Venturing Into Virtual Reality
What’s it like to exist in a virtual world? As a group, we knew that experiencing this for ourselves would be essential as we embark upon designing an educational mixed reality tool. Our team set out to test a variety of devices along the virtual, augmented, and mixed reality spectrum, in hopes of better understanding the range of experiences they could provide.
Part I: HTC Vive
Our first stop was at the far end of the virtual spectrum — as close to The Matrix as we could possibly come. Friend of Moment, Duncan Frazier welcomed us to the Bitbanger Labs studio to help us test drive his HTC Vive, a fully immersive headset that runs a variety of VR games.
We took turns testing it out, each experimenting with a game of our choice. Some were more viewing-based, but most were highly interactive. Even something as seemingly benign as a job simulator game had us throwing toast at customers, discovering that we could drink the bottle of wine on the counter, and eating old donuts that made us vomit. We shot at attacking aliens, defended our castle from an enemy siege, and painted in three dimensions with plasma and stardust.
Part II: Microsoft HoloLens
The HoloLens was an entirely different experience. As an augmented reality device, it wasn’t as fully immersive as the Vive, and felt more like a transparent screen laid over our field of vision. After scanning the environment, it created experiences that interacted with the layout of the room, with holographic objects and creatures that sat on surfaces as though they were truly in the space.
Observations
Experiencing these devices challenged many of our assumptions about virtual and augmented reality, and we discovered a few things to keep in mind when designing for the virtual world.
- Moving things with your hands feels natural; moving them with your eyes does not. We don’t use our gaze to manipulate objects in real life, so it felt strange when the HoloLens asked us to move things this way. The Vive’s controllers allowed us to pick things up and manipulate them with our hands, and as users, we needed the familiarity of those hand-based interactions.
- Haptic feedback is just as important as audio and visual feedback. The Vive’s controllers gave us something to grab onto, and acted as a tactile link between our bodies and the virtual environment. It became clear how important this was when we moved to the HoloLens, and struggled to “click” by moving our pointer fingers in mid-air.
- VR helps suspend creative inhibitions. The real-world constraints of materials and gravity don’t have to exist in the virtual world. This allowed us to build and create to the fullest extent of our imaginations, and manipulate objects effortlessly and instantly. Building something with totally new tools and possibilities was thrilling.
Now that we’ve experienced the virtual world for ourselves, the prospect of designing an educational VR tool is more exciting than ever. What if students were able to build and create instantly and limitlessly without ever having to leave their classroom? What if virtual reality could transform a boring science lesson into a magical space expedition, or bring history to life with a journey through ancient times? We can’t wait to start imagining what this new world will look like.
Each summer Moment creates a research project about an exciting topic we see on the horizon. For the 2016 summer project our group of interns — in collaboration with full-time Moment designers, leaders, and outside experts — will explore the intersection of a mixed reality experience and children’s education.
For the Moment 2016 summer project our group of interns — in collaboration with full-time Moment designers, leaders, and outside experts — will explore the intersection of a mixed reality experience and children’s education. We’ll be thinking about how students could interact with virtual objects and environments in the real world.
UPDATE: The Moment summer 2016 intern project is live here.
