Category: Plexal City

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The Fourth VR Diversity Initiative Announced for 19th October

The last VR Diversity Initiative (VRDI) held on the 31st July was a huge success, with 80% of participants rating the workshop excellent. The VRDI is a one day free event for participants from under-represented groups and has grown in popularity amongst individuals looking to learn practical 360 film, Unity and Web VR skills. 

VR Diversity Initiative
Two attendees look at existing VR applications on their mobile phone.

Plexal hosted their second VR Diversity Initiative which ensured a relaxing, open and accessible space for learning. One attendee commented: “I found the atmosphere extremely good. The people teaching extremely giving and understanding of the different levels of people. The attendants extremely willing to learn. Perfect combination to make it a pleasurable experience.”

At the July session there were three workshops, each focusing on different XR elements. Asha Easton of Haptic Media, led the 360 film workshop. Teaching some basic theory of 360 filmmaking at the beginning of the day and providing a camera for the second part for participants to go and film their own projects with. Sam Perrin, director of Virtual Vault has been a returning Unity workshop leader, and taught the Unity VR workshop on his birthday. Setting up a rough project in Unity, which the participants had to re-create on their own laptop stations and HTC Vive Headsets. Ada Rose Cannon and Jo Franchtti, both Developer advocates helped participants create a project for Web VR. The final products could all be experienced using the Oculus Headsets.

VRDI aims at trying to make VR accessible for everybody, and the July workshop had many attendees attend who wanted to learn a new skill for the future, start their own company or incorporate it into their existing business. Marc Bond, a participant who has hydrocephalus & cerebral palsy, attended with his assistance dog, Neo. He said: “I felt confident coming to this workshop because for the first time I wasn’t the only disabled attendee. There were significant disabilities here for a change, people in wheelchairs, people that had visible conditions so for me it was fantastic.”

Ben Harris VRDI
Ben Harris and his team setting a scene for their 360 film.

Ben Harris, SportsAble’s Community Fundraising Manager said, “it was the best day I’ve had in years”. After taking part in the 360 film workshop, he’s now bought four 360 film cameras and will be using them as a teaching aid to teach basketball classes to individuals with disabilities.

You can sign up to October’s workshop here. Make sure to share with friends who’ve wanted to make a 360 film or start up a new side of their business. This Initiative was supported by the Realities Centre, BlueHire, Oculus, The Case Farm, Barclays Eagle Lab  and Innovate UK.

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Sign-up to the Third VR Diversity Initiative

The second VR Diversity Initiative held on the 8th of May at Plexal City in Stratford allowed participants to not only learn how to create 360 film and Unity, but mixed reality (MR) as well. Since the launch of the VR Diversity Initiative, we can now see that the majority of under-represented groups come from women with attendees making up 58% of the participants. 

VRDI

Most of the participants came from a creative background, with the majority wanting to learn how to incorporate VR and AR into their work. So far, the feedback has been incredibly positive with 76% of past participants saying they now feel more confident in pursuing a career in XR. All of them have recommended the VR Diversity Initiative to anyone who wants to take their first steps towards a career in XR. The VR Diversity Initiative continues to try and create an impact in the new immersive space of VR. We had a large variety of participants, all coming from under-represented backgrounds and all wanting to learn more about VR, 360 film or Mixed Reality.

VR Diversity Initiative

The aim of having all students create a rough VR prototype whether it be a 360 film or rough working VR Unity project led to four 360 films to be made, and every member of the Unity group create their personal Unity project. Kyaw Tun Sein, one of the Unity workshop leaders says, “The impact of VRDI is huge. After just a few hours people who had never touched Unity before before developing a project with confidence.”

The event also had Mixed Reality being taught by DoubleMe, where participants were able to experience Holoportation with the Microsoft Hololens. At the end of the workshop, participants and workshop leaders discussed what they learned, and try or view each other’s projects. Some of these projects can be seen on the VR Diversity Initiative’s website.

DoubleMe

Although this is only the third VR Diversity Initiative, success stories are already starting to come from past participants. After its success, the third VR Diversity Initiative will be held at the same location on the 31st of July 2018 at Plexal City. To sign up please click here.