Immersive Technology Poster

Immersive Technology

Using ShapesXR to create a fully immersive experience for the online course 'Critical Thinking in Forensic Science' final assessment.

Pros

• Good tutorials
• Can view progress on desktop
• Prebuild 3D assets
• Collaborative tool

Cons

• Financial costs
• Time to build
• Needs a headset to edit
• Software updates

ReferencesMicrosoft Copilot, 2024, “Generated Image”, digital artwork, illustration, online. ShapesXR—VR Creation and Collaboration Platform for Remote Teams. (n.d.). Www.shapesxr.com. https://www.shapesxr.com/

Use Case

The learner will be fully immersed in a court room and experience witness testimony from a forensic expert. The ideation of this scenario will be created in ShapesXR so it can be collaboratively designed before being exported to Unity for the final Virtual Reality experience to be created.

Recommendations

If you are looking for a beginner’s tool, this is a good place to start. Instructive, yet informative tutorials that will guide you in your first steps into 3D modelling in Virtual Reality. For those more experienced, ShapesXR is good for designing and collaborating. ShapesXR is a fun application, where you learn through experience and ‘playing’ in the environment, be careful though as you might get carried away!

Reflection

I have chosen to create a poster about ShapesXR as this software is new to me and I think it is a great tool for beginners. The tool has given me a different perspective on how to transform creative ideas into visual representations and I will try to incorporate this element when creating prototypes for future courses, even when not in VR. I believe this is a great step for me on the road to creating an online course in either VR or AR, also being able to bring other ideas into the 3D domain, with the potential of opening other creative ideas. I really like this software and would recommend it to anyone who is taking their first steps into 3D modelling, prototyping and designing in a virtual environment.

What is ShapesXR?

ShapesXR is a standalone software that allows users to create interactive 3D models in a virtual reality space. It is a collaborative tool where teams can design together and present the model in the VR space to stakeholders. There is no coding involved and the content can be exported into game engines such as Unity.

Considerations

The design software does have limitations:

• Recommends collaborative teams of 8 users for best experience.
• Requires a VR headset.
• Supports import of OBJ, gIFT and GLB formats only.
• Alternatives:
• Zbrush - licence is expensive.
• Blender - would suit a more experienced designer.