Beyond Oculus

Engage Learning Platform

• Engage is virtual reality meeting and learning platform. You can host meetings, presentations, classes and events with people across the world. Users create an avatar that can interact with others in VR. Hosts can share content including videos and Google files. A collection of built-in virtual content and locations enhance the experience. Sessions can be password protected, live and recorded. Engage works on a PC or mobile device, however the VR benefits are lost. Engage is freemium priced, however users can do a lot with a free account. The premium version is about $70 a year and provides extended content, locations, and increased # of participants in an event. I recommend you sign up for a free account and install the Engage app from the Oculus App store. Learn Engage from the 17 videos in the Learn Engage Playlist

  • Stanford launches first class taught completely in virtual reality

  • Southwest Florida's newest school embraces virtual reality

  • Charter School - gives each student a VR headset and uses Engage

  • VictoryXR creates VictoryXR Academy to teach using Engage

• VictoryXR Academy - a K-12 learning group is offering an interactive VR learning environment in Engage - video overview (1:53) You can sign up for a tour at https://www.victoryxr.com/campus/ (these are prescheduled) in Engage Events (must be logged into an Engage account for this link to work.)

Management

• Arbor XR - device management - contact mychal@arborxr.com for more information - pricing free for up to 5 devices (you can ask and they may provide more); or $10 a device a month. Requires .apk files for pushing app installation

• CoPlay Hub - free (Beta) from SideQuest
  CoPlay Hub makes it easier to find your devices on a network and provides a dashboard to control multiple devices at the same time. Enter IP address the app provides (such as: http://192.168.0.44:8080) and cast, from hub on device, you can start an app, force quit an app; and multiple users can view screen at the same time. Supports multiple devices and optional passwords for changing a device. May need to include a router so this is done independent of a school’s network.

Oculus Quest to 3D Printing

• In these apps you can create, save and then transfer objects you create as .obj files and then bring into a slicing program and 3D print

• Tilt Brush

• Gravity Sketch

• SculptrVR

VictoryXR - Educational VR Content & Learning Platform

• www.victoryxr.com is the #1 VR educational content provider in the world

  • Access all content for $10 device/month; some content, including the 5 dissection apps, can be purchased through SideQuest for $35

  • Explore the VXR Direct VR apps for the Oculus Quest (mostly STEM)

    • VXR Direct - Mel & Gerdy Cell Museum Experience (:30)

    • VXR Direct - Triceratops Ranch (1:30)

    • Dissection Apps - Frog Dissection video overview (5:23)

      • Hoggin’ the Scalpel (2:00)

      • Diggin’ the Dogfish (2:00)

      • Squid and Starfish (3:30)

      • Purr-fect Procedure (2:00)

Create Your Own VR Tours and Stories

• You can create and share VR Tours. There are different apps you can use to view your tour based on where it was created (e.g. Oculus browser, YouTube VR)

• Google is ending access to Google Tour Creator as of July 1, 2021.

  • Alternatives to Google Tour Creator - What to look for and examples (24:21)

    • Roundme

      • Steve's Geo-Investigation Tour - can be open in the Oculus Quest

  • ThingLink - Ed pricing - $35 a year for a teacher and 60 students

  • CoSpaces - Ed pricing - $80 a year for teacher and 5 seats

  • StorySpheres - add audio hotspots to your 360 degree images (beta)

• Other 360 Tour Creation Apps - many are for professional use

  • Marzipano - open source app - install on computer

  • 3DVista - commercial program $$ - download and install

  • Theasys - online - free account allows creation of 5 tours; $20 a month pro

  • Panoskin - offer online and app - free account - 1 Google tour to Google Street View a month; $20 a month for Pro

• Driftspace is a platform for creating immersive VR stories by combining 360 video, text, images, links, and other media. Driftspace allows you to create interactive video stories in VR and to share - find and install the Driftspace VR app from SideQuest

Create Your Own VR Apps

• Unity VR Creation Platform - https://unity.com/learn

  • Free 750 hours of training ~ also a Junior Programmer

• Byldr - Byldr is a code-free app creation tool for AR and VR. Byldr features hand-tracking so that you can build wonderful apps in VR using your own two hands. When you’re done, publish your app so the world can experience your creation. Online tutorial: https://www.byldr.app/tutorials