Tag Archives: Virtual Reality

Better Ways of Looking at Virtual Reality in Education

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Hype about virtual reality is still building. It seems to be the “Little Future Idea That Could” – people want it to happen really, really, badly. But much of what we see is kind of gimmick-y at best. From my perspective, it seems that VR is suffering from the same problem that Second Life did: people are just trying to recreate the 2D web in 3D virtual spaces. Virtual Reality will require a new way of thinking about interaction and creation (among other concepts) to really become useful in any manner beyond a new way to play video games. The video above of ELEVR talks about their research in VR that really takes VR research into a more interesting realm. They are not looking at how to simulate the real world in VR, but how to create entire new experiences that give us new abilities of reason, communication, self expression, reflection, etc (to slightly paraphrase their words). Also note this statement: “these experiences are not reality, but they are real.” Too many projects focus on making VR more “reality,” while missing what makes them “real.” The whole video is very fascinating, especially when they get into using virtual reality to design spaces that make people think more complexly about how they categorize objects in real life. Along the same lines of re-thinking how we do VR – but serving as less complex way of realizing the ELEVR research – is the Google Blocks project which aims to re-imagine how we build 3D objects in a more intuitive way inside VR rather than on a 2D screen.

Facebook and Google Give Us a Glimpse Into the “Future” of Virtual Reality

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After much speculation as to what their Virtual Reality plans would be, Facebook finally announced what most assumed would be the answer: Facebook Spaces. The basic idea is that you recreate yourself as a cartoon and then connect with people in VR to interact, share VR experiences, and take VR selfies of, well, your cartoon you. Spaces seems to only work with Occulus Rift + Touch, and there is even a kind of cool but creepy VR camera you can look forward to bringing your messy bedroom or kitchen table into VR. Wonder how long until we see this camera on tele-presence robots? Or floating in the air training Jedis how to fight with light… or not. On the other side of the VR world is the release of Tabel by Google, an immersive VR movie. It sounds cool, but since it is only for Cardboard right now, I only get errors on my iPhone. Will VR make movies immersive? Hard to say. I could see people really wanting to watch something like Star Wars in VR, but it would be expensive to make a movie like that immersive while also basically keeping the focus on main narrative. Maybe it will lead to a different types of less linear movies like Tabel? Who knows. Maybe people won’t really care that much for it. But both projects reveal a future vision of VR that takes some part of everyday life (movies, video chats, event planning, etc) and makes them more immersive, 3-dimensional, and realistic. Well, depending on your feelings about cartoons without legs.

Building Content in Virtual Reality with WebVR

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One of the biggest challenges with Second Life was the steep learning curve for learning how to build things. Sure, once you got the hang of it, it wasn’t that bad. But it took a while to get the hang of it. So this led many users to kind of feel stuck after they ran out of things to do if they weren’t willing to learn how to build things. Virtual Reality will probably have the same challenge, as just sitting and staring at stuff will get old fast. The Mozilla VR Team is already on a system that allows users to build VR content in a borwser, using existing browser tools (APIs, HTML, etc). One example of this is how the team built a Minecraft environment with the WebVR A-Frame kit. The magic of this A-Frame system is that it uses html code to build objects in virtual reality. You could write out your VR build in code if you wanted. But there are many other possibilities, including the ability to create applications that work on different devices.

Virtual Reality Companies Continue the March Towards “Full Immersion”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIin6K_iNSA

Those of us that are old enough remember how movies went through an initial round of “full immersion” experiences – paper 3-D glasses, moving seats, and smell-o-vision. Now that Virtual Reality is catching on (or maybe it isn’t?), we now have companies working on full immersion VR. Smells, hot/cool winds, and vibrations are all part of that. Feel Real is offering an interesting all in one device, with a mask that attaches to existing VR devices and a full immersion helmet (all previewed in the video above). The scents cost $5 each (ocean? sure; burning rubber? no thanks), the attachable mask will cost $250-300, and the helmet will cost $500-800. Read Ready Player One to see where this is all probably heading. The Feel Real Nirvana helmet has some SciFi coolness to it, but still looks pretty impractical. My guess is that someday you will see this with a merged reality application to help you walk around more safely, and maybe even an internal camera that will project your face on the outside so that it will have business meeting applications or whatever it may be. The “2001 me” really loves this, but the “2017 me” worries about what could happen to people that could cut themselves off from the real world even more. But like any tech we need to look at ways to keep the human side of ourselves front and center. One plus for Feel Real is that they do have the production tools (mostly free with purchase for now) to add their technology easily to existing VR experiences, putting users more in control.

Second Life is Creating a “WordPress for Social Virtual Reality”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75zNNO6SO7s

You probably did a double take at seeing “Second Life” in the headline. Believe it or not, Second Life is still going strong with 900,000 active monthy users and over $60 million in real cash income in world. But Second Life is still falling behind times, so its creators are moving into Virtual Reality. Sansar is a new project they are working on to allow every day users to create their own virtual reality world, connected by “teleportation” hubs (sound familiar?). Of course, it is still an expensive venture: users really need high end VR headsets, and this article mentions using things like LIDAR (laser radar basically) to scan and re-create rooms. Sansar is still pretty closed and basic, but they have plans to bring it to “everyone.” Well, “everyone” that can afford and understand it. Companies always seem to leave that out. However, the ideas are going in the right direction: recreate places in VR that would be hard to access, embed learning tools, let people use other 3D modeling programs to build objects, etc. The first minute 20 seconds of the video above is of Sansar in action, followed by a quick 30 second promo of “possibilities”, and then the rest is talk.

Intelligent AI Virtual Reality Worlds That Anyone Can Develop?

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Virtual Reality seems to be everywhere these days – commercials, game systems, schools (well, a few at least), etc. Behind the hype are some serious concerns (many of which are covered in this somewhat bleeped language honest trailer for PlayStation VR that Justin shared with us). If we really want to look at VR for education, I think we need to look past games and into other applications. The passive nature of much VR content is a big barrier to really being useful. As the Honest Trailer points out, you sit a lot. Connecting AI to VR could help eliminate some of the passive issues, but then you add a layer of concern that comes along with AI (who programmed it, for what purpose, and what are the implications of those decisions on the user?). For me, I would say the best way to bring VR into education is to find a way to let learners create their own simulations (including programming their own AI). But that is expensive and impossible at this point. But hopefully that will be changing. The news last week that Google will be partnering with Improbable is a step in the right direction. Improbable basically looks to be a way that will let users create their own virtual worlds populated with AI in various ways. Of course, both are trying to make money and advertise services off the deal. But if the idea of creating your own AI-driven virtual world can catch on (again? remember Second Life?), maybe other more user-friendly options will emerge. The video above is talking about the engine behind this partnership called SpatialOS. The video looks mostly at games but also peppers in some other references to the wider uses for SpatialOS that might be more applicable for education. However, instead of thinking Matrix, people need to start thinking Ready Player One, and the good and bad that comes along with that.

Google Earth VR Takes Virtual Reality Global

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Most people probably saw this coming once Google Maps started offering 3-D maps of certain parts of larger cities, but now we have Google Earth VR. Certain select areas of the Earth are offered in virtual realty for HTC Vive users. The Vive is and $800 device that requires a powerful computer to run, so don’t see this as global virtual tourism for the masses. But it is another sign that interest in virtual reality is exploding. Services like this are probably a good way to work the kinks out of VR navigation and interface problems. Someday we will probably see VR “record and broadcast” devices that cane be set in a room or at a famous landmark or whatever to record video and sound in immersive VR to broadcast like Facetime. Then those devices will probably be integrated into our phones as quickly as possible. So now is probably a good time to start talking about the future of immersive real word broad VR. What will privacy, permission, data, etc become in a situation where a device can record and broadcast immersive VR from all directions? I like the idea of visiting the Eiffel Tower from my living room, but what happens when my neighbor carelessly broadcasts their VRcast (maybe that will be a thing?) from their front yard and my window is open?

How Will Learners Create Their Own Content in Virtual Reality

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When talking to educators about Virtual Reality, the big question I always run into is “how can my learners create their own content?” This is a good question. If we don’t get our learners into the creation process, we are really just creating fancy textbooks and lectures, or slightly more immersive movie experiences. Interesting but passive in the end. There are some ways to use newer high-end phones to record 3-D panoramic images with apps like Panorama 360 or InstaVR. But these aren’t moving, and you need some serious sound equipment to re-create immersive sounds. Projects like Jump from Google are looking at how to work on these issues. But even then you are looking at recording the world around you, bringing in limitations. How does one create content for games, fiction scenarios, historical re-creations, etc? It seems that Google is also looking into this with the Daydream platform (see also the video above). Still very rudimentary, but a good start. Someday we can hope that building VR will become as easy as placing a box of crayons and paper in front of learners and letting them create whatever comes to mind.

Are We About to See Virtual Reality Go “Mainstream”

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Virtual Reality seems to be everywhere I look now in technology news. Does this mean that VR is about to leap from “cool futuristic idea” to “mainstream tool that most people are familiar with”? We will see. Just in the past week alone: Sony Playstation finally released their long awaited VR headset and suit of games (with reviews not always being that glowing), Occulus Rift released a pair of controllers (that did earn glowing reviews), Walmart started selling a headset/controller combo that turns your smartphone into a VR device for $19.98 (made out of plastic instead of cardboard), and a VR model was used to convict a Nazi War criminal. The real educational potential will be more in allowing learners to design their own experiences in VR, from creating 3-D models that they can then walk around virtually to designing and releasing various games and simulations.

Room Scale Virtual Reality with a Smart Phone

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If you are like me, the first time you used Virtual Reality, you probably ran into one of the more painful problems with VR: you can’t see real life obstacles with a device that blocks your view. While it might seem that mapping an entire room into VR would be incredibly expensive, Occipital has found a way to bring that price down to $500. Occipital’s Structure Sensor can apparently scan the room around you in 3-D, and bring the physical world into your virtual one. So now, instead of being a passive participant basically watching a VR movie unfold, you could possibly roam around in simulations with real movement (instead of moving virtually with a controller pad or awkwardly with an omni-directional treadmill). And while $500 is not cheap, its still less expensive than other options.