Katalin had a television appearance in Budapest and for that she needed an app to show her 3D model in VR. So we urgently sit together and published this small app. You can just stare at different point of interest and fly there directly. The models are quite basic, this is mostly to collect experience about such an app.
The VR moving experience can be disturbing though, especially if you are new to VR. The first version is set to five seconds flying time and maybe it should be ten seconds. Also the start of the flying should be very slow I suppose. I am not sure about the usability aspect of this solution, maybe this is a learning process for both developers and users?
Can you imagine entering a 3D space to learn languages, history or mathematics? I believe it will be an inevitable tool in our future learning process. This is a growing field, a blue ocean for developers. I am curious how these system will change the field of education.
There are many prototypes and solutions. Here I just list a few of them:
The video is of course from the Engage team. Their software is great, it’s worth trying it. You can use it in non-VR mode too on a PC. It may have a few limitations though: You need a windows system to use it.
So how can we contribute in this field? Maybe by getting rid of some limitations?
It is possile to create a VR space with the following properties:
VR and non-VR mode: You can enter the same space using VR and using just a normal computer screen
Platform independence: you can enter using cardboard, Gear VR, Oculus, Vive, PC, Mac or practically any other Unity 3D target device
Massive multi-user experience: It is possible for a few hundred users to be present in the same space, mixing VR, non-VR and all platforms.
I wonder why this space doesn’t exist already? So we set out to push this concept at least until a well usable prototype stage. What we did:
server structure to store user locations and directions
client functionality to read all user locations in every 100 ms
client funcitonality to post own user location every 100 ms
Tested on these platforms: WebGL, PC, Android and Unity editor (should work on any platform)
Of course this is just a pretotype – I am really embarassed to show this humble picture – but already users from different platforms are present.
Our next steps:
Research similar solutions, like Engage (4-8h)
Clarify necessary functionalities (4-16h)
Build prototype that we can publish (8-32h)
Look for possible partners (writing emails basically 1-3h)
Our questions for you:
What content would you put into this environment?
What would be your main user device?
What feature would be the most critical for you?
We are in this together. Let us know how we can help creating our future education platform.
