knowledge-Exchange workshop with researchers from Ispace SFU
From 17th-21st April, the IRL hosted a workshop involving VR researchers from Ispace Lab (Professor Bernhard Rieke, Dr. John Desnoyers-Stewart, and VR developers Ekaterina Stepanova and Noah Miller from Simon Frazer University in Vancouver). This workshop enabled us to to carry out our first multi-person VR sessions in the recently constructed IRL multi-person VR facility.
The workshop focused around:
Effective use of VR hand-tracking in the latest generation of the Meta Quest VR headsets
How to effectively design VR gloves for embodied interaction with molecular simulations
Effective ways for incorporating augmented reality ‘pass-through’ libraries (available in the latest generation of VR hardware and software) into group VR sessions for scientific visualization. The workshop led to a design prototype for a VR ‘hybrid’ glove which works on both the Steam VR and Oculus platforms.
The SFU team intends to carry on working with the multi-person VR software being developed in the IRL, and to establish an SFU ‘VR node’ when they return to Vancouver, in order to participate in citizen science data gathering activities related to the NANOVR project. Rhoslyn Roebuck-Williams from the IRL taught everyone the technical specifications and how to set up future sessions.
IRL lab technician Sila Sobrado also held a proprioception workshop for the group, focussed on the perceptual mechanics involved in sensing the dynamics of molecular objects. The dates of the workshop corresponded with an open day at CiTIUS. So the IRL teamed up with SFU to showcase interactive multi-person co-located and remote VR projects from both the IRL and the iSpace group.
L-R: Rhos teaches Bernhard, Ekaterina, John and Noah how to set up and run a multi-person VR session
Testing hand tracking & pass-through functionality with Jonathan
IRL and iSpace researchers participate in a multi-person VR session
