New Dimensions in Computer Science

 Like the broad idea of immersive stories, in what?  Games, interactions, graphics....  etc.

New Dimensions in Computer Science?

When William Bares was young, he loved video arcades. He mostly studied the games — sketching their graphics, examining how they worked, noticing their stories.

At home, he used an Atari computer to practice making graphics. Soon, he was programming his own games.

Flash forward. As an associate professor of computer science at Whitman College, Bares uses computer programming and advanced equipment to create surprising, accessible, story-rich digital experiences.

His Immersive Stories Lab gives students an opportunity to discover the thrill he felt in the arcade. "I hope they become inspired to create the amazing," he says.

From Whitman College    

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College in a MetaVersity?

Change is coming,  but the metaverse is also not ready.     Based on our own experiences,  there is much yet to be done to prepare content, delivery and users of training and interaction in this way.  Meta-reality is still hard.  

College in the Metaverse Is Here. Is Higher Ed Ready?

By Inside Higher Ed, August 8, 2022

This fall, students at 10 universities will attend metaversities, immersive virtual reality platforms where remote faculty and students don virtual reality headsets and meet synchronously as they would on a physical campus.

This fall, students at 10 U.S. universities will attend metaversities, virtual reality (VR) platforms where educators and students wear VR headsets and interact synchronously.

Advocates claim VR increases student engagement, achievement, and satisfaction, but some scholars worry about metaversity technology licensors putting revenues above academic freedom, exploiting students' data, or replicating biased narratives in VR.  Many such challenges can be addressed by aligning educational best practices, commercial incentives, and political resolution, while students may find metaversities better than engagement via remote, two-dimensional screens.

Last year, Morehouse College tested a proof-of-concept metaversity with courses in world history, biology, and chemistry, and participating world history students improved their grade point averages 10% compared to grades in the same class facilitated through Zoom and face-to-face. ... 

The University of Massachusetts' Nir Eisikovits believes on-campus education will ultimately supplement metaversities, not vice-versa. ... 

From Inside Higher Ed

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Joystick Immersion for VR

Better immersion in VR.

 For Better Immersion in VR: Flying Joysticks

Via Informations dienst Wissenschaft

February 22, 2022

At Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen, researchers have developed a toolkit for flying control elements to make virtual reality (VR) more immersive. The goal is to make VR controllers look and feel how they appear in virtual space. The researchers produced five common user interface elements from the virtual world—button, knob, joystick, slider, and three-dimensional (3D) mouse—using 3D printers; they attached each device to a quadrocopter drone. When a virtual control element is visible in the virtual world, a flyable with the matching element steers to the person operating it. Although researchers found that the flyables allowed for more realistic interactions with virtual content, the prototypes were not yet on par with modern controllers in terms of input precision. ... '

Immersive Drug Design with VR

In the much earlier days of VR we did something similar.  Key is what insight you get from the VR and how do you put it to real value in a design effort?   What is the value of the immersion?   Like what I see, but not very much detail. 

VR Puts Drug Researchers Inside Molecules

The Wall Street Journal, Sara Castellanos, September 7, 2021

Drug-discovery researchers are using virtual reality (VR) to examine the structures of molecules in order to determine how fluctuations in the distance, configuration, and chemical properties of such structures could clarify a drug's functions. Scientists can probe virtual environments filled with color-coded drug molecules and proteins, manipulating them with hand controllers to more easily identify promising molecules faster. Startup Nanome, which developed three-dimensional modeling software for this purpose, also is developing an artificial intelligence assistant that can guide users through the VR experience.