迈克尔·加利, 中国博彩平台斯库尔基尔分校的物理学副教授, assists elementary and middle school students as they explore 虚拟现实 at Kid's College, 为期五天的暑期科技营. Gallis has been continuing his work with VR for a new 虚拟现实-based course that will be taught this fall.
宾州大学公园. — A new class at Penn State is a video gamer's dream — or just the perfect thing if you have ever wanted to design your own virtual realm.
从今年秋天开始, 新课程, 游戏180N:虚拟世界的艺术与科学, will be offered to first-year students at 中国博彩平台 and Penn State Schuylkill. 这门课 will focus on the physics and foundations of virtual worlds, 虚拟世界规划与设计, 互动小说叙事, and application of technologies used for virtual world input and creation, including 虚拟现实 headsets and a variety of web- and computer-based software packages.
这门课, 酝酿了两年, 是由杰弗里·斯通领导的, an assistant professor of information sciences and technology at the Lehigh Valley campus, and was supported in part by an Integrative Studies Seed Grant from the 通识教育处.
"Students will come up with their own idea of a virtual world," said Stone. "It's a vague concept intentionally so students can follow their own passion."
The multi-disciplinary course will be the perfect marriage of narrative arts and physical sciences. It will be taught at the Schuylkill campus by its developers: 迈克尔·加利, 物理学副教授, 和妮可·安德尔, 英语副教授. 在利哈伊谷, the course will be taught by Stone; Daniel Jackson, an assistant teaching professor of physics; and Michelle Kaschak, 英语教学助理教授.
To help point students in the right direction for their virtual realms, faculty have been diving into the vast world of computer-generated creation.
“我们几个人一直在玩 Unity游戏引擎，以及…… 人字形这是一个基于网络的工具包，”加利斯说. "We've been playing with the 360-degree cameras and some 360-degree animation."
在课程中, students will work in teams to construct the various virtual environments and characters, 应用360度视频组合, 编程, 数码图像.
“迈克的作用, 作为物理学家, is to help them learn about the different physics concepts behind 虚拟现实 and virtual worlds — things like motion and light — so that their ideas can be grounded in what's feasible, 实用、真实,斯通解释道.
Gallis wants students to learn about the science of observation, including how they make measurements in the virtual world and how they model what is happening in the physical world. 在虚拟世界里, 这变得很有趣, 由于一些原因，事物会偏离模型, one of which is due to the fact that virtual worlds may not be exactly correct or complete.
"Virtual reality is useful for training simulations," said Gallis. “我们想要传达的不仅仅是‘嘿, 虚拟世界很酷,' but they're actually useful in a variety of situations: training simulations, 测试, 这取决于模型的准确性."
The narrative arts aspect of the course will examine what the story and narrative of the virtual world will be and how it will be expressed.
Coming from a background in theater, Andel is used to storytelling. As a graduate student, she co-founded a medieval and renaissance drama troupe. 最近, she taught a course on video game literature and she found the opport团结 to apply her production expertise.
“我利用了我从制作中获得的技能, directing and thinking in 3D as a narrative and brought them over to VR,安德尔说。. "Part of the class is discussing how to embody a story and how it's different than it usually occurs in drama, 那里有观众在舞台上观看人们. 角色的故事叙述是不同的."
为学生, there are many options for future careers in the video game industry, 因为涉及到很多技能.
“还有很多空间, career-wise; if you ever look at the credits list on video games you will see a large number of people involved in a wide variety of specializations. The budgets for these projects can be tens of millions of dollars," said Gallis. “它们可以与最昂贵的电影制作相媲美."
Students will walk away from the course excited and prepared for a growing industry.
"Right now, we're training people for jobs that aren't created yet," Andel said. "We hope that students will gain the skills they need to do these types of jobs in the future; courses like this help them become acquainted with everyday jobs they might be asked to do."
Andel hopes professors will branch out into teaching similar nontraditional courses in the future.
"My hope is more instructors will embrace these kinds of courses and modes of teaching in really exciting ways,她说.
