Virtual Reality Class Combines Talents Across Colleges

Curt Bright Author

02/16/2017 Added

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UNL students from Computer Science team up with students from the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film to create 3D virtual worlds.

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[00:00:00.756](upbeat music)
[00:00:04.635]Get it, aww!
[00:00:07.021]Basically a bunch of students have gotten together
[00:00:08.830]and created games for virtual reality.
[00:00:11.696]I'd never done VR before and upon doing it I realized
[00:00:16.599]how cool it was, and having the chance to make something
[00:00:18.489]in VR is just an amazing experience.
[00:00:22.154]Computer science handles all of the programming,
[00:00:25.308]the interactions, scripting, and then the film students
[00:00:28.240]make all of the designs, all of the models.
[00:00:31.909]So I demoed a spaceship today.
[00:00:34.437]I wrote all of the code that makes the spaceship move
[00:00:38.104]and fire weapons, and my partner designed the spaceship
[00:00:41.013]and what the missiles look like, how the explosions work.
[00:00:45.110]I was a little concerned about how well it would work out
[00:00:49.765]when we started the class, but it's been awesome.
[00:00:53.199]Collaborating is pretty beneficial because neither of us
[00:00:56.112]knows how to do everything, so I know how to do the coding
[00:00:59.915]part and they know how to do the modeling, and it's really
[00:01:03.330]nice because without them I wouldn't have all of the assets
[00:01:07.590]to put into the game, and it's really useful.
[00:01:11.549]Virtual reality is essentially like putting a tv right
[00:01:13.833]in front of you that you can look around at all sides.
[00:01:15.217]It's kind of like being in the real world,
[00:01:16.224]but everything is fake.
[00:01:18.102]It's really immersive, you put it on,
[00:01:19.592]and it's like you're there.
[00:01:21.475]It's kind of weird to describe,
[00:01:23.508]but your brain actually thinks that you're there.
[00:01:26.769]We made like a sort of creepy carnival in the woods,
[00:01:29.203]but it's more of just like a fun game where you can throw
[00:01:32.593]things and just experience the world.
[00:01:34.656]There's one that's doing a carnival setting where
[00:01:37.563]you're going to play some skeeball hopefully and
[00:01:40.374]they decided they wanted to do a cotton candy thing,
[00:01:42.847]so there's a cone that you can actually interact
[00:01:44.920]with in the headset, pick up, and dunk it
[00:01:46.776]into the cotton candy tank, and bring it out
[00:01:49.027]and it'll have a big pink puff on it or whatever.
[00:01:52.853]Just trying to explore with ways to control the interaction
[00:01:55.762]and freedom inside the space.
[00:01:58.833]It's intended to be a fully immersive experience.
[00:02:02.739]You're not just looking at one flat screen,
[00:02:05.841]you're able to look at every single angle, look around it,
[00:02:08.944]feel like you are within that environment.
[00:02:11.385]And even to an extent feel like
[00:02:13.982]you can manipulate that environment.
[00:02:17.914]It's as close to reality as you can get it.
[00:02:20.796]You feel like you're actually sitting in a video game
[00:02:23.421]and you're within that environment,
[00:02:25.624]and it's weirdly natural.
[00:02:27.902]That's the biggest thing that really surprised me is that
[00:02:31.150]once you get in, it's this wow, this environment
[00:02:33.599]around me isn't actually there and I'm seeing it.
[00:02:35.599]And then it's like okay now what can I do
[00:02:36.852]with the environment.
[00:02:38.914]And you just start interacting with it immediately,
[00:02:41.886]you start going in and playing with it.
[00:02:43.391]Alright who's next?
[00:02:46.292]We're calling it a sandbox course, where we're giving
[00:02:49.391]the students a sandbox to play in and explore and learn
[00:02:51.681]about things and it's cutting edge technology so
[00:02:56.147]it's brand new and there's really not books on it
[00:02:57.239]or anything like that.
[00:02:59.149]For this mini project that they've only been working on
[00:03:00.806]for the last three weeks, they've been producing
[00:03:02.652]some outstanding stuff.
[00:03:06.010]Full-fledged like Star Wars kind of simulations
[00:03:10.795]or one group has built a fully working trombone in VR.
[00:03:15.982](computerized music notes)
[00:03:18.642]And so we've been just floored by the progress
[00:03:20.862]that they've made in just the last three weeks.
[00:03:23.151]And we have high expectations for the next ten weeks
[00:03:26.373]of what the major project is going to be.
[00:03:28.383]Neither side can work in a vacuum,
[00:03:31.075]they have to be collaborating at every point to know
[00:03:32.986]that well you have to change this
[00:03:35.177]because it's caused a problem on my side
[00:03:37.776]or what I've done has caused a problem on your side,
[00:03:39.963]so they have to update things and work side by side
[00:03:42.807]the entire time and they're in constant communication.
[00:03:46.775]We've had to really adapt and change things as we go along
[00:03:50.716]but the students have done excellent at adapting,
[00:03:54.494]and they've just been producing really, really cool stuff.
[00:03:56.527]Far beyond, even in the first three weeks here they've
[00:04:00.470]produced something I was expecting for their final projects
[00:04:03.761]so now we kind of set our expectations low
[00:04:06.615]and we should have set them a lot higher.
[00:04:09.838]Every time we come in, they are putting up their latest
[00:04:12.685]updates and testing them up on the big screen
[00:04:15.004]and every single time they do that I'm just,
[00:04:17.409]my jaw drops that wow how did you do that
[00:04:19.977]and then that's exactly what we were looking for.
[00:04:23.301]It's fantastic to see these students, just the light bulb
[00:04:24.990]moments that keep coming on in each class
[00:04:26.804]as they figure out one little piece of code
[00:04:29.378]or how to make this model work in this scale.
[00:04:31.407]And they're growing by leaps and bounds.
[00:04:33.754]I had no idea what to expect, they're much further along
[00:04:36.344]than I ever thought they would be in five weeks.
[00:04:38.657](laughter)
[00:04:41.908]I kind of see this as the first sort of trial run
[00:04:44.013]of what we're hoping to do in the Carson Center
[00:04:45.862]on a much larger scale.
[00:04:47.462]There's no rules.
[00:04:50.873]You come in and you create.
[00:04:54.629]I really do think that this is how education needs
[00:04:56.826]to be done, with this collaborative environment,
[00:05:01.135]and this very multifaceted team really makes it
[00:05:03.355]best learning experience.
[00:05:06.008]I'll have to deal with this in the future in my career
[00:05:09.326]and it's a good thing that we're learning about it now,
[00:05:13.240]how to collaborate across different disciplines.
[00:05:15.365]And when you maesh it together like this,
[00:05:17.869]it just works out really nicely.
[00:05:20.618]Everything is more intuitive, it looks better,
[00:05:23.425]it works better, it's the future.
[00:05:25.259](music)

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Virtual Reality Class Combines Talents Across Colleges

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