Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality

Immersive Education has created an initiative conference being held in Paris this year, 2015. Immersive education at Boston College has expanded widely and looks at many different forms.Virtual Reality has become very popular in recent years and is only expanding with more advanced technologies. IMMERSION 2015 informs the public at the conference and events about this form of immersive education. For more information, you can go to http://summit.ImmersiveEducation.org. 

Virtual Reality (VR) is a kind of technology that is being used more and more each day by society. It is computer-stimulated and creates a “world” that seems like the real world. In most cases, VR uses a headset that you can have a physical presence of this world. It allows you to communicate within environments and provides the viewer with a virtual presence. In some cases you can virtually smell, see, and touch things in these virtual worlds. 

Geared toward a lower budget level, Google Cardboard was created in form with Virtual Reality. It is a cardboard box with a mobile phone places inside. The intention is to screen the virtual reality from the mobile phone to keep the cost down while still able to be in a virtual world. Google Cardboard is being presented at the Immersive Education Initiative this year in Paris. Students will have the opportunity to use this headset and their own mobile phone.

The Oculus Rift is another virtual reality headset that is being presented at the Immersion 2015. This headset gives the person the chance to enter games and virtual worlds. It has 360 degree head tracking which allows a more “real life” effect. When you move, you move in the game, making it that much more realistic. Here is a view from the Oculus Rift . 

Virtual reality gives people the opportunity to see environments and worlds that they may not necessarily have the opportunity to in their every day life. It is being used for things such as field trips for schools, monitoring environments and creating new architecture. Schools that do not have the budget for field trips to a certain museum, park, or in the case of immersion 2015, Old Bents Fort, they are able to view it in a virtual world. 

Communication among virtual reality worlds has allows people to virtually meet people online. Many people have built close relationships. This initiative in Paris shows people what virtual reality has the capability of doing and all of its benefits. Cognition and communication are being expanded through virtual reality.