Prompt: To show understanding of astronomical concepts and methods by creating a work in a medium of your choice.

Summary: Concept for mobile art-game application for casual space education through AR.

Overview

2 weeks individual project

RISD Wintersession 2021, Astrophysics for Artists

Project Concept

“Astrophysics” is a subject people often find unapproachable.

In an attempt to engage more people in astrophysics, SpaceLeap brings stellar phenomena out of the textbook and visualize in an augmented world.

Why AR?

In SpaceLeap, stellar phenomena are represented in AR, allowing impactful information delivery and immersive learning compared to diagrams and videos.

Three photo comparisons between process representation methods: Sequence Diagram, Simulation Video, SpaceLeap AR

Sequence diagram (timeline)

Process as still pictures, simultaneous display, time flows as read left to right

Simulation video

Process as collaged animated clips, inconsistent viewpoints, time adjustable through video controls

SpaceLeap AR

Process as AR objects, time and viewpoint adjustable through user’s distance from object

Based on spacetime relativity, the further we are from a stellar object, we are able to observe further into its past. The reverse is also true: the closer we are to an object, we can observe it at a state closer to its present.

Through SpaceLeap, users discover a new relationship to space by traversing through millions lightyears in one human step.

Advantages of AR

Accessible, minimal hardware requirements
Interact with real space
Novel experience
Rapidly developing capabilities

Architecture

With two weeks to bring this project together and determined to make a working AR demonstration in Unity, I decided to simplify the app to the most basic features: display and collect objects.

AR Space Diagram

Base Station: Every session’s starting point. For exploration experiences, having a “homebase” or something to return to is important for human attachment and belonging. It is also a potential “hub” for social interaction with other users (yet to be thoroughly considered).

Gallery Space: Users can decorate their base station with knowledge and objects they have collected in discovery expeditions.

AR Menu: AR UI for browsing and selecting phenomena to experience.

Experience Route: Exiting the Base Station, the users walk to explore the selected phenomenon like on a simple space discovery expedition.

Although unrealistic to expect all users to have access to free space suitable for the experience, the proposed idea of visiting the galaxy in the leisure of your own home is still worth exploring. For the “A Star is Born” phenomenon I modeled in Unity, the displacement from the user’s starting point to the celestial object is about 28 ft.

Ideally, the AR space should automatically adapt and scale to the user’s free space.

App Walkthrough

App concept is illustrated in XD with a basic UI.

Onboarding

SpaceLeap starts off with an onboarding that makes sure the user has an appropriate environment for the best AR experience.

Real Space Set-up

SpaceLeap asks for an approximate length of the free space and warns for potential tripping hazards. The experience works best with dimmer light.

Base Station Space

A “homebase” for users to exhibit collected objects, read more, browse and select expedition experiences, and potentially connect with other users.

* Space rendering in Rhino 6

AR Menu

A menu of experiences that users can browse and select from.

Route Experience

As the user walks down the experience route, the object would change and evolve. Informational data and stats appear with a navigation diagram.

Potential feature: To compare the size of a stellar object with a real life object for scale.
For example, “Our Earth is only the size of a 10 cents coin as compared to this Star.”

"Collecting" objects

Users can save and collect objects and its information to browse back later without having to go through the AR experience again.

Exhibiting objects in Base Station

Once collected, object “models” and photos can be displayed in user’s personal gallery space in Base Station.

Modeled AR experience

One stellar phenomenon was modeled in Unity and currently is a functional AR experience. “A Star is Born” is the formation process of a Red Supergiant, the transformation timing accurately scaled to the real space of about 30 ft.

All objects are modeled in Unity using Unity’s Particle System and simple C#. In the future where mobile phones can handle rendering with VFX graphs, the modeled phenomenon will look much more impressive.

Feedbacks & Conclusion

SpaceLeap is personally a very interesting project even if it was realized within only 2 weeks. It is a particularly ambitious project for a non-studio class, especially because of my strong personal goal of learning to work in AR. Through an intense period of parallelly learning the interface and capabilities of Unity, the rendering system and C#, all the while bringing this project to life, I have reached my initial goal as well as created a satisfying final project.

Of course, as only a concept design of an app, SpaceLeap is nowhere near a complete product. It is most encouraging to hear that people are intrigued by the novel experience and look forward to a more developed version of SpaceLeap.