VR Physics

On the forefront of interactive games hardware are virtual reality headsets and their controllers. Products such as HTC’s Vive, Oculus Rift, and Playstation VR provide immersive experiences that outperform what computer monitors can provide. It is with these virtual experiences that Team 10 will build an educational environment that can effectively use all forms of learning. The commonly used forms of learning are shortened into the acronym “VARK” which stands for “Visual, Auditory, Read/write, Kinesthetic.” The typical classroom environment can at best address two of the four forms of learning. Classroom lectures are spoken to students who listen for important details while reading what a teacher has written on the subject and recording the details in notes for later use. Labs that are associated with classroom lectures address the remaining two forms of VARK learning. Students are given the opportunity to see what was being described in their lecture while interacting with the lecture material. Team 10’s Virtual Reality Physics Lab will address all four forms of learning using a personalized experience in HTC Vive. As mentioned, Team 10’s Virtual Reality Physics Lab will incorporate all of the forms of learning usually restricted to two environments into one environment. This environment will be in the form of a “sandbox” environment. “Sandbox” environments encourage freedom of movement, where a user is left to their own devices to interact with various objects in the environment. Each object in the Virtual Reality Physics Lab will have information associated with the object that relays physics data relevant to the student’s education. With the combination of an immersive “sandbox” experience and the information necessary to learning physics, students will leave the simulation having enjoyed learning about physics.

Poster

We created a poster to present on innovation day. Look at it!

What simulations are there?

The following simulations are available or in development

• Projectile Motion - Seaside Blast
• Newtonian Forces - Towerfall
• Buoyancy (Coming Soon) - No Name Declared

Our Advisors

Benjamin Brown

Our main project advisor, he is employed at the Davidson Academy of Nevada and enjoys helping students with senior projects.

Eelke Folmer

Our faculty advisor for this project. He is the new department chair for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UNR.

Meet Team 10

Christopher Lewis

Graduating Spring 2018 and considering graduate school in the future.
christopherlewis@nevada.unr.edu

Andrew Munoz

Graduating Spring 2018 and is attending graduate school at UNR.
amunoz24@nevada.unr.edu

Nicholas Bolling

Graduating Fall 2018 and is planning to work for a local start-up.
nicktendo13@hotmail.com

Project Documents

The following documents describe our development

Fall 2017
1. Proposal/Concept
2. Project Specification
3. Project Design
4. Progress Demo #1

Spring 2018
1. Revised Concept and Project Management
2. Revised Specification and Design
3. Acceptance Criteria and Testing Strategy and Plan
4. Progress Demo #2
5. Implementation and Integration: Final Demo

Project Resources

The following resources helped us with our development and influenced the creation of VR Physics

• Problem Domain Book(s)
  
  1. Virtual Reality

     
     VIRTUAL REALITY by Steven M. LaValle This book details various aspects and properties relating to virtual reality (VR). The book discusses the hardware required to make a VR device, the software that is currently being used in conjunction with VR, how the human body is affected when using VR, and what experiences VR has to offer.
     Retrieved From: http://vr.cs.uiuc.edu/

  2. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#

     
     Introduction to game design by Jeremy Gibson is a textbook that details areas of game design. Since game design is an important part of this because this is a VR game this book is a valuable resource
     Link to 1st Edition on Amazon
     2nd Edition also available here

• Websites
  
  1. Unity-3D Tutorials

     
     This site has information on how to create and work with virtual reality components in the Unity3d Engine. It has pages on it from the basic components used in VR to how optimize for VR games. It is a complete guide on using VR in Unity3d and offers several comprehensive tutorials.
     Unity Tutuorial: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/s/virtual-reality

  2. Phet Simulations

     
     This site is a valuable resource since this is was what inspired our project. By looking at this we can see what an educational physics simulation should look like. Included in this site are simulations for: Projectile Motion, Newtonian Forces, Buoyancy, Etc.
     Phet - Interactive Simulations

• Articles/Papers
  
  1. Flight of Fancy: Exploring the Integration of Educational Content in Computer Games

     
     Benjamin Brown wrote his theis on educational games. What made his research different was that talked about masking an educational game with something that was less "educational". We took his research and applied it to our game.
     Benjamin Brown's Thesis

  2. Measuring virtual experience in a three-dimensional virtual reality interactive simulator environment: a structural equation modeling approach

     
     This article discusses how different factors of a virtual reality environment effect the quality level of an experience in VR. Its aim is to see how virtual reality impacts the user’s mood. Specifically, this article discusses a study on how virtual reality effectively evokes certain feelings from the user. This is important to our game since our game relies on how the user feels because its main target demographic. The main target is younger students and we would like them to feel the best when playing
     Take a look!