Celestia Forums

There seem to be a few scattered posts over many years using celestia with virtual reality headsets, but no real discussion about activity.
And amazing there isn't a decent VR universe simulator.

OpenVR middle-layer (eg github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr) would seem to be a relatively good modern option to enable interfacing with the headset and controllers, and Celestia already has all the required dual-viewpoint visualisation integral to existing code.

Thus it would seem like a relatively small effort to put them together to make Celestia even more amazing.

However given this seems simple to me but hasn't already been done implies either there is something better than Celestia which has already done it (but I can't find it), or there is something very challenging about which which I'm missing...

Can anyone input on the options?

D

I do not think anyone out there is working on it, but a lot of the foundation work is already done, so it can happen if anybody wants to work on it.

I do not know about openvr sdk but I looked at the cardboard SDK for android some time ago which for rendering basically just requires us to render the same scene from two eyes to separate textures (I did not go further than just looking tho). and I believe with celestia code one can set different observer orientation to do so. it should not be too difficult to set it up just for basic rendering if one is familiar with both celestia and the VR sdk. to get proper interaction to work might require much more work.

dgm3333 wrote:implies either there is something better than Celestia which has already done it

SpaceEngine supports VR. yes, Celestia is free while SE is not (depending on which version you get), but people prefer the better visuals and the procedurally generated universe that SpaceEngine offers. however, Celestia does get more frequent data updates, mainly via the many user-created addons that are growing in abundance. so Celestia does give users a more up-to-date and realistic simulation of the known universe, but SE fills in the gaps with its procedural generation, which is the programs main focal point.
Celestia VR could possibly do well on the educational side, educational observatories such as Wellington's Space Place could use Celestia VR as an educational tool. but other than that, i dont really see a market for Celestia VR. it likely wouldnt be downloaded much, thanks to competing programs like SpaceEngine. but i sure as hell would use it, if i could afford a VR headset

TheLostProbe wrote:Celestia VR could possibly do well on the educational side,

Considering there is Celestia Celestia ED already, VR would do a good job for Educational Celestia.

There was a 3rd party project to make Celestia run in stereo mode. But it was made between 2013 and 2017 when Celestia was dead, so it lives like an independent abandoned fork.

But in any way we're glad see any contributions.

as i recall ( a few years back ) Celestia was ported to the " CAVE" environment , as to VR ?
i do not use any VR yet so it really has not been important to me at least for the time being