Our Crowdfunding Groups
A few days after the VRCI fundraising project closed, a generous SIUC alum noticed that we had not quite achieved our $7500 goal and contacted the SIU Foundation to offer a gift of the remaining amount. So it took a bit longer than anticipated, but the Virtual Reality Classroom Initiative is now fully funded by your gifts and by this gracious final benefactor. What a great start to the Spring 2020 semester! Thank you all.
And you can find a nice article by Meera Komarraju, our provost, concerning the changes in the creative writing program here: it's from a recent number of The Southern Illinoisan, and it's deeply supportive of our efforts to update our offerings. Thank you, Meera!
That's it from me and the VRCI until 2020. Have a great New Year's Eve and New Year's Day!
Fifty-six donors gave a total of $6215 (82% of our ambitious $7500 goal) over thirty days. The chair of the English Department and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts have generously agreed to make up the final 18% needed to purchase the VR hardware and software that we need for VR fiction classes to commence in January. The first such class is fully (even over-) subscribed. Research and teaching assistants are in place. This thing is really happening.
Thank you all so very, very much. You have given me and my students a truly wonderful gift. I've never been so excited for the start of a new semester. The VR Classroom Initiative simply could not have happened without your combined efforts. I look forward to sharing the results with you as the semester progresses!
As a final bit of info, here's an article from the most recent number of The New Yorker about trying out VR for the first time. It captures the experience well, and nicely illustrates why virtual reality in dozens of professions and endeavors--narrative art not least of all--is going to be a big hulking deal.
The full article is here.
excerpt: "I pressed the Power button and found myself in the center of a computer-rendered 3-D glass geodesic dome with a million-dollar view of mountains. Sensors in the V.R. headset tracked my movements and instantaneously rejiggered the mise-en-scène. Gazing up, I saw stars; turning full circle, I took in a few Danish-modern sofas, a bookcase, and potted plants. Oh, look, I thought, my Oculus has a fireplace! (For a moment, I considered ditching my apartment and moving, with my headset, into a closet.) In the “living room” was an enormous floating display with a menu of options from Oculus—apps and games that I could buy for $9.99 to $29.99 (some are free). Should I travel aboard the International Space Station and experience zero gravity? Take a guided Tai Chi class? Create 3-D paintings in the air? Have a tête-à-tête with Jesus, who would lead me in a guided meditation? (The In His Presence V.R. Web site asks, “How can God fit into your crowded life with everything else on your plate?”) Disunion, the guillotine simulator, was discontinued, so I’d have to find another way to imagine what it was like to be executed during the French Revolution—perhaps I could download the app produced by Excedrin that allows one to feel what it’s like to have a migraine? (Philosophical query: Is it O.K. to cancel a real-life appointment because you have a virtual headache?)"
The last 24 hours have been amazing. We have swiftly gone from 42% of our (admittedly ambitious) goal of $7500 to 75% (a bit over $5700) through a flurry of gifts both large and small, and every one immensely welcome. Thank you all!
This will likely be my last update before the campaign ends tomorrow morning at 8. For your entertainment and edification, I’ll leave you with a 30-second video in support of SIU Forever, the university’s major current fundraising effort.
I’ll just note, for what it’s worth, that the video’s thumbnail image of a young man in a VR headset (an Oculus Quest, the type of headset the purchase of which your gift is funding!) is of none other than our own Jay Livingston, who was an undergraduate at SIUC and who is now a first-year MFA in poetry. He’ll also be a GA in the VR Narrative class for which these Oculus Quests will initially be used. Jay features in the final moments of the video as well.
Greetings, all! We’re 48 hours from the end of the SalukiFunder for the VR Classroom Initiative, and we currently stand at 57% of our goal (a bit over $4000). Thank you all very much for your generosity and participation.
Will you please tell your friends, family, folks with an interest in SIUC, and folks with an interest in virtual reality and immersive storytelling, that our VR Classroom Initiative fundraising drive is coming to an end at 8 AM on Friday, December 20, less than 48 hours from now? It would be great to finish strong.
As an incentive, here’s a picture of a little boy enjoying VR for the first time in SIUC’s Morris Library this past October. He’s saying—I can hear his delighted, piping voice clearly in my head—“This is so cool!” His mother, who was proudly looking on, will be a student in the Narrative VR class in the spring. Ask your friends who haven’t given yet if they really want to dash the dreams of this astonishingly cute boy and his devoted, doting mother, in the week before Christmas. I don’t think they do. I mean, they’re not monsters, right?
Yes, I am shameless. Just to undercut the mawkishness, I shall include a link to a 360 video that illustrates what happens when you give a bunch of obstreperous Forestry students access to a waterproof VR camera. You may have to click through to YouTube proper to get the 360 effect, but it’s worth it, because now you’re a fish!
Check out the embedded short (40 seconds) 360-degree video made in our newly established VR lab (in Shryock Hall, right behind the box office--come visit!) using the amazing virtual reality space exploration app SpaceEngine Pro. It looks best in 4K resolution, if you have the bandwidth. In a 360 video, the image wraps all around you, so you can pan and tilt to look at whatever you like. It's a perfect medium for telling stories in VR. Try it out!
On a PC monitor, pan around using the mouse (left-click and drag or click the arrows in the upper left corner). On your phone, simply move the phone around you to shift your view. In VR (using YouTube VR app on Oculus Quest), just turn your head. Voila--you're in space!
For a longer and more narrative 360 video experience (also funnier and weirder) made by an SIU fiction student, check out The Doubles Phenomenon by Ian Moeckel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93zqYCdqJE&t=202s
https://collegegazette.com/the-10-best-hidden-gem-public-universities-in-the-us/
SIUC is ranked #8.
Not exactly VR-related, but from my experience of better than 13 years here, this article describes SIUC well: a hidden gem. So many phenomenal and exciting things are taking place on campus, and students at SIUC can get a terrific education, one that's easily the equal of (dare I say superior to?) what they could find at other, more famous, more expensive schools. Including (here comes the sales pitch) first-of-their-kind efforts like the VR Classroom Initiative.
For what it's worth, I put my money where my mouth is: my son is currently a sophomore at SIUC. He loves it and we love having him nearby.
Pinckney Benedict
This coming Friday, December 6, at 5 pm in the first floor rotunda of Morris Library, come see the students in my Honors class show off their VR chops! The class is called Survival Stories: Making the Literature of Survival, and we've been using virtual reality in the classroom to simulate high-stakes survival situations. Students from the class will help event attendees to experience asymmetrical VR roleplaying in the Rotunda starting at 5pm and will take the stage in the Guyon Auditorium at 6pm for a brief live demonstration of teamwork and cooperative problems-solving. Join us!
Happy Thanksgiving to all who have helped out in one way or another so far! The funding project is coming along well: we're at just over $3000 of our $7500 goal with three weeks to go. The fund will make for some exciting advances in the fiction program at SIUC--changes that simply wouldn't be possible in any other way.
Although it's difficult to describe the experience of VR to someone who hasn't yet been in VR, the embedded video will maybe give you some sense, if you're new to the technology. As it has for several years now, Verizon broadcast the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade over YouTube, using views from a number of 360-degree video cameras along the parade route. I've uploaded about eight minutes of a recording I made while watching this morning's festivities. In virtual reality, it can seem as if you're actually on site, and you are able, by looking around you, to see a great deal that is hidden from the audience by conventional 2D broadcast technology. Note the cameras, crews, and the close-up of the guy operating the 360 camera in front of Macy's. The ground-level cameras, which replicate the feeling of actually standing among the crowd, are the best for "presence," that sense that you are really there.
Here is a link to the full 360 video, which you can watch and manipulate on your computer screen or on your phone, if you don't have access to VR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6-uisXk6P8
Sorry for the slight fisheye effect--will try to work out how to eliminate that when recording 2D from 360 videos. Also working on what head movements don't create disorientation. This process is teaching me a great deal!
Pinckney Benedict, Professor
SIUC Department of English/Creative Writing (Fiction)
On Day 3 of the campaign, we’re already at over $1800 dollars, which is nearly 25% of our goal, or the equivalent of 4.5 Oculus Quest headsets. Look how excited and happy the students are (even the one who was sick and Skyped in)! Thank you!
By 9:30 PM on the first day of the VRCI (Virtual Reality Classroom Initiative), we raised $410 (5% of our goal) from 13 donors. That's one Oculus Quest headset down and fourteen to go! Thank you all so much.
SIUC's UX Design Club will host Prof Pinckney Benedict at their regular meeting on Wednesday, November 20, at 6 PM, in Room 59, Pulliam Hall. Free admission to SIU affiliates and public. Benedict will demonstrate the remarkable power of VR for storytelling and for building empathy.
Contact Roshni Choudary for more information: roshni.choudhary@siu.edu
You're enthusiastic! We fully share your enthusiasm! Before we put on our Quest headsets for the first time, all of the students in the class will say your name, or a name of your choosing, and applaud enthusiastically.
You're funding the purchase of an essential VR application for one of the Oculus Quests in our VR classroom. The student who benefits from your gift will send you a brief sample of a work of narrative art created with the application.
This level of contribution will buy a hard carrying case for one of the Oculus Quest headsets we need for our VR classroom. The student who receives the case will send you a picture of the her/himself proudly holding the protective case with the precious Quest within.
This donation purchases one quarter of one of the Oculus Quest headsets we need to outfit our VR classroom. The student who benefits from this donation will send you a picture of him/herself wearing the headset for the first time and grinning with the joy that VR brings.
This donation purchases one half of one of the Oculus Quest headsets we need to outfit our VR classroom. The student who benefits from this donation will send you a brief video of him/herself using the headset for the very first time.
This donation purchases one of the Oculus Quest headsets we need to outfit our VR classroom. The student who benefits from this donation will send you a video of her/himself putting on the headset for the first time and describing the experience of the initial tutorial. You may also visit our class at your convenience to try out VR for yourself.
This donation purchases *two* of the Oculus Quest headsets we need to outfit our VR classroom. The two students who benefit from this donation will send you a video taken when they engage in their first VR social/multiplayer encounter. You may also visit our class at your convenience and engage in VR social/multiplayer activities with the students.
This donation purchases *two* of the Oculus Quest headsets we need for our VR classroom as well as *two* hard carrying cases and *five* copies of the software that we require. The students who benefit from this donation will send you a video of a short virtual reality narrative created just for you. In addition, you may visit our class at your convenience and engage in VR social/multiplayer activities with the students. During your class visit, the students will also gleefully demonstrate the VR narratives they're working on.
