The education-focused Mars 2030 launches today on SteamVR for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, soon to come to PSVR. With 40 square kilometers of explorable terrain, the experience successfully achieves its main objective: to make the user feel like they are on Mars. However, while its stunning canvas has great potential, its execution currently suffers from a lack of features, and a number of technical problems.
Update (7/27/17, 9:28AM PT): A spokesperson for FMG Labs says the launch of the experience has seen a slight delay. There’s no indication on the new launch date yet, however the game’s Steam page currently indicates availability beginning tomorrow, July 28th. The original article below has been updated to reflect this new information.
Original Article (7/27/17, 8AM PT): Unquestionably, Mars 2030’s greatest assets are… its assets. The vast landscape is covered in detailed geometry and textures, and the habitat, vehicles, and other equipment are modelled to a high quality. Combined with convincing lighting and shaders, the result is, at times, very impressive.
The Mawrth Vallis region has been reproduced using satellite data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE, with topographical data accurate to within 30cm of the actual elevation. As described in our first experience of Mars 2030 at GTC 2016, the team went to great lengths to represent the martian terrain in the most realistic manner, using Unreal Engine 4’s physically-based rendering. “Our lead environment artist actually worked with a NASA geologist to find the correct reflectance factors to really get the materials to be as photorealistic as possible,” said Justin Sonnekalb, a designer on the project.
Available soon via SteamVR for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, the Mars 2030 journey begins on the final descent towards the planet. I’m told to push the giant ‘detach’ button, which is where the first body Presence problems become apparent.
The inverse kinematics on the avatar’s arms look odd, probably because the hands (and their resting position) don’t seem to line up agreeably with where my hands fit on the Vive controllers. My character is seated, so I feel compelled to sit too. Resting the controllers on my knees, the virtual hands clip through my virtual legs. It’s possible to reset the camera and sit in such a way that this doesn’t happen, but it would certainly benefit from some fine tuning here. (After being spoiled by the incredible hand animation in Lone Echo, this kind of thing stands out.) While this could be explained as the result of maintaining 1:1 tracking of the hands, the hands also clip through the legs if you play it with a gamepad, where you have no direct control of your arms—something that doesn’t occur in the rover, so I suspect it can be fixed.
After the landing sequence, I appear ‘outside’, with my avatar now standing. The problem is, if I then physically stand, I end up floating above the surface. So I start hunting for a camera reset button, and unfortunately, the Vive controller map (and indeed every controller map) is blank. I eventually figured out that the camera reset is pressing the left trigger and right ‘grip’ button simultaneously, but I still haven’t discovered the shortcut for gamepad. A tutorial sequence is then supposed to activate, but over multiple restarts of the software, it only seemed to trigger 50% of the time.
I’m instructed to move around, use the scanner, and pick up a few rocks. Here, the physics system seems to struggle, and it’s not just from the weaker gravity. Tasked with placing flags at notable locations, these act as a checkpoint and can then be used for fast travel. Several times, the flags ended up flying out of my hand rather than elegantly fitting into place, and the problem seemed even more prevalent when using a gamepad.
After this, you jump into the rover, and my character is sitting again. I grab the virtual joystick with my left hand. Unfortunately, when operated by the tilt of the Vive controller, the movement is unnecessarily sensitive, causing the vehicle to move erratically due to its 6-axis system. Using a gamepad or keyboard in this case is far more intuitive and stable. Thankfully, there is an autopilot feature, which means you can enjoy the view instead of wrestling with the controls. Then, whenever you exit the vehicle, you’re given a brief ‘pressurisation’ animation of your character climbing into their suit. It’s jarring, as it feels like an out-of-body experience, particularly as every other transition is a simple fade to black.
Much like Steve Wozniak’s demo, I also experienced dizziness, as the vehicle movement is unusual (the unfamiliar martian gravity is probably a factor too) and the on-foot locomotion is smooth, including rotation—a common cause of nausea. The opening tutorial suggests there is now a ‘comfort mode’, but exactly what that entails is unclear, as enabling or disabling the function had no obvious effect.
However, there is a permanent ‘teleport’ function that appears active whether you want it or not, so perhaps this is a bug. What it desperately needs (for those sensitive to smooth locomotion in VR) is a snap turning option, which is presumably what the comfort mode is supposed to enable. The teleport feels rather overpowered, as it allows the user to fly across the landscape at breakneck speed, much faster than the rover can travel. As a result, the temptation is there to mash the button and ‘cheat’ your way across the terrain rather than enjoying the journey.
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Source: Hands-on: NASA-backed ‘Mars 2030’ – A Beautiful, Educational, & Buggy Trip to the Red Planet
