Conversation with Dr. Jacki Morie and a Hands-on Workshop on VR Techniques.

ED-XR is OPEN to ALL VRCAI 2019 Attendees

XR Technology

VRCAI Brisbane EDXR 2019 - Education and Extended Reality

Welcome to EDXR 2019, our 2nd meeting/workshop on Education and Extended Reality. XR technology, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality, have recently experienced significant advances that affect our roles as educators. EDXR 2019 is organized to address important and challenging topics for teaching XR applications and content development. These include: how educators are contributing to XR development, best practices, the educators’ role in guiding student XR projects, XR curriculum integration and development, and the future direction of this field. The meeting features a talk by a pioneer of this field, Dr. Jacki Morie, and includes time for discussion and a hands-on workshop on VR techniques.

Workshop

Hands-on Introduction to VR Workshop

This workshop is designed as a step-by-step guide for participants to experience creating a VR project using Unity3D, a game engine that is used for VR development worldwide, and the High-End Visualisation System (HEVS) a Unity plugin developed by the Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre (EPICentre) that allows easy creation of cross-platform visualisation applications. Attendees will learn the basics of Unity3D and how to build VR scenes, with the possibility to then deploy them to VR headsets during the workshop. Instructors (Tomasz Bednarz and Conan Bourke) will also show how to deploy VR to larger infrastructures (whether it is hemispherical dome, clustered cylindrical wall, or other large screens).

Prerequisites for the hands-on workshop:

  • Basic knowledge of variables and functions in regards to programming (prior knowledge on C# is desirable, but not required)
  • A laptop computer with Unity3D version 2019.2.10f1 installed and running (free download from Unity website: www.unity.com), including the following additional Build Support:

Android Build Support and its supporting SDK, NDK and JDK.
Windows 10 Users: Universal Windows Platform Build Support.
Note: OSX users may not be able to support many of the various VR devices

 

What to Bring:

A laptop computer with Unity version 2019.2.10f1 and VR build support (please see the detail above) installed, and your presentation materials

ED-XR 2019 Workshop and Meeting Registration: 

Registration Fee: $80 USD

https://vrcai.siggraph.org/attendees/ (Please register for ED-XR Workshop)

ED-XR 2019 Workshop registration includes the sessions above and VRCAI sessions and VRCAI opening night banquet on 14th November, but it does not include VRCAI academic paper presentation sessions on the 15th and 16th November.

This workshop is supported by the ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee, Griffith Film School, ACM SIGGRAPH VRCAI conference and the EPICentre of the University of New South Wales Art & Design.

VRCAI EDXR 2019 Schedule

Thursday 14th November

12:30 - 22:00 Join VRCAI 2019: Expose to VR research from both academic & industry views⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
12:30 - 13:30
Registration
13:30 - 18:00
VRCAI 2019 Keynotes + Sessions
18:00 - 22:00

Greeting meeting
Weta Workshop
VRCAI Banquet
VRCAI Keynotes

Friday 15th November

09:00 - 17:00 Education Focus Day⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
09:00 - 09:30

Opening announcement
Barbara Mones,
ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee Member,
University of Washington, US

09:30 - 10:10
Featured Talk with Dr. Jacki Morie + Q&A (10 mins)
10:10 - 10:30
Morning Tea
10:30 - 12:30

Discussion and Presentation time
VR Education in your institution

12:30 - 13:30

Lunch Break

13:30 - 15:00

Hands-on Workshop - Introduction to VR in Unity (Part 1)

15:00 - 15:30

Afternoon Tea

15:30 - 17:00

Hands-on Workshop, Introduction to VR in Unity (Part 2)

ED-XR 2019 Featured Speaker

Jacki Morie

Senior Advisor at Prize Operations, Adjunct Professor in SmartLab at University College Dublin

Dr Jacki Morie’s 30 years of researching & creating meaningful VR experiences combines multi-sensory, perceptual techniques for VR that predictably elicit emotional responses from participants. Her company All These Worlds, LLC is active in social VR, Mindfulness applications, storytelling, stress relief experiences, and immersive education and training . In 2016 she concluded a project for NASA called ANSIBLE, a full virtual world ecosystem designed to provide psychological benefits for future astronauts who will undertake extremely long isolated missions to Mars. ANSIBLE was tested in an analog facility called HISEAS in Hawaii, where a team of six scientists was sequestered for a full year to simulate the conditions of isolation on Mars, including long communications delays. She also investigates the use of personal avatars for how they affect our human selves. She invented a novel scent release device for VR called RemniScent, to aid in the evocative power of VR experiences. Education: MS & MFA (U Florida, 1980s); CIS PhD (SmartLab, UEL 2007).

ED-XR 2019 Introduction to VR in Unity Workshop Instructors

Tomasz Bednarz

Associate Professor, Director and Head of Visualisation at the Expanded Perception & Interaction Centre (EPICentre), UNSW Art & Design

Tomasz Bednarz is a Team Leader in Visual Analytics, at the CSIRO Data61 (Computational Platforms Group, Software & Computational Systems Program). He holds Partner/Associate Investigator positions at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS) and holds Adjunct Associate Professor positions at the QUT (School of Mathematical Sciences) and University of South Australia (School of IT and Math Sciences).

His current roles reflect his conviction to a holistic approach to the wicked problems facing the collation, analytics and display of big data. His approach is expansive and encompasses the use of novel technologies (AR, VR, CAVE, Dome, AVIE), often in combination. Over the last couple of years, he has been involved in a wide range of projects in the area of immersive visualisation, human-computer interaction, computational imaging, image analysis and processing, visualisation, simulations, computer graphics, computer games, computational fluid dynamics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and multi-sensors assimilation.

He is Chair of ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2019. SIGGRAPH conferences are the world’s largest, most influential annual meetings and exhibitions in computer graphics and interactive techniques. The conference will be held for the very first time in Australia (Brisbane).

Conan Bourke

Senior Advisor at Prize Operations, Adjunct Professor in SmartLab at University College Dublin

Conan comes from a game development and teaching background, and  worked for Bluetongue Entertainment Pty Ltd THQ on numerous cross-platform commercial titles on Sony and Nintendo platforms. Most recently he was the Head of Curriculum in Programming for a school specialising in 3D film and game development. He has many years of experience teaching C++, C#, Math, Game A.I. and Computer Graphics to students of all levels.

Contact: Miho Aoki (maoki3@alaska.edu)

ED-XR Organisers

Miho Aoki

Miho Aoki is an Associate Professor of Computer Art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She has exhibited her artwork internationally and has received awards, including TOREI Digital Art Awards Grand Prix. She served as the chair of the Symposium on Education of SIGGRAPH Asia from 2015 to 2017 and is a member of ACM SIGGRAPH International Resources Committee, Education Committee and External Relations Committee. Aoki is also the co-director of the Massive Collaborative Animation Projects.

June Kim

June Kim is currently a researcher-practitioner in the Art and Design discipline at UNSW Art & Design and holds a casual academic position at UNSW Art & Design and the University of Sydney. Her expertise lies in melding interactive art and the virtual environment. At ACM SIGGRAPH, Kim has held numerous roles, including as a member of VR/AR/MR Program Jury for SIGGRAPH 2018, SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 and 2018. She also served as a Juror and an Awards Chair for Emerging Technologies for SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 and 2018. She presented her course to introduce Processing for Artists & Designers at SIGGRAPH Asia 2017.

 

Barbara Mones

Barbara Mones is a  Principal Lecturer in the School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, Washington, USA. She is also the Director of the UW Reality Studio, part of the UW Reality Lab, a center for XR Research, Production and Teaching and is also Director of Animation Production for the UW Animation Research Labs. 
She earned an MFA degree from Rhode Island School of Design and has been a DeTao Master, IACC Beijing since 2015.

VRCAI 2019 Submission Requirements and Deadline Info