From Pokemon Go to processing plants

Virtual Reality isn’t just for gaming anymore. In “Virtual Reality: What It Is and What It Can/Can't Do For You,” a free, public talk in the NCSU Libraries’ “Coffee & Viz” series, two scholars introduce the educational, industrial, and research futures of the rapidly developing platform.

On Friday, September 16, from 9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m. in the James B. Hunt Jr. Library’s Teaching and Visualization Lab, Mike Cuales (Creative Director, NC State's Distance Education and Learning Technology Applications) and Gary Kapral (postdoctoral associate in biochemistry at Duke University) will give an overview of a spectrum of Augmented Reality, Virtual Augmented Reality, and mixed reality platforms, as well as current and future applications for the technologies in teaching, training, and research.

Before and after the talk, attendees will also get to try out some of the latest VR devices and applications such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, many of which are available for lending at the NCSU Libraries.

“The whole VR spectrum is important for us as producers and educators to understand,” Cuales says, “as we try to match up which of these tools and mediums will best solve the instructional challenges that we face, especially in an environment where online education is becoming not just prevalent but expected from our end-users and prospective students.”

Cuales describes the classroom usage of a training application: a student puts on a headset or sits before a monitor. She’s standing on the floor of a processing plant, surrounded by a lot of heavy equipment that’s very expensive and complicated to use. It might even be dangerous if one’s not adept already. The student walks through the virtual room to a machine’s control panel, checks the readouts, and operates those controls to deal with a common problem on the floor, all without the risk of stopping the processing line, losing a hand, or damaging equipment--things that might stop a real business dead in its tracks. If she makes a mistake, the application tells her, and her instructor helps her try again.

“Real-world, it’s actually very costly to have students moving through or conducting learning in an operational facility,” Cuales says. “We see that cost and concern not going anywhere anytime soon, so we’re seeing the use of VR applications to further extend and allow access to spaces that are very high-cost or just not feasible to allow large groups of traffic, like a class for instance.”

“With the revival of VR, suddenly we have this whole host of new tools that has just popped up and become more accessible. These tools get us closer—not perfectly by any means, but closer—to realizing that vision that we’ve been chasing for getting students to have a sense of presence in these spaces and places.”

Contact:
Markus Wust
(919) 513-0743
mgwust@ncsu.edu