STUDENT DEVELOPER GROUP

Novel Observations in Mixed Reality (NOMR) enables the exploration of novel physical phenomena in a virtual laboratory environment. It’s a whole universe distinct from our own, which works by different physical laws; will you discover what makes them tick? Create positive and negative charges which behave very similarly to charges in our own universe obeying Coulomb’s Law. See what structures they form, and how the collective behavior between many of them allows us to observe how charges move on a conductor. Create “minty” particles, a phenomenon completely unknown to our universe. Work to discover their underlying laws with force and distance measurement tools, empowered by your ability to pause physics entirely to set up your experiments. What will you discover?

VR technology has experienced a boom in the past two years establishing a strong position in the entertainment industry and an emerging position in the education and training sectors.

The Student Developer Group (SDG) allows for the successful continuation and expansion of the NOMR VR application and also provides invaluable applied programming experience to student developers interested in becoming part of this project.

Students joining the NOMR VR lab application development team would benefit from applied experience with software development and support in the areas of 3D modeling; VFX artistry; and VR UX design.  In addition to software development skills, these academic physics skills will also be developed: Numerical methods in physics; working with real-time physics engines; evaluating and optimizing the performance of numerical physics simulations.

Many undergraduate students do research through faculty in the UW PEG, particularly physics undergraduates considering going into physics education & outreach.  The NOMR VR lab project has created a number of research opportunities for undergraduate students taking PHYS 499 (Independent Study).

As a Student Developer Group member, student software developers have so far yielded excellent career development opportunities.