Teaching Remotely: Students build VR experiences on their own phones to test in Google Cardboard headset

p After COVID-19 was detected in Austin in mid-March, the University of Texas moved all of its classes online for the remainder of the semester. In this series, we explore how faculty in the College of Fine Arts are adapting their curriculum to an online format./p p strongInstructor/strong: Assistant Professor of Practice M J Johns, Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies in the School of Design and Creative Technologiesnbsp;/p p strongTell us about a class you’re teaching this spring./strong/p p emThis semester I taught Level Design, Game Prototyping, and VR for Games. By far the most challenging class to move online was VR for Games.nbsp;/em/p p strongWhat was a challenge you faced in moving instruction online this spring?/strong/p p emMy VR class has faced logistical challenges ever since its inception. First I taught it in a Mac lab, but Mac computers are not particularly VR compatible. Next, it was in a small classroom with barely enough room to set up the hardware. This semester I was delighted to find an ideal space in the PLAI lab, which has VR-compatible computers and tons of open space.nbsp;/em/p p emThe VR class is an opportunity for students to use a wide variety of VR hardware including HTC Vive, Oculus Quest and Google Daydream. They have access to this technology in the lab, and they work in teams solving problems with the hardware and designing new and interesting experiences. With the move to online classes, we lost access to the hardware and lab space basically overnight.nbsp;/em/p p strongHow did you solve it?/strong/p p emBeginning in the second half of the semester, students transition from exploratory mode (trying all the different hardware) to a deep-dive into one chosen hardware, and they spend 9 weeks designing and building a complete game. The announcement to transition online came just two days after we had formed their teams for the big project, and right before they chose hardware.nbsp;/em/p p emDuring the first few days of spring break, I spent a lot of time brainstorming how we would proceed. My first concern was getting them access to hardware. I did not want to turn this class into a theoretical lecture series, because so much of what we do depends upon trying things out for yourself and experimenting. I came up with 3 viable options:/em/p ol li emTeams would be allowed to meet in the PLAI lab with strict social distancing rules, only one team using the space at a time, and all hardware thoroughly disinfected between uses./em/li li emEach team would take one VR headset home (we had just enough headsets for one per team), and one member of the team would be the “dedicated tester” who would test their game on the headset as they developed it./em/li li emEvery student would be mailed a Google Cardboard headset ($8 each), and students would build VR experiences on their own phones to test in the Cardboard headset (Cardboard is compatible with the vast majority of smartphones including both Android and iOS)./em/li /ol p emI pitched these three ideas to the department, but in the process of writing up the pitch, I realized the third option made so much more sense than the other two. It wouldn’t require students to come back to campus, and it would give all students equitable access to “hardware.”nbsp;/em/p p emSo I got to work coordinating the mailing of Google Cardboard headsets to each of the 18 students in the class, and one to the TA. In the second week of spring break, I started putting together some step-by-step tutorials for students to get started building Cardboard apps for their phones./emnbsp;/p p strongHow have your students responded in your class?/strong/p p emDuring the extended spring break, I sent a survey to my students to find out what they were most anxious or concerned about with moving online, and also to see what aspects of this they saw as an opportunity, as well as to verify smartphone access. Here are some of the highlights.nbsp;/em/p p emAnxious about:/em/p ul li em“Having to talk/be on camera”/em/li li em“Holding group members accountable”/em/li li em“Making a fun game with the Cardboard”/em/li li em“Losing the experience of working with other vr hardware”/em/li li em“Time management”/em/li /ul p emPossible opportunities:/em/p ul li em“Increased productivity due to reduced commute time”/em/li li em“Work at home with my own computer”/em/li li em“Learning how to work remotely as a group is a good opportunity; it’s just a little scary”/em/li li em“I won’t have to buy food on campus anymore, I’ll be home and can make it”/em/li /ul p emIn our first week back, kicking off our Zoom Room classroom, I tried to assuage their concerns. We came up with plans for holding each other accountable by doing “stand-ups” twice a week where students would talk about what they were working on. We used Slack for this, so there was a written record and they could easily go back to see what a teammate had done in the last session.nbsp;/em/p p emWe also talked about the benefits of having “hands-on” practice for working in a remote development environment, which is quite common in the video game industry. Students would also benefit from understanding how to build projects to their own phones.nbsp;/em/p p emPart of our online change involved teams creating blogs where they could document their progress, which are now public and can be included in their portfolios. One student’s final blog post eloquently sums up the challenges their team faced and how they overcame:/em/p p em“I had never developed a level for VR before, so there were some issues that I didn't see being issues till they were. Conventionally to travel from spot to spot the player would just walk there, but our VR platform only has 3DoF [degrees of freedom] so instead of walking around, we had a teleport function. I didn’t take this into account initially and ran into the issue of not being able to clearly see each teleport node. So instead of clear paths on the ground to each node, I closed those paths and simply made sure that you could see both of the other nodes clearly./em/p p emVerticality/Scale was a bit of a challenge. I didn't really know how big the world was in relation to the player and also how big the mushies were, at least not till later. Best solution to this was pretty much just making sure to go into the level and test it to see how big everything felt and then go back to adjust. Adjusting the player height was also helpful, since we could effectively control how what the player could see, like the edge of the level. In this situation, our VR platform's 3DoF made things easier to execute.”/em/p p emMush Ambush a href="https://bubblehorn.itch.io/mush-ambush/devlog"blog./a/em/p p emMush Ambush gameplay:/em/p p strongHave there been any innovations or solutions that you plan to carry into in-person instruction in the future?/strong/p p emThe addition of blogging to document their progress has been a great success, and I definitely plan to use that in all my classes moving forward, whether online or not. I also think future iterations of this class, even in-person, might include at least a short project for the Cardboard so they have that experience of building a game to their own phones./emnbsp;/p p strongWhat else do you want us to know about this teaching experience?/strong/p p emI a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=139K7IYW3siDVY76HNo4ROd1eOAS8hJmR%C2%A0"compiled their work/a into a video that shows what all 6 teams made for their Google Cardboard projects:nbsp;/em/p p emFor anyone with an Android phone, you can also a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=16ljeZcE6QkypS2h_ZNJOhqqvfRXKsjuV"download and play their games/a yourself, with our without a Google Cardboard device./em/p p emYou can also read about their process in their blogs:/em/p ul li a href="https://adriftvr.blogspot.com/2020/"emAdrift/em/a/li li a href="https://darzzler.itch.io/yearningvr"emYearning VR/em/a/li li a href="https://itch.io/t/728828/vr-hidden-objects"emMedieval Detective VR/em/a/li li a href="https://bubblehorn.itch.io/mush-ambush/devlog"emMush Ambush/em/a/li li a href="https://buildingblockscardboard.blogspot.com/"emCardboard Building Blocks/em/a/li li a href="https://anarobertaflores.itch.io/birdwatch/devlog"emBirdwatch VR/em/a/li /ul