What's Happening in Lacey, WA…

Thanks to technology, lines between the real and digital worlds are blurring, and a class is being offered by the IT Center in Lacey to help students make sense of new techniques.

Virtual reality (VR) training will take place over four weekends and is designed for people who are just becoming familiar with VR and want to learn the fundamentals of the technology. This includes major hardware platforms, tracking, stereopsis, displays, and optics. By the end of the instruction, students will have learned VR’s physical principles and created a VR app. Programming experience is not a prerequisite for this class.

Instructors will use Unity for the editing process, so students will need access to a computer that is running either Windows, version 7, 8, or 10; or a MAC OS X (10.8+). Instructors will use real-world examples to help students understand VR in depth.

Among the subjects that will be covered are understanding VR basics; applications for VR; distinguishing among the three illusions in VR: embodiment, plausibility, and place; and much more.

The training is a total of 16 hours to be covered over four weekends, which breaks down into two, two-hour sessions per weekend: two hours on Saturday and two on Sunday. The time is from 8.30 am until 10.30 am, and the inclusive dates of the course are May 1 – May 23. Graphic design is used to create displays for events like this.