FundamentalVR has expanded its VR surgical simulation platform to include new procedures and a new scoring system, integrated with its HapticVR technology to help train surgeons around the world.
The Fundamental Surgery platform combines VR experiences with realistic haptic feedback through a pen-shaped peripheral, that can simulate the pressure felt when performing surgery on skin, bones and all the other icky stuff. Jamie tried the technology back in August, and although the realism of the haptics kind of freaked him out, he “couldn’t imagine a better tool for training surgeons.”
FundamentalVR has announced that it’s expanding the simulation to offer a new Facetectomy procedure, centered around the vertebrae and decompression of spinal nerve roots.
The company stated that this “lets trainees and surgeons practice the surgical procedure through an immersive, self-directed experience where they can remove a volume of bone material piece-by-piece, anywhere on the joint.” The new procedure also uses eye-tracking, which was implemented into Fundemental Surgery’s platform a few months ago.
The graphics for the procedure look quite realistic and gruesome too, as you can see above. There’s no doubt that this technology is one of the best examples of how VR can help educate in industries such as healthcare.
FundamentalVR has also implemented a scoring system that will debut in the Facetectomy procedure. This system will give a percentage score on each session, based on how well users meet objectives for the procedure, which it hopes will facilitate independent learning.
Two Australian digital artists will board the RSV Aurora Australis next year to document the journey from Australia to the Antarctic, with the aim of creating a virtual reality experience upon their return.
The artists, Dr Adam Nash and Dr John McCormick (collectively known as Wild System), have experience in creating mixed reality artworks and installations. Their artistic Antarctic expedition next year will be made possible thanks to support from the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship and two Australian universities.
While aboard the ship, they will document the journey using “cutting-edge technologies, such as drones, portable motion capture system, ambisonic recordings, LiDAR scanning and still, 360 and video cameras.” This will allow them to map the journey and then convert the recordings into an immersive experience available after their return.
The ship they’ll be travelling on, the RSV Aurora Australis, is over half a mile long, accommodates 166 passengers and currently serves as a “multi-purpose research and supply ship.”
Given the scale of both the ship and the journey, there’s potential for the artists to create a really unique VR experience from the trip. Speaking about the project, Dr McCormick said, “It is a lifelong dream to travel to Antarctica. We want to create a work that honours the spirit of those who have explored the world’s last great wilderness area.”
The resulting immersive experience will be available in “galleries and festivals, and via mobile, gaming and virtual reality technology.” It’s unclear whether the experience will be publicly available on VR headsets, or limited to VR headsets at the aforementioned galleries and festivals. Let’s hope it’s the former – it would be quite cool to take a trip to the Antarctic from the comfort of one’s own home!
The artists will begin their journey in January of next year.
Immersive education is not only being employed as a novel way for students to engage with subjects but also a useful way of introducing more people to the power of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology. To this end, Discovery Education, a UK-based provider of digital curriculum content and professional learning for primary and secondary schools has announced the acquisition of Inspyro, a British VR/AR content creator.
While terms of the acquisition haven’t been divulged, the deal is part of Discovery Education’s global content and product strategy, delivering immersive content to thousands of UK schools. The company now has an in-house ability to quickly design and deliver new VR/AR content, integrating the technology across its wide-ranging product portfolio.
“For almost 20 years, Discovery Education has provided the educators it serves with the innovative digital resources and best-in-class professional learning they need to create engaging learning experiences for all students,” said Discovery Education Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy Philip Nanney in a statement. “The purchase of Inspyro and the addition of their talented staff to the Discovery Education team expands our capacity to develop and quickly deploy VR and AR content which educators can use to create captivating lessons that ignite students’ natural curiosity.”
“This is a fantastic opportunity to bring our technology and approach to the most trusted and respected brand in education,” said Phil Birchinall, Managing Director at Inspyro. “Discovery Education shares our commitment to bringing teachers and learners the immersive technology they need to create modern learning environments, and we look forward working together on that joint mission.”
Inspyro has previously won several prestigious Bett Awards for its VR and AR work, all of which concentrates on education. It’s curriculum-focused learning modules help support science, history, and geography learning, compatible with various VR head-mounted displays (HMDs).
Discovery Education’s services support over 50 million pupils in more than 50 countries around the world, currently available in almost half of US classrooms and 50 percent of all primary schools in the UK. As the company continues to expand and introduce more VR and AR content, VRFocus will let you know.
The team behind Osso VR, the VR surgical training platform, says that the software is now in use by more than 1,000 surgeons a month around the globe.
The platform, which was created to provide surgeons with an immersive, repeatable environment to safely practice their craft, is now used by more than 20 teaching hospitals and eight top medical device companies across 11 countries.
The company says that leading hospitals using the platform include Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Hospital for Special Surgery, Marshall University, Newcastle Simulation Centre, The University of Hawaii, UCLA, University of Washington, Wake Forest Baptiste Health, University of Kentucky, University of Utah, and New York University.
Besides offering risk-free practice sessions and performance analytics, the platform also helps bridge distances by letting surgeons train, and be instructed on how to use new equipment without having to physically travel to conferences or location-based training sessions. Moreover, it can be done in a virtual environment one-on-one or in a group setting.
“This technology can drastically change the lives of our patients, and it is critical that we maximize access to the platform. Our continued expansion is a marker of the global nature of these training gaps and the scalability of Osso’s technology,” said Justin Barad, MD, CEO and co-founder of Osso VR. “Patients today want the most valuable treatment, which often involves new and innovative medical technologies. Surgeons badly want to deliver for their patient, but might lack the tools that allow them to utilize these novel techniques. Osso VR augments the surgical team, giving them the proficiency and objective confidence that they can bring significant value to their patients using the highest value devices.“
The company says its main focus is to increase access to hands-on training that improves patient outcomes and “increases the adoption of higher value medical technology.”
Survios, the studio behind a host of VR games such as Raw Data (2017), Sprint Vector (2018) and Creed: Rise to Glory (2018), has been a stalwart pioneer of the medium since the birth of consumer VR. Now, Survios CTO and co-founder Alex Silkin is set to share his experience by teaching a full semester course on expert-level Unreal Engine VR development. Plenty of high-profile industry pros will also be available too as mentors.
What’s more, the course will be taught in VR, so you can connect remotely and learn from Silkin—virtual face to virtual face.
“We’ll meet twice a week in virtual classrooms and build amazing virtual reality content together,” Silkin explains. “I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with VR since 2012 and contribute to the development of many innovative VR systems over these years. I want to share my experience with the community to make it easier for newcomers to break into the VR industry. I am beyond excited to help students invent their solutions for the still relatively untamed landscape of VR development.”
Although the full semester course is priced at just under $2,500, there are also scholarship opportunities for exceptional students. Axon Park has partnered with VR First, an organization which maintains a network of international VR lab-enabled universities and science parks; the partnership will provide needs-based scholarships to get students either low-cost or free access to VR hardware and resources through their partner network of 850 universities.
Prior to Silkin’s course, Axon Park ran the first remote in-VR class at the MIT Media Lab to explore teaching and learning in social VR classrooms. The class focused on VR Development with Unity and was taught remotely by an instructor in LA with students split between two buildings on the MIT campus.
Here’s some of the basic course info, although check out the course website for the full details and application process.
Course Specifics
Course Name: Unreal Engine VR Master Class
Duration: 14 weeks (September 4 – December 11, 2019 – current dates with MIT fall semester).
Frequency: 2 times per week in VR.
Target Student Demographic: Expert-level Unity (or other game engine) developers who want to master Unreal Engine 4 for VR.
Prerequisites: Game engine development experience (Unity preferred), 3D linear algebra, C++, visual studio (or similar), and Github (or similar). Must have access to VR ready PC and Oculus Rift or Rift S (hardware access scholarships available at selected destinations through partnership with VR First).
Curriculum: The course is project-based and designed to help you build a stellar portfolio piece from scratch. Classes are designed to help you learn the core concepts, while providing ample time for project work and support from your instructor and mentors. More details can be found on the syllabus.
Select mentors: Nick Whiting (Technical Director at Epic Games, Unreal Engine), Ray Davis (creator of Robo Recall, previously ran Unreal Engine), Jacki Morie (Previously at NASA, Disney, DARPA, Board of Advisors Axon Park), Ron Millar (Chief Creative Officer at VRChat, founding team of Blizzard), Oculus founders, and numerous other industry professionals
Tuition: $2,495
Scholarship opportunities: Needs-based scholarships will be provided to exceptional students to foster inclusion and diversity in the class.
Inclusivity & Equality: Neutral avatars will be used in the admissions process and virtual classrooms to reduce unconscious and conscious student and teacher bias and equalize opportunity.
Additional Features: Dedicated networking with VR industry’s top professionals, career coaching, Virtual Field Trips “VFTs” to explore other social VR enabled tools, like MasterpieceVR, and a virtual job fair where top companies will setup virtual booths to meet the students. Axon Park Alumni are invited to meet IRL after graduation with XR Nomads.
I love sharing content about virtual reality (VR) in education whether that be here on VRFocus, on my own site www.virtualiteach.com or in-person at events around the world. I also love connecting with other people working in the VR education space through social media channels as well as my monthly #CPDinVR events inside Engage. The VR education community has grown substantially in the last couple of years and there are now a wide range of places to look if you’re interested in using VR as a medium for learning. So for this month’s article I wanted to highlight some of the best communities and content out there if you are looking to build your PLN and find fresh ideas for using VR in the classroom.
Twitter
Without a doubt, the most widely used hashtag related to immersive tech in education is #ARVRinEDU which is moderated by edtech pioneer and author of Learning Transported, Jaime Donally. Jaime also coordinates a weekly Twitter chat on this hashtag where she demos educational AR and VR apps and shares best practice with immersive technology. The chat is attended by educators from across the globe and is always a fun, lively discussion. It’s also worth giving a shout out to Jamie’s website www.arvrinedu.com where she curates some of her Twitter content as well as sharing other ideas and projects.
In terms of other hashtags to look out for, things like #VReducation #VRedu and #VR;earning are also quite common but none have the consistency of #ARVRinEDU. I did also consider compiling a specific list of educators who tweet about VR in education too but ultimately decided against it. Not only would the list be pretty long but inevitably I’d forget someone. Instead, use the hashtags to identify those educators (and developers) that are engaging with discussion and sharing great content.
Facebook
There are actually more than a dozen Facebook groups specifically dedicated to VR in Education. Personally, I’m in all of them but some are definitely more active than others. Some also tend to get spammed by resellers a little but nothing that’s too disruptive.
There are three in particular that I’d like to highlight.
With over 4500 members this is the largest FB group dedicated to VR in Education and tends to have the most interaction. Definitely, the one I’d recommend joining first. Discussion is varied and with members from across the globe, you get a great mix of perspectives from this group.
Managed by the always excellent Michael Fricano, this was a group specifically focused on the use of the Oculus Go in the classroom but has recently expanded in preparation for the Quest launch. If you’re using these headsets in schools, you can find a lot of great discussion as well as support here.
This is one of the smaller groups but it’s definitely worth being part of. It’s managed by Eric Hawkinson who is based in Japan and is definitely one of the most innovative voices in VR education. With so much content in the other groups coming from the US and Europe, it’s great to get some regular insight into the way that VR is being harnessed in the East.
YouTube
I’d love to say that there are loads of great YouTube channels for learning more about VR in Education but sadly there aren’t. In January of this year, I launched my own channel but in truth with so many other pulls on my time, I’m already struggling to upload content regularly. One thing I did manage to do on my channel was to curate over 1000 educational 360°videos into subject-specific playlists so if you’re looking for 360° content to use with VR headsets or even tablets, it’s a great place to start.
Here are a couple of other channels that are worth checking out:
Bryne is based in Germany and has been doing some incredibly innovative things with high-end VR for some time now. I’d also recommend checking out his website at www.vrintheclassroom.com
Technically this is mine too since the VR content here was produced by me (I don’t run the channel though). This is where you can find videos from some of the VR projects I have coordinated at JESS over the last few years.
AltspaceVR
Whilst I continue to use Engage for my #CPDinVR events, last year my friend Daniel Dyboski-Bryant launched a monthly meetup inside AltSpace for educators around the world who are interested in VR. The Educators in VR events have been well-attended and featured some great guest speakers including Jessica Outlaw, Gabe Baker and Joe Millward. Free to attend and since AltSpace has a low entry point in terms of hardware, you can access the sessions from pretty much any device! Well worth checking out.
Here’s a recording of one of the events from last November:
Podcasts
I know that podcasts aren’t really a social network but I’d be remiss if I left this one excellent resource off this list. The Virtual Reality Podcast is hosted by a super-team of edtech trailblazers from the USA – Alex Chaucer, Steven Sato, James McCrary and Amanda Fox. Now in its second season, the team have done a stellar job of lining up guests from across the VR space including Stanford’s Jeremy Bailenson, Charlie Fink, Brian Costello and Jaime Donally. Available across the usual variety of podcast platforms, it’s an excellent way to learn more about VR in education in a different format and makes for great listening whilst driving to work!
I’m going to wrap up there but I know some of you are probably wondering why I haven’t included other social platforms like LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, Discord etc. To be honest, there are various reasons – some tend to just act as mirrors for VR education content that is shared on Twitter anyway (like Instagram), others have no real active VR education community groups (like Reddit). If you do think I’ve missed something useful though, please do reach out to me on Twitter via @steve_bambury
According to The Journal of the American Medical Association in a 2017 report, it was found that 1 in 5 high school athletes (20%) will get a concussion. That’s a staggering statistic. Often referred to as an “invisible injury,” concussions are one of the most prevalent sports injuries out there.
A big part of the issue is not just a lack of awareness, but a lack of education about how to spot a concussion and how to treat it. That’s where CrashCourse comes in.
“an injury to the brain that results in temporary loss of normal brain function. It usually is caused by a blow to the head. In many cases, there are no external signs of head trauma. Many people assume that concussions involve a loss of consciousness, but that is not true. In many cases, a person with a concussion never loses consciousness.”
CrashCourse is split into four parts for students:
An interactive film that puts the viewer in the shoes of a football player using a camera installed in a helmet as it’s being worn to record the scenes,
Then a symptoms simulator will attempt to let you (harmlessly) experience what it feels like to have a concussion so you know what to look for in the future,
After that is a brain fly-through that lets the viewer get up close and see how the brain operates,
Finally, training secrets from sports heroes and respected athletes will help solidify the learnings.
The program seems surprisingly thorough and you can see in the video above that they’re using both Oculus Rift + Touch and Google Daydream devices. The amount of the program that’s actually in VR is a bit unclear, but it seems to be leveraging the technology in a really positive way, which is great.
CrashCourse is created by TeachAids, a nonprofit backed by Stanford University research that’s focused on public health education. Arkansas is the first state in the US that’s been confirmed to start implementing CrashCourse into their curriculum, reportedly in every high school across the state as mandated by Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.
For more details on CrashCourse you can visit the official website here. Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Virginia’s Shenandoah University is the first in the state to offer a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science in AR/VR design. To further round out the department’s facilities, the university announced it’s partnering with Immersive VR Education, the company behind VR experiences such as Apollo 11 VR (2016)and the VR learning platform Engage.
Engage is a full-featured social VR program that lets educators create multiuser VR training experiences and craft their own immersive lectures using a vast library of 3D assets, locations, and effects. It’s already been in use at a few colleges and universities worldwide, including University of Oxford, New Haven University, The Royal College of Surgeons, and corporations such as the BBC.
The partnership with Shenandoah is a little less about taking students on thrilling trips to the surface of Mars, or watching famous scientists give immersive lectures (both possible in Engage), and little more about letting students build virtual worlds and scenes that allow them to create simulated life experiences; the students’ ultimate goal is to create a five-minute immersive training experience for real-world clients.
Shenandoah University says in a press statement that these VR training experiences will aid businesses, law enforcement and emergency medical services “in everything from suicide prevention to simulations for communicating with patients of dementia.”
“Engage is going to move us so far beyond our brick and mortar here at Shenandoah. We’re going to have the ability to help companies and entities nationally. Rapid training and retraining of individuals is becoming essential. It’s important to be able to efficiently and cost-effectively train employees in the newest and best practices,” says Shenandoah Center for Immersive Learning (SCiL) Executive Director and Associate Professor of Theatre J.J. Ruscella, M.F.A.
Image courtesy Immersive VR Education
The Ireland-based Immersive VR Education is known for their work on everything from realistic recreations of the Titanic to the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. The studio, which is a publicly traded company on both the London and Irish stock exchanges, also collaborated with the BBC on 1943: Berlin Blitz (2018), a World War II experience brought to life through VR.
“We are always very careful entering into partnerships of this kind because we need to be sure that whoever we team up with has the same vision for the future of VR education as we do,” says David Whelan, CEO and Co-founder of Immersive VR Education. “However, the drive and innovation Shenandoah has shown for the future of its students was palpable from the minute they reached out to us and we knew immediately this University and its students were a perfect fit for what our company has to offer.”
Engage has been in Steam Early Access since 2016, and represents an important step forward into the enterprise education space for the studio, as they intend on eventually releasing the platform for businesses, academic institutions, and singular users alike.
Apollo 11 VR (2016) is an educational experience that takes you on a breathtaking trip to the Moon, virtually recreating the July 24, 1969 mission that has inspired so many. The creators Immersive VR Education are taking Apollo 11 VR’s commitment to realism one step further though with their newly remastered version, dubbed Apollo 11 VR HD, which is now set to launch on Steam November 7th for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows VR headsets.
As the result of a successful Kickstarter in 2015 built for the Oculus Rift DK2, Apollo 11 VR was created with the mission to let VR users experience the first manned mission to the Moon, which includes a first-person interactive rocket launch, iconic lunar landing, and humanity’s first step on the Moon. The experience, which has since been made available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, stitches in original archival audio and video, not only giving you the first-hand experience of making the fateful trip yourself, but packing plenty of historical info along the way.
Apollo 11 VR HD is a complete remake, and includes all new assets, new textures, new animation, new lighting, revamped audio, and Windows MR support.
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Image courtesy Immersive VR Education
Image courtesy Immersive VR Education
Image courtesy Immersive VR Education
Like the original, you’ll be able to take control of the command module for docking with the lunar module, land on the Moon’s surface, explore the Apollo 11 landing site and deploy the original experiment, and explore every detail of the lunar module and command module at your own pace. If you’re not in it for the gamey bits though, you’ll also be able to skip around the experience with a new chapter selector that let you pick which sections to experience.
Check out the side-by-side comparisons of the original vs. the new to see what Immersive VR Education has in store.
Learning a new language can be intimidating, and while there are plenty of resources out there to help you get a good foundation, there’s nothing quite like touching down in foreign lands and using what you know in front of native speakers. That’s why the creators behind Dynamic Spanish, an immersive Spanish learning video course, decided to appeal to prospective crowdfunders in their new Kickstarter campaign.
Project creators Morning Calm Productions have developed a two-hour trial, which you can download now for free, although they say the final product will top out at 12 hours, with a total of 24 half-hour lessons. Check out the trial here.
As a complete beginner’s course, the full kit is slated to include worksheets, audio files, and transcripts so you can go continue your Spanish practice outside of the headset. At top speed, the creators say the course should take around 35 hours, although they recommend a slower pace, and studying all of the materials and taking one or two lessons each week.
The course is carried out by way of monoscopic 360 video, which can be viewed on a number of devices including Google Cardboard, Oculus Go, PSVR, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Windows VR headsets.
Having sampled the free trial myself, it’s clear 360 video isn’t the perfect medium based on the fact that live speakers will simply leave a pause for you to respond, then continue on with their questions/conversation, although it appears to accomplish the goal of hearing real speakers in Spain, and learning the basics in an intimate classroom environment too. The ability to rewind, pause, and practice on your own is certainly a nice feature not to be overlooked.
The course is deigned to get you comfortable with the following: introducing yourself to friends and colleagues, ordering food and drink, asking for directions, talking about your family and sharing stories and anecdotes, describing how you feel, speaking about your interests, and more.
Morning Calm Productions is aiming to hit a funding goal of £15,000 before October 2nd, which will allow them to go all around Spain (the free trial is in Valencia) to capture multiple locations and include a diverse set of regional speakers. Starting at £45, the full course is slated to arrive in early May 2019.
In the free trial, the project creators suggest the following:
Sit somewhere comfortable but make sure there’s space to stand up.
Try to be alone when you do the lessons. You’ll feel more confident.
Speak when spoken to. Even if you get it wrong, it’s better to try and fail than not try at all.
Pause and rewind the videos if you need to. You should go at the pace that suits you, but don’t rely on these functions too much. Try to move through the lessons at a steady pace.
Stand up when you’re told to. You need to fully engage with these lessons to really get the most out of them.
Do the non-VR bits too. This will really help speed up your learning and keep your motivation levels high.
Have fun! This should be an enjoyable learning experience so try not to get too frustrated if you’re struggling – follow our advice and you’ll be speaking Spanish in no time.
While there’s still nothing quite like having the experience of full language immersion, this clever VR immersive course makes some interesting headway. Check out the Kickstarter campaign here.
