The “Impacts” Show

In 2014 the AAS WorldWide Telescope team produced a tour called “Impacts” that showed how to create experiences that look great on a flat screen, in the planetarium dome, and even in VR goggles. This section shows how you can put on the Impacts tour yourself and gathers many resources that show you how it was constructed.

The Impacts Trailer🔗

Show Overview🔗

“Impacts” includes a narration and original music soundtrack and brings audiences to the locations of impacts in the past several billion years. Made for VR and domes, the show creates new levels of immersion to bring the visitor to the surfaces of bodies in our Solar System as well as a tour of the International Space Station (ISS). The senses of immersion and physical presence in the virtual environments are especially powerful when viewed in virtual reality (VR). Moreover, the show illustrates how AAS WorldWide Telescope can be used in high level production. Additionally, the components of the show are made available for adaptation, customization and re-use.

The presentation can be done using the voice of the recorded narrator or you can have a presenter deliver the narration live. The script has been translated into several languages.

Show Assets🔗

The .wwt WWT Tour file comes in three variations:

• Optimized for flat screens
• Optimized for domes
• Optimized for VR headsets

The script is available in multiple languages:

• English
• Chinese

You can download the audio:

• Music in MP3 format
• Music in WAV format
• Audio tracks for indiviual slides (Zip of MP3s)

And here are the backing data:

• Spreadsheet of Earth impact data

To allow for reuse, the individual segments have also been saved as standalone WWT tour files:

1. International Space Station (ISS)
   • Optimized for flat screens
   • Optimized for domes
   • Optimized for VR headsets
2. Asteroid Impacts on Earth 2000–2013
   • Optimized for flat screens
   • Optimized for domes and VR
3. Meteor Crater Flyover
   • Optimized for all formats
4. Manicouagan Crater Flyover
   • Optimized for all formats
5. Moon - Tycho Crater Flyover
   • Optimized for all formats
6. Mars - Gale Crater Flyover
   • Optimized for all formats
7. Mercury - Caloris Basin Flyover
   • Optimized for all formats
8. Asteroid Belts Exploration
   • Optimized for all formats

Tutorial Videos🔗

To learn how the show was produced, checkout our YouTube video series documenting the process. Here’s the first video:

Click through to the playlist to see the rest!

Credits🔗

• Produced, Written and Directed by: Doug Roberts, Ph.D.
• Original Music Composed and Performed by: Chris Richko
• English Narrator: Jonathan Fay
• Science Advisor: Brett W. Denevi, Ph.D.
• 3D Modeling: Patrick McPike
• 2014 WorldWide Telescope Team:
  • Dan Fay
  • Jonathan Fay
  • Jessika Gebauer
  • Ron Gilchrist
  • Henry Honig
  • Nils Kock
  • Ben Kunz
  • Curtis Wong
  • Data

Data credits:

• All-Sky Background: Digitized Sky Survey (Color) — copyright DSS Consortium
• Asteroid 433 Eros: NASA, Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Mission
• International Space Station (ISS): Toshiyuki Takahei
• Earth imagery: Bing Maps
• Asteroid Impacts 2000-2013 dataset: B612 Foundation
• Moon imagery: NASA, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Mission
• Mars imagery: NASA/USGS/Malin Space Science System/JPL, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Mission
• Mercury imagery: NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL/Carnegie Institution, MESSENGER Mission
• Asteroid dataset: International Astronomical Union (IAU) Minor Planets Center (MPC)