Idris: Are all people like this?
The Doctor: Like what?
Idris: So much bigger on the inside.
The Doctor's Wife, Doctor Who
- Sid
As part of my selection of Christmas gifts from Karli, she cleverly picked up a pair of tickets for the award-winning Space Explorers: The Infinite virtual reality event currently being presented in Vancouver. Located at the Rocky Mountaineer Station, The Infinite presents an immersive experience of the International Space Station from a wide range of perspectives and viewpoints.
Arriving at the location at our appointed time, the event staff set us up with what's essentially the same Quest 2 VR headset that I have at home, with a networked sensor add-on to the front of the unit, a bar code (presumably for the tracking ID) and enhanced earphones. The experience uses a simple system - the rest of your group appears in VR as a yellow avatar, other guests are blue, and cast members are green.
Once equipped with a headset, you are introduced to a shadowy ghost of the ISS, populated with glowing spheres.
By touching a sphere, you can activate a virtual reality movie clip showing various aspects of life on the space station, such as donning space suits and working on the outside of the station, along with commentary from the astronauts on the station*. There are also periodic changes of setting, displaying breathtaking orbital views of and from the station in the overhead area.
To transit the guests out of the VR space, the experience ends with a seated panoramic view of the ISS in space, after which the headsets are returned and you exit the VR environment.
I enjoyed the freedom of being able to actually walk around in VR, something that my home usage hasn't permitted. That being said, it was surprisingly crowded, to the point that it was a bit challenging to avoid other
avatars. I suppose that logically, dumping a couple of dozen people
into the actual ISS wouldn't leave that much extra space either.
Sadly, I fell prey to a couple of technical issues that shut my headset down due to heating problems, so I did miss a few minutes of the show. In both cases I was quickly assisted by staff members, full points for rapid response in a time-sensitive situation.
Although I found The Infinite to be an amazing experience, I would liked to have interacted with a more fully rendered version of the ISS interior. (Which certainly exists, as per the ISS program that I have loaded on my personal headset.) However, I can appreciate that the star of the show is the actual VR footage of astronauts on the ISS, both inside and outside - better to see the real thing than a simplified rendering.
Minor issues aside, The Infinite offers a spectacular perspective on the ISS and its daily activities. If you're looking for a unique opportunity to experience life in space, I would fully recommend picking up tickets to the show - but don't wait too long, it's a popular event, and it's only available until March 19th.
- Sid
* In one of the clips, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques comments
that the ISS is "like camping in your backyard. Mars is our Everest."
I'm sorry, David, but at best Mars is a week at a provincial park -
let's save Everest analogies for when we eventually get out of our own solar system.
Obi-Wan: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!
Anakin Skywalker: From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
Lucasfilm has announced that they have come to an agreement with the Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council and the University of Manitoba to release a dubbed Ojibway version of A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie. (If you happen to be a fluent speaker of Ojibway and have theatrical ambitions, now is your chance: you can apply at http://starwarsojibwe.com/)
The producers chose Ojibway because it is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages, with approximately 320,000 speakers in North America. The Ojibway version of the film will see theatrical release across Canada, and will eventually be broadcast on Canada's Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.
It's interesting to imagine an indigenous re-write of the entire series, with the Empire recast in the model of a colonial power that has undertaken a program of ruthless conquest across the galaxy. In this version, Anakin Skywalker becomes a Lost Generation child, swept up in the equivalent of the 60s Scoop and stripped of his aboriginal identity. His romance with Amidala then becomes a double secret, not just due to the strictures of the Jedi code but because of prejudice and discrimination against his indigenous background.
But where do the Jedi fit in this retelling of the story? It's an easy out to have the Sith stand in for the Catholic Church, but a stark examination of the prequel trilogy makes it just as easy for the Jedi to be guilty of the same sins - let's face it, Qui-Gon Jinn essentially takes Anakin away from his mother and drops him into residential school at the Jedi Temple.
With the narrative changed to an indigenous perspective, Anakin turns out to be correct when he tells Obi-Wan that the Jedi are evil, and his conversations with the Supreme Chancellor about similarities between the Sith and the Jedi gain a new resonance. The good news is that in the aboriginal retelling, Anakin is no longer guilty of killing the younglings that he encounters at the Jedi Temple - instead, he rescues them. And after that, it's a whole new story...
- Sid
