CTE and Virtual Reality: Who Brought the 3-D Glasses??

"It felt like I was flying over the room. The images were so crisp and clear," says CTE's Dave Peloff, describing a 3-D Virtual Reality simulation that he and his colleague, Sam Abramovich, experienced last month at the University of Michigan. Dave and Sam traveled to Michigan as part of their ongoing investigation into VR technology for LG2G.

According to Dave and Sam, these new 3-D VR simulations are truly amazing when experienced in a room called "the cave." "The content is projected onto three walls and the floor," says Dave, "and you wear a tracking device that adjusts your view depending on where you turn your head." Unlike previous VR applications (which were typically of the one user/one headset variety), this new technology allows a roomful of people to simultaneously share the experience of the simulation. This would, of course, be especially beneficial for classroom use. "This type of VR," Sam says, "is definitely designed with teaching in mind."

So what kinds of things does this technology teach now? One of the current applications is a training simulation for the University of Michigan football team: players experience specific plays in the 3-D environment of "the cave" and get a very close approximation of how it feels to work the play in a real game. Another application helps to train emergency response personnel. According to Dave and Sam, both of these applications create "incredibly immersive simulations."

While this technology is expensive, says Dave, it can actually be adapted and used with much less costly equipment. "You don't have to use this technology in a room like 'the cave,'" he says. "We also experienced it using a computer with three video outputs, some typical classroom projectors and three white screens. That's equipment that a lot of schools already have. It was still great and we got to experience the exact same content."

The LG2G simulations will, of course, not be about football or emergency response, but as Dave says "the simulations we're seeing now will be inspirations for us." "The Michigan simulations," says Sam, "are examples of VR made real and very much applicable to the classroom."

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