GestureTek Custom Installation - Business Solutions
NASA Space Exploration Experience

The NASA Space Exploration Experience concept was to design an environment which would immerse the participants in a simulated galactic world. By means of GestureTek’s GestTrack technology users have the ability to manipulate video footage throughout the exhibit by pointing at the screen from a distance, replacing the mouse cursor.  In a separate room, the combination of nine projectors and the five surrounding projection screens enabled NASA to achieve their desired effect, a simulated exploratory space journey with the unique feature of an interactive floor made possible through the GroundFX system.      

The entire Virtual Space Experience project is installed inside a truck, which acts as a type of capsule to insulate the users inside the space environment. In the front of the vehicle, two HoloTrack Frame units are used to display clips of information to educate and inform users on the NASA program. The beauty of the technology of the HoloTrack Frame system is that it allows the users to manipulate and interact with the information projected on the display screens, from a distance in “Minority Report” style fashion, without the use of any external apparatus, such as keyboard, headgear or mouse.  

As the users move to the back of the exhibit, they are immersed into a virtual world with a 17’ x 17’
 in diameter hexagonal projection onto the floor surrounded by five projection screens.  (Figure A.)  On the floor, the content displayed is custom produced, completely three dimensional immersive footage which moves through different scenes to depict a journey in space. The content is displayed onto the surrounding projection screens mirroring the footage projected on the floor, enhancing the immersive properties of the virtual room.

The first scene puts the users in the cockpit to experience a rocket launch, which moves into the next scene
which takes the expeditioners through space where they get to observe the vastness of the universe while
seeing light emulsion (aura) streaming off their bodies. The third scene involves moonscapes and a moon landing where the travallers can interact with the moon’s surface and kick up moon dust and moon rocks. The craters actually move at the same gravitational speed, as they would out in space!  Finally, the space travellers return to earth and find themselves on the edge of a sandy pond, where they can interact with the fish-life in the pond with gestures over the water’s surface.

The technology behind the projections on the floor is powered by GroundFX® , GestureTek’s interactive floor projection which allows users to gesture over content displayed on the floor or wall with their hands and feet to affect changes in the images being shown.

One of the challenges of installing this project was the low ceilings which made it difficult to project on to the floor without interference to the projection (such as shadows). The solution involved mounting all nine projectors on the low ceiling, with careful placement to allow overlapping of blended images on the floor and perfect horizontal alignment for the surrounding images. Four tracking cameras were also installed on the ceiling in order to give superior interaction tracking.