US-based company Leap Motion has unveiled a new program using the Oculus Rift technology combined with its own hand-tracking sensors that allows users to explore a virtual planetarium.

The game – titled Planetarium – is available from Leap’s website as a free download and allows users to explore the night sky, travel the globe and look at the stars as they would appear in real life at different given locations and time periods.

Using the combined Oculus Rift and Leap Motion technology, players use their hands to travel around the world and then ‘time travel’ using a virtual arm-mounted heads up display (HUD). The technology also allows users to reach out and ‘grab’ star constellations, revealing distances and temperatures.

Planetarium is soon to be released as open source technology – allowing developers to use the programming in their own projects.

Following the March 2014 purchase of Oculus Rift by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Attractions Management looked at what implications this could have for the attractions industry, with Zuckerberg predicting augmented reality will become part of everyday life in the near future.