Step Into the Motherboard Simulation Vault

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Step Into the Motherboard Simulation Vault

We dug through our archives to find the best simulations videos from Motherboard past.

It's Perfect Worlds week on Motherboard, and all week we've been investigating, re-imagining, and celebrating the simulations that surround us. From finding out what it feels like to simulate death to chatting with the guys who tossed Homer Simpson into a 3D world for that 1995 Treehouse of Horror episode, we're leaving no virtual stone unturned.

But the truth is we've been fascinated with simulations here at Motherboard for a really long time—since our inception, actually. So we decided to dig through our vaults to uncover the best simulation videos from our past. If you've been a reader for awhile, you might remember some of these forgotten gems. If you're new to the site, hopefully you enjoy a little stroll down memory lane (all the way back to 2009) as we rediscover the virtual worlds that captivated us in years past.

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The Virtusphere

In 2011, we took a jaunt up to Binghampton, NY, to check out the Virtusphere: a 10-foot hollow sphere that rotates kind of like a giant, human-sized hamster ball. It allows a user to physically explore a virtual reality space, like a mini holodeck. This may no longer be new technology, but it feels very futuristic:

Mars on Earth

Here's one where we checked out the desert colonies where people simulate life on Mars in an attempt to understand what it might be like to actually visit the red planet:

Fighting Asteroids Under the Sea

This time we journeyed to see how NASA astronauts simulate life in orbit, from 20 meters below the surface of the sea. The Aquarius Reef Base is an important simulator for preparing astronauts for a mission to a nearby asteroid, and potentially saving the world. Oh, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson chats with us (passionately) about it:

William Gibson IRL

Back in 2012, we sat down with revered science fiction author William Gibson to chat about some of the incredible virtual worlds he crafted. He's considered by many to be the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk genre; he coined the term "cyberspace;" and in our interview, he told us "the only real time machine is just getting older. It's very slow, but it eventually gets you to the 21st century, or the 22nd." A wise, if depressing, prophet:

Perfect Worlds is a series on Motherboard about simulations, imitations, and models. Follow along here.