15th Feb 2024: Astro Pixel Processor 2.0.0-beta29 released - macOS native File Chooser, macOS CMD-Q fixed, read-only Fits on network fixed and other bug fixes
7th December 2023: added payment option Alipay to purchase Astro Pixel Processor from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries where Alipay is used.
I am including an image of the Pleiades below, but the reason for this post is to get feedback about my VR Astronomer project. I just released the 2nd video(the first of which to include one of the images I converted). If any users here have a VR headest then please check it out and let me know what you think. My VR Astonomer Setup
My 2 favorite hobbies are Astrophotography and VR film making. I produce average results with both, but decided to merge the hobbies by converting astro stuff to VR. There are a lot of space videos in VR but they are almost all CGI and while it looks great, it's just not as exciting as looking at a real image captured at a particular moment in time. I have converted a few images over and while they aren't scientifically accurate, viewing them in 3D in VR gives a completely different perspective to the target. I modeled my setup in meshmixer and blender and made a video of it along with a VR version of the pic below.
Hi Jonathan @minroadkill,
Thank you very much for sharing this. I do not have VR headset yet, otherwise I would have tried myself 🙂 ! So the VR film can only be seen with the headset then? Or how does it work? I must admit that I have not done much myself yet on VR. If you have a movie somewhere that illustrates the VR experience without the headset, please share it, you can drop a youtube URL here and it should show the video embedded on the forum 😉
Mabula
@mabula-admin I do have a 2d version on youtube that I will link here, but there is just no way to to understand the experience without a headset. I have some movies done in 360 2d and they can be uploaded to youtube and you can kind of experience those by scrolling or moving your phone around, but VR180 3D has to be seen in VR to appreciate. To kind of put it in perspective, the telescope appears to be about 4 meters away and be about 4 meters high. The lettering is different distances away as well. With the Astro photo you appear to be traveling through space towards the photo and as you get closer the image envelopes your field of view.
This is not something I have seen anywhere else so there was no tutorial, and I will have to learn as I go. Since it is 3D the stars are at different depths and those distances aren't accurate and the gases appear more solid. If you move your head around the edges of the image are warped so it is not perfect, but there are some upsides as well. The depth helps you to appreciate the vastness of space and there is a galaxy near the bottom of the nebula that I never noticed in viewing images of the Pleiades. The edge warping means that this method will work best with widefield images, but you also need enough focal length for the detail. That means mosaics are the way to go and we all know the best software for that:)
side note.. I could not find 3d models of my epuipment so I used 2 programs called meshmixer and blender to make it all myself. They aren't exact, but if anyone would like a 3d version of any of these items I can upload it if asked.
Hi @minroadkill,
Thank you very much for the explanation and the youtube link 😉
Yes, I will need to get myself a VR headset one of these days!
Mabula
