>> Welcome to our specialization on virtual reality. My name is Sylvia Pan, and I am a Lecturer in Virtual Reality at Goldsmiths, University of London. >> Hi, I'm Marco Gillies. I'm also from Goldsmiths, and I'm a Reader in Computing. >> Both Marco and I have been working in the area of virtual reality for quite a long time. I started my Masters and PhD in this area in 2004, and have worked in various research projects including the use of VR in psychotherapy, training and education, and research in social neuroscience. >> I started working VR in 2001, and I've worked particularly on virtual characters for social VR, and virtual reality interaction. >> During our time working in this area, we have seen how virtual reality has been used to improve all aspects of our lives with a great range of applications. Since 2013, VR hardware has become available to consumers, which made VR accessible to a much broader market, and opens doors to many exciting new ventures. More and more people are interested in learning more about VR, and we have been bombarded with questions like, what can we use VR for? How is it different from other media? And, how to get started? >> And that inspired us to create this virtual reality specialization. It is for anyone who is interested in VR. Not only game developers, but also, designers, artists, psychologists, philosophers, engineers, and architects. This specialization will help you get started in VR. We will explain how virtual reality works from both a psychological and technical perspectives. It will help you to really develop a theoretical and practical understanding of the concept and of the technology. >> We'll start with an introduction to VR, where we'll really explain how VR is different from other media. We'll help you make decisions in choosing your VR devices, and give you ideas of how to best make it out of VR for your application. This part of the specialization will concentrate on the concepts and theory. So, don't worry if you don't have access to any VR hardware, or a powerful computer which could run VR software. All you need to submit are design documents. >> After that, you will be starting with some light VR development, where you will create a 3D environment all guided by us, and our teaching assistants. You will learn how to find and import 3D assets from the internet, how to make a 3D environment, and how to get everything to work with virtual reality headsets. >> You will also learn how to interact with a VR 3D environment either created by yourself, or a model provided by us. You will learn how to move around in an environment, and interact with objects with different capacity of the VR devices available. >> We'll discuss virtual characters and social VR. Just like in real life, where we spend a big chunk of our time interacting with other people, in VR, social interaction is key to many applications. >> And just like in real life, social interaction could go very wrong if you don't have the right set of social skills. We will show you how to animate your avatar to be sociable in virtual reality. >> We'll lock up the specialization with the Capstone Project, where you'll be developing your own VR application. But we think it's really important to get some advice on this, from people who've been working in the area for 5, 10, or even 20 years. >> So, we went to international events and interviewed researchers from all over the world. We have also interviewed our colleagues, collaborators, and VR developers from world-leading VR companies. We hope their advice, together with all the skills you will learn from this specialization, will help you produce VR applications that are not only special to you, but also meaningful to society. >> We're looking forward to sharing our experience of VR with you, and we're very excited to see what you'll create. >> The future of virtual reality is just starting, and we need your help to define it together.
