Having a computer strapped to my face for 40 minutes was one reason to feel a little sweaty. But the tour of the Universe I had just received in virtual reality\u2014including visits to the near vicinity of the Sun, the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy, and a hellscape of an exoplanet 41 light-years distant\u2014provided another excuse for sensing some heat.<\/p>\n
Smithsonian Starstruck: An Immersive Experience<\/a> is a 40-minute astronomy walk-through. It debuted in Washington, DC, in May<\/a> with solo adult tickets now ranging from $29 to $35 and group tickets for four or more starting at $18 each (all now discounted by 15 percent); it will also open in Denver, Orlando, Florida, and San Antonio, Texas, later this year. I stopped by on a Monday in June to take it in.<\/p>\n After some onboarding that included setting such preferences as closed captioning and signing a waiver, I had enough time to sit on a bench next to the exhibit space (which has hosted other VR experiences<\/a>) to enjoy watching another attendee with a VR headset blurt out, \u201cOh my God!\u201d<\/p>\n After putting on an HTC Vive Focus 3 headset and receiving introductory coaching about how to move through the exhibit space, the tour began. My virtual self was standing below a glittering night sky at the Multiple Mirror Telescope<\/a> at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory\u2019s Whipple Observatory.<\/p>\n The stars in my VR night were big and bright, but they blurred noticeably when I moved my head. I had to wonder how a headset more recent than this 2021-vintage model<\/a> would have performed; in other cities, Starstruck patrons will don a newer HTC product, the Vive Focus Vision<\/a>, and the DC exhibit will move to that model at some point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having a computer strapped to my face for 40 minutes was one reason to feel a little sweaty.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-741066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}