I built this project from the ground up with The Washington Post, The University of Texas at Austin, and Howard University. In the beginning, our scope was small and manageable. Our goal was to take you on a walk of the surface of a crater on Mars using real data and accurate renders so that you would feel like you were on the red planet. Later, our scope increased to devices, web usability, desktop applications, etc. We started to think about how we could get the experience of VR to everyone regardless of equipment or technolgy restrictions. We expanded our team to produce and develop solutions for Oculus Rift, desktop mac or PC, and a web based 'Aframe' solution that enables a 360 video gaze experience in a psuedo VR fashion for anyone with a smartphone enabled browser.
We built it in Unity 3D with our geometry modeled and sometimes textured through Cinema 4D.
For the full Mars Journey experience the build straight from The Washington Post website with additional builds for desktop, Oculus Rift, and mobile. VR for every platform.