GatorVRse: Virtual Reality for Social Good JOU 4930 (Section 77B2 - Undergraduates) MMC 6936 (Section 77E7 - Graduate) Summer 2017 Dr. Shiva Halan

Reflection moment What is Virtual Reality (VR)? Why do we need VR? What can you do with/in VR? How do we do VR?

Introductions Name Year Department/Major Prior VR experience Interests/Hobbies Breath-taking real world experience Breath-taking virtual experience

Background for the course Media Effects and Technology Lab – formed January 2017 Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman – Professor in Journalism, Founder-Director “Serve as an interdisciplinary collaboratory to design, develop, and disseminate the effects of media content and technologies to improve the human spirit and condition” Collaborators around campus looking at VR to solve their problems – Seekers Students around campus looking to gain VR experience – Solvers Bringing the seekers and solvers together for the greater & Gator good

Why take this course? Learn VR design and development skills Work on a project that has a real-world consequence Build a prototype that you can showcase to potential employers, friends and family Work closely with mentors from varied fields who will help you design and develop the immersive experience Start from a problem, go through an entire VR development life cycle What you build will be part of research experiments in the future

What will you do as part of this course? Be introduced to Virtual Reality Design skills – Learn how to effectively frame and design immersive experiences that communicate messages focused on social change Development skills - Learn how to use Unity 3D to build immersive, interactive experiences Hear from five different mentor groups about challenges in their domain Design a VR-based solution to one of the mentor-identified challenges Build the designed prototype in VR Showcase the built prototype at the end of the semester

What will you NOT do as part of this course? Not only develop – you will work through the entire design-develop- disseminate cycle of an immersive VR experience Work on a project/game of your own This class is not a collection of tutorials Learning Vs Teaching Focus on one aspect of the immersive experience alone. The goal is to get a comprehensive view of VR design and development

Resources Website: https://gatorvrse.wordpress.com/ Syllabus Course policies and guidelines

Class Structure Tuesday (1 hour) – Instructional lecture on different VR components, tools and devices Due before class on Thursday – Writeup on how to incorporate the said component into your immersive experience Thursday in-class – Present progress and future work. Feedback will be provided about progress and future work Work on building in the component into the immersive experience

Tentative Course Topics Introduction to virtual reality Introduction to building immersive experiences (and Unity 3D) Project topic and mentor introductions Designing immersive experiences Framing effective communication messages - Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman Fundamentals of experimental research - Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman Operationalization of Social Good - Dr. Sri Kalyanaraman Designing impactful immersive experiences

Tentative Course Topics Components of immersive, interactive and impactful experiences Introduction to Unity development environment 3D Assets - creation and use Source Control & Collaboration in Unity Scripts & Interactivity Animations Sound Shaders, Texturing & Modeling Physics Engine Deployment platforms - Oculus, GearVR, Vive, Cardboard etc. Performance Enhancement Intros & Outros

In-class Activity What is Virtual Reality? What is unique about VR? Why do we need VR? Give me one application (that is not currently implemented or available) for VR?

Comments/ Questions? Shiva Halan shivashankarh@ufl.edu Office Hours : Wed 3 – 4 pm