Story Selection

When the kiosk version of OpenSpace starts, the user is presented with a story selection menu interface. Select the left/right arrows to browse between the “Solar System”, “Jupiter & its Moons”, “Earth Weather & Events”, “Mars Sights”, and “Galaxy Exploration”. Press “Tap Here to Explore” to select a story.

The user interface is customized to each story. There are common elements to the interface, which include the buttons Home, Help, Info, and Overview.

Home

Press this to return to the main story selection menu.

Help

This will show an overlay of how to use the touch gestures to navigate. Note that there are limits to zooming in/out, restricting the camera movement to what is relevant to the story.

Info

Shows a pop-up window describing the current story.

Time

Time controls are available in every story except those where time has less meaning (e.g. Galaxies story). The date & time can be moved forward or backward at various speeds using the arrow controls and pause/play button. Pressing the Time “loop arrow” button will reset the clock to the current date/time.

Overview

The Overview button will zoom the camera out to a point where all relevant element(s) in the story are visible.

There are also interface elements that are unique to a particular story.

Solar System

Each planet in the solar system has its own button. Press it to move the camera there.

Jupiter

Each moon in the story has a button that will move the camera to its location. There is also a button that will scale the moons from their true scale to 10X size for better visibility.

Earth Weather & Events

There is a “Select Event” button that will pop-up a list of interesting dates and their description. Selecting an event will cause the date/time to jump to that point in time.

Interesting Sights on Mars

This story has a “Select Sight” button that will pop-up a list of interesting locations on Mars. The camera will zoom-in close to the surface when a sight is selected. Pressing the “Overview” button will reset the camera to a planetary view.

Galaxies

There are a number of individual buttons available that will toggle visibility of specific galaxy layers.

Info Buttons

In addition to the main Info button for the story in the menu bar at bottom, labels with an (i)nfo icon sometimes appear. Pressing the (i) will toggle visibility of an info description for the corresponding object.