SynchronyVR

Project Summary

Virtual Reality and associated development platforms have evolved considerably in the last few years, to the extent that while still niche, VR has finally evolved to a point at which it can appeal to a wider base of consumers. One of the most promising use cases for VR is the ability to visualize complex concepts in a fully immersive three dimensional environment — that is to say — VR is proving to be an exceptional venue for developing useful productivity and research tools. Perhaps of even more significance, Virtual Reality is rapidly becoming recognized as a valuable research platform through which human interactions can be recorded and analyzed in a controlled environment. The key advantages are obvious: test subjects don’t necessarily need to be in the same physical space, and the researcher has full control over all environment variables. To this end, we have developed SynchronyVR — a virtual reality software kit capable of tracking and logging avatar movements in a virtual environment to a fine level of detail. Our intention is that this tool will be applicable to a current specific research study, but will also be extendable by future researchers working in the VR social research space.

Leveraging back-end modern server technologies and the free-to-use High Fidelity social VR platform, we have created a tool that is powerful, portable, and extendable. The Virtual Reality research community lacks capable tools currently, especially in the realm of social science research. Synchrony VR seeks to fill that conspicuous void and provide the academic community with an innovative platform for conducting social research.

SynchronyVR has been designed from the ground up to be extendable and scalable. Though an immediate research need at the University of Georgia prompted the development of this platform, we have designed the tool to be modular and easily modified to accommodate any VR research project wherein precise logging of avatar movements over time is necessary. The server software will run on all major operating systems. Data will be stored in a platform independent portable database and will be available for offline processing and/or future access. Real-time Pearson correlation visualizations are provided via the highcharts.org API. These groundbreaking features will combine to provide the research community with an invaluable tool for researching one of the more interesting emerging mediums today, and to that end, SynchronyVR is poised to fill a significant void in the realm of VR research.

Features

• Real time visualization of Pearson correlations
• Portable server technologies that leverage Docker containers to provide platform agnostic back-end data processing.
• Extendable code base that could potentially be expanded to track many avatars.
• Community generated VR assets available free of charge to researchers.

Technology

• High Fidelity VR social platform (virtual environments).
• Docker containerization for data processing and storage.
• JavaScript and the “R” research programming language (offline data processing).
• highcharts.org API (real time data visualization).
• HTC Vive (VR hardware).

Potential Impact

SynchronyVR will significantly increase the accuracy of research studies that seek to analyze human behavior through Virtual Reality experiences. Currently no tool is available to the average research community that provides this functionality. It is our hope that the academic community will embrace this powerful technology solution, and expand upon it.

As more institutions come online, we look forward to observing how our solution is implemented by the academic community as a whole. The scalability of SynchronyVR makes it suitable for a multitude of scenarios, and we anticipate that researchers around the world will find uses for our software beyond anything we could have envisioned when initially designing the scope of the platform.

Partnership

We have partnered with researchers and developers at Cornell University to develop this software tool for use at both the University of Georgia and Cornell for immediate research needs, but also to ultimately provide the research community with a powerful but easy to use VR research platform. Partnering with Cornell has been a fabulous experience. It has allowed VR research initiatives both here and there to leverage resources and collaborate on an expansive project that requires extensive testing. The availability of remote users for testing and feedback has been invaluable.

As the popularity of SynchronyVR increases, more opportunities will arise to work in conjunction with other researchers and labs to really leverage the power of this software package. It is our hope that eventually this solution will perhaps even move beyond the academic environment and into the private sector where it could potentially be used to conduct research in fields such as medicine and engineering. The possibilities are truly limitless.

Lessons Learned

Research

From a personal standpoint, I am learning more and more everyday while working with my various collaborators on this tool. Academic research is fascinating, and I am really excited about the potential uses I am hearing for SynchronyVR. Developing and implementing newer VR technologies into the tool will be an ongoing task. VR is advancing rapidly as a medium, and I look forward to the R&D efforts that will go into future versions.

Design

Think twice, code once really applied here. With such an expansive code base, it has been necessary to put a great deal of thought into the various features of the tool before actually coding to avoid scope creep and disparate functionality. Keeping the end goal— a powerful but easy to use tool for recording avatar moments — foremost in focus during the design phases has been critical to success.

Development

Development has been rigorous and exhausting at times, but generally rewarding as everything is working as planned so far. The initial development phases were particularly tough as is usually the case, but things began to come together when the High Fidelity developers tossed a few tips and tricks for working with their platform my way. I still a good bit of work to do, but I know the path ahead now and look forward to continuing to work on this interesting project.

But hey, that’s enough about all of that. Have a look at SynchronyVR!

Virtual Reality, Chicken, and Other Significant Things: My Emerging Media Journey

In the early days of The Program, it was all about the chicken. That isn’t to say that there wasn’t an element of learning even at that nascent stage, but make no mistake, more often than not on those cool Autumn evenings back in 2017, an irresponsible amount of chicken made an appearance. I won’t accuse any particular vendor of perpetrating said fowl here, but if you are reading this post, then you have presumably been around campus for a while, and you know where you go to get your chicken. But, though chicken did indeed help to mark the path ahead, it all morphed into something much more spectacular than that along the way. It has been a wild ride, but I wouldn’t take anything for it. I’ve made new friends for life, gained a few pounds from stress eating (cue the chicken), and learned how to sit at the bar at The Globe in downtown Athens and begin sentences with: “Now, when I was just an undergrad…”.

That last part is crucial. Very empowering. To steal a line, now that you have the means, I highly recommend it.

I wouldn’t have dreamed even five years ago that I would be willing to endure the stress of college academics again, and indeed heading back to class at forty….eh…something while also working full time has been a bit of a challenge, but the comradery and the NMI staff have made the EM journey a splendid one and an all around wonderful experience. I have never once regretted signing on for all of this. I’ve found graduate school to be a much more pleasurable atmosphere than my undergrad days—no more spoon feeding—at this level the instructors are here to help you along, but mostly you are left to your own devices and I’ve found that to be very refreshing. And the opportunity to very actively work in Virtual Reality in a way that will ultimately benefit the academic community has been stupendous, and it may well aid me in shifting gears in regards to my career path.

For certain, this program has been considerable amount of work, but through good old fashioned elbow grease and significant amounts of chicken, I have made it through. Well, almost…

Advice to future EM’ers:

• Make friends right away—don’t be shy. You will find that in grad school programs, people are typically very like-minded relative to you as you are all pursuing a specific common interest. You will need the assistance of others along the way. Posse up as soon as you can.
• If your first semester classes are in person, they will be looooooong, almost certainly at night, and in the Journalism building. That last factoid regarding locale is key, and understand this: there will be much chicken at dinner break. Embrace the inevitability.
• You will procrastinate just as you did as undergrad, and you won’t love yourself all that much at times due to said procrastination. You will stress out significantly at the end of the semester. But even if you think you will go completely insane, you probably won’t.
• Slack is your friend—don’t be afraid to ask questions up in there. As has always been the case, all the way back to the making art with Cheerios days, if you are confused about something, others probably are as well. Use your posse channels to try to get an answer first, but if that fails, take it to the EM powers that be. They are usually very quick to respond…ahem….…usually.
• Remember that the program has been designed to expose you to many aspects of emerging media, and even emerging media is loosely defined. To that end, figure out what interests you, i.e. VR/AR or mobile apps or what have you, and latch on to a professor on campus working in that space if you can. They usually need the assistance of eager grad students, and you might be able to identify and create your capstone project through working with them.
• You will make new friends. Go out and do stuff with ’em. Your time together is short-—you won’t believe how quickly time will fly—and when this is all over, you will quickly go your separate ways. But connections are important — so stay in touch with your classmates. It can really pay off.
• Have fun with it! We all did along the way.