray tracing, the ability to accurately represent materials, and scaling from desktop to datacenter. These capabilities have made Iray an indispensable tool for designers and will become essential for realistic virtual experiences.

In particular, Iray has proven itself to architects and lighting designers, who are using its capabilities to model how light interacts with their designs at any time of day, and any day of the year.

Attendees at our GTC conference, taking place now at the San Jose Convention Center, can experience the full Iray VR experience in our booth in the VR Village. Look for more details on the availability of Iray VR capabilities later this spring.

 

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