Here, you can see the ship in 3D virtual reality, thanks to a new Stocktonia partnership.
This ship’s hull is cloud white, marred by mud-colored waterlines from a partial sinking. Its ports sprout the dangling ends of countless hoses.
And in the evening, when the air is still and the tide is just about to turn, the ship sounds like it’s singing.
“The ship” – though lately in Stockton, there may be only one ship everybody’s talking about – is the Aurora.
The vintage cruise ship once promised to become a refurbished piece of history. Then it sank at its mooring in May and started leaking oil and other contaminants into the Delta.
Approach the Aurora by land, and you can see it from a half-mile off. The ship is 300 feet long; its upper decks sit aloft of the levees, and its mast and blue smokestack reach to the sky. It’s easy to see why this vintage cruise liner has launched more than one star-crossed dream.
But get much closer than that, and you’re likely to be stopped at a roadblock. Most people won’t get any closer to the Aurora than to squint at it from far down the road. They’ll never get close enough to peer into the ship’s hatches and imagine its past – or its future. Certainly they won’t get close enough to hear that aging hull, thrumming against the tide.
That’s why Stocktonia is launching this new interactive report about the Aurora.
Here, you can see the ship in three dimensions, in up-close detail, thanks to a partnership among Stocktonia, NEWSWELL and journalists and technology experts from Arizona State University.
Hover over the image below. Scroll in or out to zoom; click and drag to move. If you can’t see it, click here.
To build a version of the Aurora in virtual reality, Stocktonia went to the scene at Little Potato Slough along with some journalism partners: Emmanuel Lozano, a pilot and photojournalism professor from Arizona State University, and Mike Caronna, a UK-based photojournalist working with 3D technologies at the university’s Narrative and Emerging Media program.
Over two days, our team spent hours flying a drone around and above the ship, shooting high-definition video captures. (While the road to the ship is closed, the federally regulated airspace above it is open.)
Caronna, working with ASU program director Nonny de la Peña and her team, rendered a selection of those video frames using an artificial-intelligence driven system. The result is an image created through a special process called Gaussian splatting – a new way of visualizing the world.
“We take tens or hundreds of images from all angles of an object or scene,” Caronna says, “and use that data to calculate what it would look like from any position or angle, even from new positions and angles not in the original images.”
Gaussian splatting uses the same kind of hardware and software used to build high-end video games. But journalists like Caronna are working on how to apply this technology to real-world news.
“Gaussian splats are made up of a cloud of millions of tiny particles, and each particle’s color and opacity can change depending on the angle you view it,” Caronna says.
That’s why this image more closely shows the reality of, say, light reflecting on water, or sun rays passing through haze or smoke. “So scenes made with Gaussian splat tend to look very realistic, and can sometimes be indistinguishable from regular photos and videos,” he says.
The difference between a regular news photograph and this image, though? You, the user, are the one in control. You decide the point of view, how close to zoom in, or zoom out.
“VR and immersive technologies really excel at making people feel as though they are really there compared to traditional techniques,” de la Peña says. “Each person can make choices about how they experience the story and have a unique experience, opening up the possibility that they get something out of it beyond the expectations of the journalists working on the story. It’s an exciting prospect.”
This is the kind of technology that’s moving journalism forward. When you see this aging ship in virtual reality, imagine yourself in control of a 3D view of a natural disaster, or a political rally, or a breaking-news scene. With NEWSWELL, Stocktonia is bringing this kind of experimental journalism to Stockton. This form of VR is a new way of looking at the world – and at journalism.
Another virtual-reality image of the Aurora is below. If you can’t see it, click here.
At a scene like the Aurora, the image might feel close enough to be almost like being there.
That’s something you most likely can’t do in real life.
By June, contractors had removed 20,000 gallons of oily water and more than 3,000 gallons of hazardous waste from the scene, and officials said their response was complete. U.S. Rep. Josh Harder has introduced a bill that his office says would help prevent similar incidents in the future.
But Stockton’s municipal water intake sits just downstream of the Aurora. The city said it closed the road to limit access to the site. Private guards watched the roadblock around the clock.
A couple of hulking, trailer-mounted generators power the pumps that keep the Aurora from sinking again. It’s a fair guess that the roadblock keeps people away from this expensive equipment.
All this is in hopes of keeping afloat this ship that could contaminate the Delta, or the city’s drinking water.
According to the Coast Guard, Stockton must still navigate the process of hiring a contractor to move the ship; once that plan meets Coast Guard approval, Aurora might be moved to its final home.
But on what date, and at what cost? Nobody knows yet. It’s not even clear what owner is responsible for letting the ship fall into this state.
Onetime owner Chris Willson had long said that he was committed to refurbishing the ship. Once it sank, Willson wrote that the Aurora had changed hands to a new, unidentified owner.
Today, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Levi Read will only say, “The official status of ownership of the vessel is still under investigation.”
In the meantime, all the security around the ship leads to the same result that some advocates see happening over and over again: Another piece of the Delta ends up closed off.
“We have a problem with access to water when it comes to the Delta in Stockton generally,” says Spencer Fern, science program manager with Restore the Delta. “And we have very few areas where people can recreate safely, or even at all.”
Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but sit at the roadblock on a Friday night in the fall and you’ll notice who is allowed into the area: Duck hunters in expensive SUVs on their way to private clubs on the islands.
Access isn’t likely to get any easier. San Joaquin County supervisors in December will consider a request to formally “abandon” the stretch of county-maintained road on the levee along Little Potato Slough – meaning the road would be gated and closed for good.
But you can see the ship here. All you’ll need to imagine now is the Delta at sunset.
The water laps against the levee, and the evening’s insects start to rise.
As the aging hull strains against the tide, it makes an eerie noise. The Aurora, keeper of so many past dreams, might just be singing.
Cassie Dickman and Edward Lopez of Stocktonia contributed to this report.