This is a quick thought experiment document where I will answer a series of questions about starting up a VR introduction course. First, we will start off with our persona.
Name: Casey
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
“My glasses give me +3 to Charisma!”
Casey is a graduate fresh out of high school, who is an avid gamer/technology connoisseur. Casey, wanting to turn her passions into work is looking into game development as her career of choice. With VR being a hot topic, Casey is interested in VR but only has had a little experience with the medium over at friends houses.
Questions
1. How accessible would your VR platform be for your target student audience in terms of price?
I would use the Unity platform as my target platform. Unity’s initial cost of 0 to use makes the platform ideal for student and indie developers, that and the hardware needed to run the program can be accomplished on lower tier PC’s.
2. How interactive do my lessons need to be?
Students would have access to written and visual material that would teach the lesson from start to finish without skipping any detail. That way the student has as many resources as possible so that they can actually absorb the material taught and not have to feel confused about what’s going on.
3. How realistic do the visuals need to be?
This comes down to personal choice for the student as the Unity engine is capable of doing both low tier and high tier graphics. I’d rather the student’s work look plain and work than pretty and not work at all.
4. Does my student need to feel like an active participant in the lesson or have a passive learning experience?
Both. Being that this would be an online course there would be both passive and active lessons. This could even be broken down into the passive and active course so that students can choose between which courses would be better for their lifestyles.
5. Given the answers above what platforms would be ideal for my experience?
Unity, as it is easy to access and relatively easy to learn.
What if AR was also included in the course material?
- How would augmented reality or AR help you teach your course?
AR is still too new to me to properly apply it to my course material. I do however think that would be a fantastic course on its own.
2. How could eye tracking help you better tailor your experience to your students?
Eye tracking could definitely be used as a gameplay mechanic in some projects which would just further immerse the player in the game they are playing. So it would be a fantastic addition to our arsenal of gameplay mechanics.
3. How would better haptic feedback help each your experience?
Haptic feedback would be another amazing addition to future projects. Anything really that helps bring the immersion levels up for the experience.
4. How would the inclusion of this better technology affect the graphic fidelity of projects?
Again, this would come down to the personal taste of the creator/student. Adding feedback to the world, however, it may look, will just make the experience that much more intimate and rewarding.
5. How critical is it that your target student audience receives training in these fields within the next two years?
With the fields still being so new, I wouldn’t say its mandatory *Yet. I do however think that looking into these fields would be a fantastic idea as its only a matter of time before these are common practice in VR product development.
VR in a Digital Film medium
Name: Isaac
Age: 25
Profession: 3D animator / film director
“Technology is great! Now if only we could do something about those rendering times…”
Isaac is a 3D animator who usually works on big CGI film productions but he also helps in directing them as well. With VR on the rise, Isaac’s CGI films have the possibility of reaching a whole new level of immersion and with that better story telling.
- How accessible would your VR platform be for your target student audience?
With film, it would probably only be available to students and others in the industry. So it would be a pretty high barrier to entry.
2. How interactive/ passive would your lessons be?
Highly interactive as the skills needed for Film cannot be taught via textbooks and videos.
3. How realistic do the visuals need to be?
This would depend on the story/world the film is set in. Some would need reality blurring realism others could look cartoon like and stylistic.
4. What platforms could be used for this experience?
At the moment the Unreal Engine would have the potential to pull off a feat like this. It would require a program that is flexible in the visual medium but powerful enough to handle everything that would be required in a scene.