VRGalaxies on Windows Pc

VR-Galaxies® is the first astronomy app to allow the public to navigate the space beyond the Milky Way and know the features of more than eight hundred galaxies to a distance of 85 million light-years.

Related topics: astronomy, Virtual Reality, VR, galaxy, NASA, NEARGALCAT, science, education.


Why have we created this app?

It is really difficult to grasp how immense the universe is. The distance to a star in our own galaxy, or the distance to another galaxy, are spatial concepts that quickly melt into a mere idea of “incredibly far away”, and won´t allow us to fully assimilate certain daily notions about the most recent astronomic discoveries.

There is a vast amount of information available to the public that, due to the complexity of the data and, mostly, since there are not many visualization devices, is still out of the reach of many people who feel the curiosity and interest to understand it.
It seemed to us that it would be a good idea to reunite our hobbies and professional skills in order to offer a new tool that will allow people to complement, and even extend, their knowledge.



App features:

• Interactive navigation in a Universe of realistic scale up to 85 million light-years, represented according to the official data published by the main astronomic organizations.
• Educational information to learn the primary characteristics of the galaxies.
• Access to the most relevant data of the galaxies contained in this app: their distance, size, and most importantly, how they are distributed in space.
• Possibility to perform searches through the directory and navigate to the galaxies in auto pilot.



What do you need to use this app?

• An Android mobile phone, operative system 5.0 (“Lollipop”) or higher.
• A Google Cardboard (or similar) VR headset.
• An XBox 360 compatible controller.
• An OTG cable to adapt the controller to the mobile.



Why do you need a controller to use this app?

VR-Galaxies is not just a simple app to passively stroll in a virtual world: it is an interactive software that allows you to perform searches, inspect features, change interface modes…

All these operations are quite difficult to be handled with just one button or a few movements of your head.

We chose an XBox 360 compatible controller, due to its high popularity and its low price, as the best option for the user. Since the mobile devices allow a simple adaptation to it, we know the user will not have any problem while gaining one more step in Virtual Reality.



Why Google Cardboard, instead of another more powerful device?

Even though other devices, like Oculus and Vive, are really powerful and allow more functions and better graphics, we think those technologies are too expensive and too exclusive as yet to allow us the possibility of offering this app to a wider range of the public.

Despite the performance limitations of the mobile technology, we believe it is convenient to sacrifice the graphic in order to favor a longer reach, for a public of all ages and different economic means.

3, 2, 1... lift off!