Virtual Reality in Science and History

Dr. Schmachtenberg has taught Earth Science at Franklin County High School for over 30 years and college geology at Ferrum College in Southwest Virginia. He also runs the award winning Unity 3D computer club and has a business called Educational Virtual Worlds. In 2018, he created the official VR simulation for the Grand Canyon Centennial celebration in 2019 for the National Park Service. The pc version of that software can be downloaded from the home page of www.evwllc.com. He has also created VR simulations for the Virginia Museum of Natural History. In January of 2020, he showed off a VR sim on the Cretaceous Seaway at the Ice Age Festival. He and student Darien Bradley are creating a VR dinosaur sim for the museum for dino days. He is also working on history sims for the history department at his high school, and has recently created the March on Selma Alabama in 1965 recreation in VR. Students can log in as an African American and make the decision to walk across the bridge at Selma and face the wrath of armed state troopers in the hope of gaining the right to vote or turn back to Selma. He has published papers on VR in VEJ, and has given many lectures on how to create VR sims at the VSTE conference in RL and in SL.