VR astronaut training: Boeing's Starliner trainer and Earthlight

Boeing announced the system on September 26, 2017, at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, South Australia. It was the company's first virtual reality system developed by employees outside the United States, built by Boeing's Brisbane team. The simulation is high-resolution, interactive and real-time, and it supplements Boeing's physical Starliner simulator as a low-cost way for astronauts to familiarize themselves with the capsule and rehearse procedures.

The first training scenarios cover docking with the International Space Station in low Earth orbit and re-entry procedures. Boeing research and technology engineer Leighton Carr pointed to a practical advantage: a crew member on a six-month stay on the station can take a refresher course in virtual reality the day before re-entry. The system uses Unreal Engine 4, and the next generation is meant to make the simulation match the real capsule more closely.

Opaque Space was a small virtual reality studio in Melbourne. Boeing's team looked across the industry for who was doing the best work in Australian virtual reality and contacted the studio. Its game Earthlight was the 2017 winner of the 6th Serious Games Showcase & Challenge Australasia. Chief executive Emre Deniz described the Boeing deal as a step from VR gaming to working with NASA to partnering with the world's largest aerospace company, and expected a surge in serious games as a focus of the Australian industry.

The trainer was one part of a larger package. Boeing's announcement also described space situational awareness work by Boeing Defense Australia, a weather server that analyzes locations on the surface of the Earth and objects in space, an application that connects teams during live test events such as space launches, and spacecraft cabin anti-microbial polymer research. Boeing had more than 3,000 employees in Australia at the time. Jim Chilton, senior vice president of Boeing Space and Missile Systems, said the cooperation of the Australian and US teams would benefit NASA, the international space agencies it works with and the Australian Defense Force.

The website linked for Opaque Space, opaque.media, now shows a farewell notice. It says that after more than a decade of award-winning work, Opaque has ceased operations, and describes Opaque as a collection of software and game studios, creative agencies and technology startups, originally based in Melbourne. The notice does not name the Starliner trainer or Earthlight.

A Viveport store listing titled Earthlight: Spacewalk describes the game as created by Opaque Space in collaboration with NASA.