“Susan” also appears. She’s been crying and mutters something about thinking of harming herself. Do the right things — repeat her name, ask gentle, reassuring questions, make eye contact — and her expression softens. Points are scored to an evaluation model that appears later.
Say the wrong thing and Susan sobs heavily, burying her head in her hands.
Next — and here is where it gets freaky because the software is called BodySwaps — the roles are reversed with the student now viewing a replay of the session from the Susan avatar’s perspective.
“We are not learning XR (extended reality),” said Marcus Davis, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “We are learning from X technology.”
It’s fitting that the lab is in the library.
“This was the first immersive media,” Davis said. “The book. You open a book and you use your imagination to enter that immersive experience.”
The plan is to move the technology out across campus from the lab, Davis said. He estimates the cost as about $100,000, much of it to license software. The headsets are about $2,000 each.
Western New England University hosts a grand opening Thursday, Jan. 30, for its Extended Reality Lab, merging the physical and digital realms in 3D environments such as virtual reality (VR) and extended realty environments that meld what is really in front of the participant with what the computer can create such as augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) where real-life objects and virtual objects interact in real time.
Augmented reality is becoming common in marketing, said WNE alum Edward Zemba, CEO of Link to VR. Think about apps that let users measure objects on your phone, or using their phone to virtually place the sofa they’re thinking of buying in their real-life living room. Other apps let consumers virtually try on a makeup look or a haircut in a virtual reality.
“It’s not the same as being alive — but it’s really close,” said Paul Desmarais, of Educational Technology and Training at Western New England.
He said this technology is important to students’ futures.
“This is where the job growth is,” Desmarais said. “It’s not AI that will replace you in the workplace. It’s the person who knows how to use AI who will replace you in the workplace.”
Zemba started Link to VRin 2016, growing it out of the family business started by his father, Robert Charles Photography in East Longmeadow.
Western New England students have already worked on projects, like an augmented reality scavenger hunt game for the Worcester Red Sox at Polar Park sponsored by the Workers Credit Union. Fans use their phones to link with QR codes and play videos with bats and balls appearing in 3D.
Western New England students also helped Link to VR set up a virtual reality trade show display that transports a user first to a data center and then to the James Webb Space Telescope 30,000 miles beyond Earth’s orbit around the sun.
All of it is driven by artificial intelligence and all of it is becoming more common on college campuses and in corporate America. The University of Massachusetts Amherst has an extended reality center as well and Western New England officials visited centers in Connecticut to set this one up.
A few students tested it out last semester and six classes use the lab now in the spring term, Davis said.
The classes using the new lab are not necessarily in the hard sciences but instead communications, marketing or psychology.
“It’s not the same as being alive — but it’s really close,” said Paul Desmarais, of Educational Technology and Training.
“This is where the job growth is,” Desmarais said. “It’s not AI that will replace you in the workplace. It’s the person who knows how to use AI who will replace you in the workplace.”
Zemba also described digital twins, the virtual reality creation of a duplicate. That can be a building — for use by an architect, historian or designer — or a person.
Davis said these extended reality environments are useful for teaching skills where real-world practice is costly or dangerous. Think of surgeons learning a procedure virtually or architects making their mistakes in a simulation.
Or about the rookie counselor who said the wrong thing to Susan.
Students are more willing to take criticism, Davis said, when it is of the avatar. Think of a speech class where students learn virtually that they gesture too much or don’t make eye contact.
Students, especially younger students introduced to the technology through gaming, pick up the basics quickly and start using it as a tool.
“Once they get over the ‘wow factor’, they very quickly broaden their imagination as to where the technology can go,” said graduate assistant Kyle Zemba, Ed’s son. “They will take the headset off and suggest a use I never would have thought of.”
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