In this critical period where physical classes are suspended until further notice it is crucial to find alternative solutions to mandatory interactive courses required for graduation, referred to here by the umbrella term “labs”. These labs exist across disparate fields therefor these course solution must rage from tackling simulating the complex technical dynamics necessary in order to represent physical lab mechanics, as well as the more nuanced modeling of emotional interactions in a theater space. The following is an assessment of the potential to use three existing tools as a solution to education in these contexts.
Improov3
Created by middleVR based in France
This company appears to have been around since 2012 with about 15 employees. https://www.youtube.com/user/iminvr/videos
I was interested in learning more about this tool as it seemed to be a great avenue to present end of year projects in CAD in majors such as engineering and architecture. This tool seems to have yielded a lot of praise at its debut in 2012 but have not seen much activity on their social platforms. I have reached out to them through their online contact form to see if they are willing to share a sort of portfolio to better showcase the achievements of this product.
Through observing their promotional media the program appears to have a smooth, clean interface. It allows those without VR to be involved in collaborative projects via video call as well.
✅ Will mesh well with CAD familiar audiences
✅Video channel populated with examples that showcase ability and limitations
✅Allows for those without oculus to participate
✅Designed to cater specifically to oculus products
❌ So far team unresponsive
❌Will not mesh well with CAD unfamiliar audiences
❌Additional capture footage show reality of the program is not as shiny as the demo
VisionXR
Created by Future Visual based in the UK.
This company appears to have been around since 2015- VisionXR plus subscription costs about £25K annually. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxaAWrcV4PsVNnO3Xa8G_ug/videos
I reached out directly via email to learn more and response was quick. The co-founder Tim was available to meet to discuss the capacity of this tool in regards to education. We went over past endeavors and was able to learn of two prior projects completed over the past 5 years. I asked questions about turnaround time and how many other projects they have ongoing that would need to be taken into account when developing our production timeline estimates, but understandably they needed more specific information of our needs. I asked instead if they could provide a timeline for any project of potentially similar complexity and I got a few references to existing toolkits they possess to streamline the process. I was told they would send along UI screenshots and other projects in their portfolio.
✅Responsive & capable team
✅Apply creative workarounds to account for difference in VR vs desktop mechanics
✅Use of desktop and mobile including iPhone and iPad
❌ Expensive
❌ Still a small team
❌ Not available for MacOS
Amino Labs
Virtual Bioengineer Simulators
While these examples are mainly 2D web-based resources I was interested in their teaching efficacy and ability for their teaching strategy to be translated and capitalized on in VR. This presentation was very reminiscent of the digital instructional guides from my microbiology textbooks and I had always wished that I had been able to manipulate these microscopic structures in 3D space to better understand their binding affinities. I feel that this sort of pipeline would be best to implement quickly as it only requires course instructors to share a revised version of their lab protocols that is heavily reliant on visuals to be translated into a virtual experience. This can then be made accessible on all platforms and operating systems.
In summary it appears that the majority of options I examined are small teams that would require a subscription expense to aid in performance of our tasks with the benefit of a mildly increased performance capacity (dependent on each external teams current project workload). A cost benefit analysis would need to take place to see if any of these services would have a net positive impacts of level of productivity.