Lenovo today announced its next standalone headset, the Lenovo Mirage VR S3, is set to release sometime in Q3 in select countries. Built in conjunction with Pico Interactive, the headset is targeting education and enterprise customers.
Update (June 1st, 2020): Originally thought to be called the Lenovo VR Classroom 2, the company today announced that its next standalone headset, Lenovo Mirage VR S3, is set to ship to enterprise customers sometime in Q3 of this year.
Starting at “under $450,” the 3DOF standalone will be first available in North America, China, Japan, the UK, France, and Spain. The original article, now including name correction, follows below:
Original Article (January 21, 2020): With the so-called Lenovo VR Classroom 2 Lenovo Mirage VR S3, the company is offering up a complete package to educators, which includes hardware, content, device management, training, and support—all of it intended for middle and high school students.
The company says in its education-focused site that the headset will help teachers and administrators “easily integrate virtual reality lessons and field trips into their curriculum, leading to inspiration and meaningful learning outcomes.”
As for the hardware itself, Lenovo seems to be going a bit retro in the tracking department, as both the headset and single controller are 3DOF, which not only will keep students sitting at their desks due to the lack of room-scale tracking, but will also likely lower the overall cost of the hardware.
Lenovo says it will include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 running an Android-based OS, 1,920 × 2,160 per lens resolution display clocked at 75Hz, and an integrated 4,200 mAh battery charged via USB type-C. The field of view is said to be 110-degrees, which is more or less standard at this point; overall it basically sounds like a slightly beefier Oculus Go.
According to a press release, Lenovo VR Classroom 2 Lenovo Mirage VR S3 will launch sometime in Spring 2020.
Deflated Daydream ambitions notwithstanding, the Chinese tech giant is garnering itself a name in VR/AR product design and manufacturing. It recently partnered with Facebook to create Oculus Rift S, the inside-out tracked hardware refresh of the company’s PC VR headset, unveiled a new prototype AR headset for business travelers, and partnered with Finnish headset creator Varjo to certify a line of Lenovo workstations for Varjo’s super high-resolution commercial VR headsets.
Facebook’s Oculus, the United Nations, the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and XR Impact combined forces this week to present a new VR experience, titled Be Earth #13 that aims to teach users more about climate change.
The experience is making its premiere at the World Economic Forum Annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. However it will be also made available for free. Be Earth #13 “transports the viewer to the Amazon rainforest where climate change is having a clear and present impact” and “invites participants to embody earth and learn more about climate change, to take action and personal responsibility to help end global warming.” Be Earth will take users on an immersive experience set in the Amazon rainforest in the aftermath of wildfires, pictured below.
The project was developed by XR Impact, funded by Sida and Facebook, and made in collaboration with the United Nations and climate experts, researchers, artists, storytellers and more. The full title, Be Earth #13, refers to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the thirteenth of which deals with climate action. Be Earth #13 is the first in a planned VR platform, with other experiences that deal with some of the other 16 goals.
For those who might live in Davos, Switzerland or are passing through, you will be able to experience the project at the Equality Lounge in the Davos Panorama Hotel from today, the 21st of January, until the 24th of January. As mentioned previously, the experience will also be released to the public for free at some point, although there is currently no word on timing, release platforms or supported headsets.
I’ve been a little lapse on my articles here on VRFocus of late (mostly due to the time involved in setting up my own business over the last few months) but I didn’t want to miss the chance to offer up my Top 10 VR Education Apps of 2019 (PS you can read my Top 10 of 2018 here).
I have only selected apps which released in 2019 and I have decided to exclude ports of older apps (e.g. Tilt Brush on Oculus Quest). As with last year’s list, I would like to highlight the fact that every app was personally selected by me and this list does not represent the views of VRFocus as a whole. 2019 saw some excellent releases in the world of VR Education so before we dive into the main list, let’s give a few honourable mentions:
Honourable Mentions
Jigspace VR – One of my favourite educational AR apps is now in beta on Oculus. One to watch!
Mondly VR – This excellent language-learning platform came to PCVR this year.
Adam Savage’s Tested VR – Based on the TV show. Could offer some inspiration for future designers
The Rome Reborn series – I do like these apps… they just always seem like they could have done more.
Newton’s House of Forces – A fun little physics playground from the team at Victory XR
Ok, so now on to the actual Top 10 for 2019. In no particular order:
Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass
HTC Vive has continued to show genuine dedication to both the arts and education in terms of their projects and this collaboration with The Louvre is a real benchmark experience. Originally launched in situ, the app subsequently launched for free via Steam and Viveport and is simply stellar. Ultimately every single art student in the world deserves the opportunity to try this wonderful experience that brings one of the world’s most famous works of art to life like never before.
Dissection Simulator Pig/Cat Editions
After the award-winning success of their frog dissection app, Victory XR returned with multiple new iterations in 2019, offering fresh dissection experiences (no pun intended) to students. Once again these are hosted by the brilliant Wendy Martin (a national award-winning science teacher) and offer students a mess-free way to hone their dissection skills and develop their understanding of anatomy. The original frog app was notably excellent and Victory have clearly built upon what they learnt from that experience to refine and augment their new offerings significantly.
My Africa: Elephant Keeper
My Africa: Elephant Keeper pairs the original (and wonderful) Conservation International 360° film with an immersive, interactive elephant veterinary simulation experience in this Viveport app. It’s a great idea – pairing the 360° media with a hands-on companion piece and I’d like to see this approach used more by educational VR content developers. Even better still is the fact that every purchase of My Africa: Elephant Keeper helps support Conservation International’s work protecting elephants and other wildlife around the world.
Trash Rage
This little gem from Giant LaZer gamifies learning about recycling in a really fantastic way. Set in the near future, Trash Rage explores the impact of humans on the planet as you sort and recycle various types of garbage. Easy to pick up and hugely fun to play, this could really help students get a better understanding of the varying types of recyclables as well as the importance of recycling as a whole.
Gadgeteer
Gadgeteer is a physics-based puzzle app that definitely harkens back to the classic Rube Goldberg machines. Essentially you can build all kinds of crazy machines and contraptions using a huge range of parts and tools. The sandbox mode is where it’s really at for the classroom as it means students can have the freedom to really experiment and explore ideas. It’s a great example of something that would take a lot of time and physical resources to do in the real world whereas in VR, the imagination can run a little wilder! A great addition to a school’s STEM lab.
Raid on the Ruhr
A spiritual sequel to 1943 Berlin Blitz, the Raid on the Ruhr experience from Immersive VR Education showed once again that history really can be brought to life using virtual reality. Students get to experience first-hand the events of the RAF’s Operation Chastise and the bombing of the Mohne Dam. It’s more hands-on and interactive than its predecessor, with the user able to adopt multiple roles within the aircraft, but the historical accuracy and wonderful use of original audio recordings once again frame this as a genuine slice of history brought into the present through VR.
Greenland Melting
I try to avoid including 360° film content in this list but I have included Greenland Melting as it’s use of volumetric capture really does add to the sense of presence, despite the limited interactions that the user is afforded during this 12-minute documentary piece. The subject is a timely one and students will get a first-hand look at Greenland – from the sky, the ground and even under the surface of the water as they learn more about why Greenland’s glaciers are melting and the ramifications of this.
Golden Loft
This one is very unique – an immersive experience inside an attic to help you learn more about the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence! As you interact with various elements within the whimsical space, the mathematical concepts come to life before your eyes. This free experience is a definitely worth a look and a worthy addition to the frankly quite limited range of math-based VR apps.
National Geographic Explore VR
I really wanted to include something for the Oculus Quest as I’ve already seen the power of this great HMD in classrooms first-hand. That being said, I also didn’t want to include ports or this list would have been taken over by the likes of Tilt Brush and Apollo 11. There are a couple of brand new titles that launched directly for the Quest in 2019 though and this one from National Geographic is an excellent example of VR breaking down geographical boundaries and letting students explore the far corners of the Earth. In this case – Antarctica and Machu Pichu.
T-Rex: Skeleton Crew
Come on – there had to be a dinosaur one on here eventually didn’t there? It’s a good one though – an app that was developed for the American Museum of Natural History in New York by Immersion VR in association with Vive as a part of a special “T rex: The Ultimate Predator” exhibition. Much like the Mona Lisa app, this was then released for free via Viveport. It’s an engaging experience where students can build a T-Rex skeleton bone by bone and eventually witness it come to life! A great option in particular for anyone who loved Hold The World in 2018.
Immersive VR Education, the studio behind VR experiences Apollo 11 VR (2016) and Titanic VR (2018), is set to launch its next mission into space on PSVR soon, this time taking you to the Hubble Space Telescope to go hands-on with an accurate recreation of the mission, shuttle cockpit, and space telescope itself.
Called Shuttle Commander, the experience is already live on the European PlayStation Store, and is slated to arrive to PSVR users in North America on December 11th, 2019.
Here’s how Immersive VR Education describes it:
Celebrate the discoveries and experience how this remarkable apparatus changed our understanding of the universe around us through science visualization segments which are based on actual data discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope over the past 3 decades.
Fly the space shuttle in an accurate physics based landing simulation and take control of the Canada Arm in space as you witness the Earth pass below during a full day / night cycle.
Shuttle Commander is also supposed to arrive on SteamVR headsets at some point, however the studio hasn’t mentioned when we should expect it to land.
An educational experience that pilots you around the solar system and some of the largest bodies in the observable universe, Titans of Space PLUS, is coming to Oculus Quest before the end of the year.
The experience from Drash is one of the earliest VR demos for modern VR headsets and a version of the software has been available on most major VR headsets over the last few years. The software will leave early access for PC at the same time it arrives on Quest with cross-buy available between the Rift and Quest versions. The pricing of the Quest version is also expected to be roughly the same as the Rift version, which is $9.99.
The jaw-dropping educational experience takes you on a virtual tour around our solar system, providing facts about each planet and related moons or dwarf planets, along with visually demonstrating the relationship, size and position of the planets relative to each other. You can also switch on a charming and quirky tour guide character, who looks a bit like a tiny planet crossed with an alien, and moves around each planet to provide insightful demonstrations and facts. The tour guide has 2 hours of content, if you choose to listen to the entire thing.
The experience was previously available for Oculus Go, simply titled Titans of Space, however the PLUS version for Rift and Quest includes improved visuals, along with the added tour guide and a zero-gravity mode with 6DOF controls, which weren’t present on the Go version.
I tried the Quest version of the experience earlier this week, and was thoroughly impressed with how immersive and informative the whole experience was, including the tour guide elements. The experience was truly captivating from start to finish, and will be an invaluable tool for educators. Titans of Space PLUS is definitely worth trying out if you want to learn a bit more about our solar system, or if you want to demo something other than a game to friends of family.
Located at the Vatican City in Rome, Italy, the Sistine Chapel is Michelangelo’s magnum opus; the chapel’s painted ceiling, which includes the famous ‘Creation of Adam’ along with hundreds of other works which form an epic mural, is a cornerstone of Renaissance artwork. A painstaking virtual recreation of the Sistine Chapel is now available for free on Steam, offering an incredible up-close view of the works along with an hour of guided audio commentary.
IL DIVINO: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VRis now available for free on Steam, accessible in both VR headsets and flat monitors. The project is the brainchild of Epic Games’ Lead Technical Animator Chris Evans, and is said to be the culmination of a passion project spanning 15 years. A spokesperson for the project says that Evans’ goal is to democratize access to the beauty and history of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
The VR experience details every square inch of the Sistine Chapel and offers users an hour of deeply researched audio commentary which covers the history of the masterpiece along with expansive commentary of the overarching themes, individual pieces, and even the scaffolding that Michelangelo specially designed to more easily paint the ceiling. Viewers can even get a better-than-real-life perspective by stepping atop a virtual lift to see the artwork up close.
A spokesperson for the project says that Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR contains some 90 4K texture maps, compiled and corrected from high resolution photographs, with enough detail for viewers to see details down to individual brush strokes and cracked plaster.
Image courtesy Chris Evans
The team behind the project detailed some of the technical work that went into its creation, including the challenges of correcting and reprojecting the texture maps onto the 3D geometry with high detail, as well as color correcting the maps which were compiled from disparate source imagery.
A spokesperson for the project says that Evans’ plans to update Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR over time and bring the project to other VR platforms.
A new VR title, Shuttle Commander, will let you recreate the Hubble Telescope Missions. Shuttle Commander is planned for “all major VR platforms” in 2019 but currently does not have a specific release date.
The experience will offer “accurate recreations of the space missions, the shuttle cockpit and Hubble Space Telescope” and allow you to play through various different aspects of the Hubble missions. You’ll be able to play as a member of the Shuttle crew, take part in deployment, upgrade and servicing of the telescope and land the Shuttle back on Earth. There will even be scoreboards and achievements for shuttle landings.
Shuttle Commander is developed by Immersive VR Education — the creators behind a series of educational VR projects including Apollo 11 — and the new project also allows you to “experience the discoveries of the Hubble Telescope and how it changed our understanding of the universe around us.” According to the description on their YouTube video, Shuttle Commander will be available on “all major VR platforms” this year and trailer itself also features the Oculus, Vive, SteamVR logo and PlayStation logos.
Will you be launching off into space when Shuttle Commander lifts off later this year? Let us know in the comments below.
FundamentalVR, a company specializing in VR medical training, has closed a £4.3 million (~$5.6 million) Series A funding round in effort to further develop its surgical training and data analysis platform, Fundamental Surgery.
The funding round was led by Downing Ventures, with participation from Epic Private Equity, and Brighteyes Ventures. Leading medical institutions also participated in the funding round, including the world-renowned Mayo Clinic and Sana Kliniken, the third largest hospital organization in Germany.
This brings FundamentalVR’s total investment to $9.3 million, the company says. Its penultimate financing round in 2018, amounting to $1.4 million, coincided with a partnership to develop its VR training platform with Mayo Clinic surgeons and clinical practitioners, as well as its 3D modelling, data scientists and simulation specialists.
Fundamental Surgery, the company’s flagship product, has found its way to a number of medical institutions across seven countries, including Mayo Clinic and UCLA in the United States, UCLH in the United Kingdom, and Sana in Germany with initial training packages focused on the orthopedic surgical disciplines. The procedures it currently supports include Spinal Pedicle Screw, Total Hip Arthroplasty (Posterior), Total Hip Arthroplasty (Anterior) and Total Knee Arthroplasty, the company says in a press statement.
“We identified early on that FundamentalVR’s team was developing a platform that was very special,” Tern CEO, Al Sisto said. “A training and data analysis offering which could revolutionise the skills development of surgical practice, while at the same time creating a database of significant importance to the industry. We are delighted that the value and relevance of this exciting business and its entire staff has been recognised by this outstanding syndicate of new investors we helped solidify.”
Following the most recent funding round, Tern’s shareholding in FundamentalVR comes to 26.9%, with a valuation of £3.0 million (~$3.88 million).
VR Education Holdings, the group best known for the Apollo 11 VR and the Titanic VR experiences also released a proprietary virtual reality (VR) education platform at the end of 2018 called ENGAGE. Today, the company has announced that the platform has been selected by Facebook for its Oculus Independent Software Vendors (ISV) programme.
Working with enterprise developers and software companies, the Oculus ISV programme looks to accelerate customer adoption of VR solutions built for Oculus enterprise products. In conjunction with Oculus for Business, during 2020 VR Education Holdings expects to make ENGAGE available to Oculus enterprise clients via a special portal, accessing its specialised training and education solutions.
“It is fantastic to be chosen by Facebook to help accelerate the wider adoption of VR globally. Oculus has an amazing technology platform and ENGAGE is leading the way when it comes to distance learning and remote team collaboration. I see an extremely bright future for this technology with the release of high-end mobile devices, such as the Oculus Quest and the HTC Vive Focus, as well as the release of 5G high-speed mobile internet,” said David Whelan, CEO of VR Education in a statement.
“Business and enterprise will only adopt new technology when they see compelling advantages to doing so and ENGAGE is being developed to meet these business needs providing virtual meeting rooms and training scenarios which save customers time and money. To date, adoption of VR/AR has been steady, however with Facebook, HTC, O2, Deutsche Telekom and many others all now working towards the growth of 5G and AR/VR, we believe that will see an acceleration of adoption over the next 18 to 24 months,” Whelan adds.
ENGAGE was developed to overcome certain limitations of online courses and traditional learning methods, allowing users to collaborate on tasks remotely, create new content and learn in VR. Since the official launch last year the ENGAGE team has gone on to secure various commercial deals in the US and Korea with educational institutions. There are also negotiations still ongoing with several large multinationals to provide enterprise solutions to their workers.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of the latest advancements in educational VR, reporting back with further updates.
Colorado State University has deployed a new VR lab; designed to accommodate up to 100 students simultaneously, the lab’s headsets run custom software which allow students to visualize life-sized virtual cadavers and medical imagery in a shared virtual space.
The so-called Immersive Reality Training Lab lab is part of a new CSU facility called the Health Education Outreach Center, says Jordan Nelson, a member the school’s Dept. of Biomedical Sciences and one of the lab’s operators.
Nelson tells Road to VR that the lab houses 100 headsets,, in clusters of four, allowing students and instructors to simultaneously visualize complex 3D anatomical imagery in a shared virtual space. The lab and its immersive visualizations are part of a larger anatomy education program where students study in a traditional anatomy lab, explore mesh model data and diagnostic imaging in the Immersive Reality Training Lab, take assessments on iPads, and spend time studying real cadavers, he explains.
Image courtesy CSU
The lab is powered by 100 HP PCs with corresponding Samsung Odyssey+ headsets with retractable hooks for cable management. The headsets run ‘BananaVision’ software which was developed in-house by Chad Eitel, a research associate at CSU.
“The BananaVision software used in the immersive lab was developed specifically for our anatomy curriculum at CSU. The multiplayer software allows groups of students to collaborate around the same virtual entity at the same time, while the instructor can join any group’s virtual room from the front of the classroom (coined ‘pod hopping’),” Nelson says. “Students can dissect a virtual cadaver, create cross-sectional images and study a variety of volumized medical imaging in the immersive lab any day of the school week. We’ve worked hard to create an anatomy curriculum that is not only hands-on and exciting but is accessible and impactful.”
And while the new tech opens the door to more intuitive and engaging visualizations of complex anatomy, Nelson says the lab is designed to complement, not replace, existing teaching methods.
“The intention of this lab has never been to replace cadaver education for students, but to supplement the curriculum.”
Image courtesy CSU
Nelson says the lab is the brainchild of Dr. Tod Clapp, an Associate Professor in anatomy and neuroanatomy at CSU, who had the idea of developing VR software focused on anatomical visualization for student education.
The Immersive Reality Training Lab is part of the school’s new Health Education Outreach Center facility which was made possible with funding from CSU and the National Western Center COP.
