Syracuse, N.Y. (NCC News) — Another total Solar Eclipse will not go over North America until August 23rd, 2044, according to NASA. However, with new augmented and virtual reality technology, Syracuse University assistant professor of visual communications Jason Webb, along with his immersive design class, are attempting to make it accessible for people to experience the event again as if they were actually there.
“We thought it would be really cool if we used a bunch of our [virtual reality] 360 video cameras to be able to capture the eclipse and be able to put it into[virtual reality] for people to view in full 360, so not only can they see the eclipse, but also the happenings around them” said Webb.
You can get a full 360º view of the eclipse using the cameras, letting people with the headsets be able to experience an event as it happened. These headsets include Meta’s headset, as well as cardboard headsets made for your phone. Professor Webb spoke about what these videos captured and they can help recreate the event itself.
“One: the crowd atmosphere,” said Webb. “Two: the light change and three: some of them kind of caught just enough of the eclipse itself, that you couldn’t really see the full coverage, but you could see even when the darkness came across it and what that looked like.”
These new videos will also be able to be used in the Unreal Engine used for video games, making the videos become even more realistic than before, according to Webb.
