JC Group Ltd. - Virtual Mars Mission

This simulated manned flight to Mars was created by the joint team of JC Group Ltd. and Information Meta Systems Co. for the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation— Institute for Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is designed to provide immersive research and training opportunities.

For this Mars project, the team at JC Group built an immersive application that offers full interaction between users and 3D models. This application allows the end-user to carry out trainings and exploration of the Martian surface inside a virtual environment.

In the simulation, the virtual flight to Mars includes both the landing and exploration of the Martian surface and a simulated return to Earth. Working with images of the Martian surface, including those taken from the Opportunity rover, the team used Creator and Vega Prime to build the interplanetary spacecraft, lander, Martian terrain, rovers, and astronauts as well as a variety of infrastructure objects. They also employed the Vega Prime Effects module to create realistic dust storms for the landing and takeoff of the spacecraft.