Gamers experience virtual reality – The Creightonian

The 2017 Game Fest in the Skutt Student Center on Saturday attracted students for games, fun and the chance to try out the HTC Vive, a piece of modern virtual reality technology that immerses the gamer in a digitally-created and interactive experience.

The event was hosted by CU After Dark, an organizer of late-night campus activities, and the Division of Information Technology's RaDLab, an innovation-focused organization that provides in-house solutions for the myriad needs of professors, students and university infrastructure.

The mid-semester refresher Game Fest catered something for every avid game-player: top video games such as FIFA '17, Rocket League and Super Smash Bros. and board games such as chess, Life and Monopoly.

"Games are a great way to engage like-minded students with new technology," Ryan Cameron, senior director of research and development, said while showing off his gaming skill at Game Fest. "It helps them to experience teamwork and see a glimpse of the technologies of the future."

Future technology made an appearance at Game Fest. Compared to the exuberant and exasperated yells from other game stations, the HTC Vive generated even more consistent noise. After strapping on the Vive headset, students were able to use the Vive's motion controllers to interact with a virtual reality realm where they could practice archery, view incredible vistas atop an Icelandic mountain path or even wield a lightsaber to fend off a platoon of Imperial Stormtroopers.

Many students who had a run in the Vive were impressed.

"It was unlike any other experience, said Heider College of Business junior James Delage. I was totally immersed; it felt so realistic."

Steve Maaske, a primary organizer of Game Fest and an innovation analyst at the Division of Information Technology explained that virtual reality has an important role at the RaDLab not simply for its entertainment use.

"Virtual reality is something we're investing time and effort into, for applications like 360-degree photos and virtualizing real environments," Maaske said.

The RaDLab is working to inject virtual reality into academics at Creighton, starting with the College of Nursing. By using images taken by 360 degree cameras, virtual reality can offer students first-person views of clinical and lab locations without requiring classes to relocate for such lessons. These 360-degree photos are capable of being visualized in a Google Cardboard, an inexpensive smartphone-powered virtual reality headset, so that students can spend time in digitally recreated versions of these real locations, even after hours or in their rooms.

For the RaDLab, Game Fest was a proof of conceptinnovation is centered on the engagement and promotion of developing new technologies, and the RaDLab invites students to expand their involvement with such technology after having experienced the programming at Game Fest.

"Game Fest provides a mechanism for bringing together students collaboratively within the context of a relevant technological reality," Cameron said.

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Gamers experience virtual reality - The Creightonian