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Editor's Notes

1. Let me first briefly introduce myself. I'm Robin de Lange, a part-time entrepreneur in the field of education and part time PhD student, here at Media Technology. For my Bachelor I studied Physics and Philosophy and did extra courses on Artificial Intelligence. After that I followed the Media Technology program.
2. The first time I created my own VR project was for the Hack the Brain hackathon. This was a three day event where programmers, designers and scientists were challenged to hack the human brain. The Waag arranged EEG scanners and lots of help from neuroscientists, to see what people outside of the field could do with EEG scanners. I recently bought an Oculus Rift and thought that this would be a good opportunity to use it. Our project was a live visualization of the data from the EEG scanner through the Oculus Rift. You put the Rift on, wear a cap full with electrodes and find yourself in a huge model of a brain with a live visualization of the alpha waves of the different electrodes.
3. The making of this project and other developments in the field of VR made me realize the enormous potential of VR. For my research I focus on the potential of VR for explaining complex problems. Can we use data visualizations or simulations in the field of education? These are also the main research questions for the course that I¡¯m organizing this September. If after these workshops you¡¯re still or even more enthusiastic about VR I invite you to apply for this elective.
4. Now in these workshops I would like to have a somewhat different approach. We could say that right now we are in the ¡®early days of VR¡¯. In some ways these days can actually be compared with the early days of cinema. VR is often even marketed in the same way. The most famous examples of VR in popular media are of people riding virtual rollercoasters. This reminds me of the stories of people who crawled under their seats in the cinema when they watched a train on film for the first time. VR brings something similar to what film brought in the beginning of the 20th century: a more life-like virtual experience than we have ever seen before. Because we are in the early days, the approach for this part of the course is quite different from the first part. Dan could speak in retrospect about the history of film and the developments of different visual and special effects. For VR this is not really possible right now, and probably would not be that interesting. Instead I would like to have an approach of collaborative research. As a group we will explore Virtual Reality as a medium and compare it with what we learned about cinema during the last few weeks
5. So, how is this going to work out practically? Each of the three workshops will have a different character. Today, we will start with showing some VR demonstrations. Some people haven¡¯t experienced VR at all, which is quite essential I think. After this we are going to have two Brainstorm sessions in which we think about the differences and similarities between VR and cinema. We have a very tight schedule today. Next week I¡¯m going to explain about how to create your own VR experience. I¡¯ll give an introduction to Unity3D and explain about making spherical photos and videos. In the last workshop you work on your own project. You can get extra help on your concept or the realization of it and maybe also help someone yourself.
6. Greater feeling presence Greater interaction because of head movement Demos are often a close simulation of reality Completely closed of from reality VR is closer to our own experience of the world In VR you have a personalized experience Both initially most known for fear factor Both centered around visual experience VR has potential for input from the body
7. Can you zoom in VR? How does editing in VR work? For which desired goal will editing work best in VR? Rhytmic? Shock? Contrast? According to Andre Bazin film has the unique capability to capture objective reality. How does VR relate to this? How to reach continuity in VR, an essential part of telling a narrative Will the monkey illusion work in VR as well? Subtitles in VR