Hey guys, I'm Brent Rose.

Writer and guy who wishes he had three hands.

So, here at Wired we've talking a lot about mixed reality.

What you might think of as a hybrid

between the virtual world and the real one.

We've seen a lot of really cool

theoretical applications for it already,

but today we're here at NASA's

Jet Propulsion Laboratory to see how they're using

bleeding edge technology like the Microsoft HoloLens

right now to design spacecraft and chart missions on Mars.

Spoiler alert. It's even cooler than it sounds.

(hip hop drum beat)

Welcome to Mars.

[Brent] Cool. Thank you. Good to be here.

So, this device is tracking you as you move.

So you can walk anywhere in the this room.

You can crouch down and look at the rocks.

As you look around, everything you're seeing

is real data sent back by

either the Curiosesity Mars rover

or by satellites in orbit.

Is it photos or is it a 3D scan?

These are actual photos.

[Brent] It's gorgeous

It's like there's a 60-inch TV in front of me

and I'm on a couch six feet away.

It's basically offering me a window

into this alternate reality

where I'm standing on Mars,

but I can still see to my periphery.

I'm gonna stress test it a little bit.

I'm just gonna run around the room a little bit.

It's amazing, though. There's no lag.

You don't get the terrain experience,

which is a little bit disconcerting.

You see these hills and you're not climbing up

or going down but everything was moving in real time,

which was kind of amazing.

I could totally see myself overlaying this

on a treadmill, certainly.

Explore two miles of the Martian landscape

from the comfort of my gym.

You might want to be able to move around

without actually walking.

[Brent] And we have a way to do that. Okay.

Do that air tap gesture that we practiced.

[Brent] Boop!

And then tap again.

Boop! Hey!

It really looks like where the floor is

is where the rocks are.

Once I start getting really close

you lose a little bit of resolution.

That's some good compression.

You guys using Pied Piper?

(crowd laughs)

You hear things about the HoloLens

being sort of a narrow window

and despite that I found myself

incredibly immersed in the world.

I think we're just naturally drawn

to focus on the most interesting thing that you're seeing.

Nothing was more interesting than

walking around on a natural Martian landscape.

Why did you guys to decide to choose the HoloLens

instead of one of the virtual reality viewers?

We need to be able to allow a scientist

or an engineer to confidently and comfortably

walk around on the Martian surface

while they might be in a crowded office.

Could you add notes or could you draw on it?

Like could I write Bowie was here?

Annotation of the Martian surface

is a feature that we're looking at implementing.

One way you might want to think about it is

just turning Mars into a white board.

What you just experienced is a Martian operational tool

with a small set of scientists.

We want to put them right beside the rover

that they're using to explore.

Is it something that anybody could download

and check out Mars on their own?

We recently announced a public version of the experience

at the Kennedy Space Center this summer.

We're gonna bring a full scale model

of the 2020 Mars rover right here into the room.

[Brent] Bam!

[Jeff] There's a very human thing that happens

when you put your hands into view

around an object.

You really gain a whole new level of intuition

about how large something is.

[Brent] I found myself being

a little bit precious around it.

I don't to knock into it or anything.

[Jeff] Part of what is nice about protospace

is that you can cut into any of these pieces.

[Brent] If this was a manned rover

you could sit in the seat and be like

Oh no, look, obviously we're gonna need a little

more head room there

because you could see this is something you

could hit you head on

or if you needed to be able to get your hand

back there to tighten a screw and you won't fit.

That's an adjustment you could make

before you even start prototyping in physical space.

So I can take this real sprocket

or whatever it actually is called

and I can see where it fits here.

And it lines up down to the screw holes.

Are you working on ways where you can manipulate

the objects with your hands?

Being able to pull things apart

and to be able to sort of take things away,

place them in different positions

while other people are seeing it

is a feature that we're developing right now.

So if you had a hard day designing the rover

you could just go all Office Space,

smash the hell out of it

then just regenerate it

and start from scratch the next day.

Yeah, you could maybe do that.

I don't know that you'd want

to let any of your coworkers know that you're doing that.

So we've been seeing some really interesting

implementations of how you guys

are using HoloLens on Earth.

How are you using it off the planet?

We send two of the HoloLens devices

to the International Space Station

where we were able to talk to astronaut Scott Kelly

and from our computer were able

to then annotate his world.

When you think about it the International Space Station

is perhaps the most complicated machine ever build.

With the technology now we put

any number of people with the astronaut

at the same time.

So what did we learn here today?

By bridging the gap between the digital world

and the real one we can interact

with incredibly detailed models in ways

that we never could before.

Pointing and tapping at a computer screen

simply pales in comparison.

The difference is that mixed reality

and the HoloLens puts the real you

into the experience in a way that's truly exciting.

But what do you think?

Is mixed reality really as cool as virtual reality

and all it's videogamey, porny potential?

Let us know what you think in the comments below,

subscribe to Wired if you haven't already,

and make sure you check out our other videos

from NASA and from the naughty virtual world.

Thanks for watching.