Map rooms / school for VR?

[Driftingashore]

Hi All,

 

I've been given a research project but frankly I don't really know where to begin.

 

So, in essence, we have a few students that have never came into school due to severe anxiety, and the thought is to map the school into VR so they can whack on a headset and have a little explore and familiarise themselves with the school. Has anybody else done something similar, or know how to best accomplish this?

 

Thanks!

[southhamster]

Is it worth a visit to BEtT to look for ideas?

[Andrew_C]

You might want to be a little careful how far distribution of such a "tour" of your school goes in the wild. We have had instruction that no pictures are allowed showing windows, fittings, etc so as not to give thieves ideas.

[tg12]

Not an expert by any means, but what about a 360 degree camera? Could record a video tour with one that could be viewed in a VR headset. Sure, it won't be overly flexible but it's a starting point.

[strawberry]

This wont be easy!. We used Vista3D for a school project, but it took a lot of time. You have to photo everywhere, layout a map then stitch it all together.

[Marci]

Can also use a Kinect to map as a 3D pointcloud (rgb-depthkit style) and haul into (unity etc) to produce FPS-style walkthrus. Only ever done myself non-interactively with Cinema4D instead of a game engine.

 

No matter how you approach it's either complex / labour intensive, or expensive (bring in a 3rd party to do it).

[DrBeaker]

It took about 3x weeks just to get everything finished and prepared for the year 11 leaving video we used to do. So I'd imagine this project to be honest you'd be looking at a year or more if not doing this full-time. Could you get a company in to do it maybe? What resources in terms of computer hardware, cameras, disk space etc do you have?

 

Plus who's providing the VR headset? You're talking at least £130 per headset at least? What if their phone isn't up to scratch to run the version of the VR app etc? Loads of issues here I can see.

The concept is good. But it seems again they want a technical solution to what's not really a technical issue to begin with? Surely this is a job for the SEN team? E.g. we have issues with SEN students having problems entering passwords for example. As long as the account works, IMHO anything after that is down to the SEN team, that's what they're trained for and their role.

Edited January 22, 2019 by DrBeaker

[pete]

We've done 360 degree panoramas of parts of the school and then uploaded to Google maps. Usually when it's a nice day and no-one's about (it's annoying having to reshoot because Jimmy ran down the corridor late for a lesson).

 

Rule of thumb is "no rooms with shiny stealable kit".

 

It's not VR, but with a decent enough camera / smartphone it'll let the kids have a nose around the school.

 

We did it for promotional reasons and it appears (based on anecdotal evidence) to help with that.

[supportman]

https://www.3dvista.com/ with a go Pro Fusion camera is great!

 

Cost would be about 800 quid for both of those so not too bad.

Edited January 23, 2019 by supportman

[DrBeaker]

...

Rule of thumb is "no rooms with shiny stealable kit".

 

.

 

I wonder how the school insurance company would feel about that if it was online publicly and that kit DID actually get stolen?. Hmmm

[pete]

I wonder how the school insurance company would feel about that if it was online publicly and that kit DID actually get stolen?. Hmmm

 

Provided the school did everything correctly (locked, alarmed, etc), how the insurance company "feels" is irrelevant. Many companies place promotional shots of their premises on the Internet, especially when they buy new shiny things for $whatever initiative.

 

That said, we err on the side of caution because we've had to deal with the faff of break-ins in the past and we've got enough to do.

[Andrew_C]

how the insurance company "feels" is irrelevant.

Errrmm... You've never dealt with an insurance company I take it? ANYTHING they can do to weasel out of paying, they WILL.

[FishCustard]

Errrmm... You've never dealt with an insurance company I take it? ANYTHING they can do to weasel out of paying, they WILL.

 

This. Run any plans past the Bursar/Facilities Manager first!

[pete]

Errrmm... You've never dealt with an insurance company I take it? ANYTHING they can do to weasel out of paying, they WILL.

 

Sadly, I've had to deal with them on multiple* occasions. In my experience they'll quibble like hell over a £50 item (Kindle), but won't blink at £16K (my house flooding) or ~£200K (school flooding). Maybe the junior staff get the small stuff or they do it on a "how much bad publicity would denying this claim cause us?" basis.

 

But if they tried "we're not going to pay because there's pictures of the thing on the Internet", they've made worthless the policies of anyone who has shiny things on public display.

 

*

• School struck by lightning
  
• School flooded
  
• My house flooded
  
• Personal claim on the school's travel policy.
  
• School broken into
  
• School laptop stolen
  
• Motorbike crash
  

[Pottsey]

For a headset an 32GB Oculus Go could be your best choice. Not only does it have one of the best screens for VR but as it’s all self-contained there is no messing around with inserting phones, installing apps. Once setup just pick it up and go. You also need to find out how many head setups you need. I assume not many as I would expect the same people visit the students with anxiety, so not many headsets will be active at once.

 

Normally students with severe anxiety wouldn’t access the entire school. I would expect they have a set route into school leading into a quiet room. Some place with less people so they can get used to the place before entering a full classroom. Instead of mapping the entire school why not just map the path they would take into school, the room(s) they would use and a few key areas. Depending on layout that could cut out over 90% of the workload. You can also add other areas at a later date.

 

Can you explain the shear workload of doing the entire site and ask them to highlight just the key areas needed for the student to familiarize themselves with the school.

At the most basic level start with a preset route flyby video going from outside the main gate to the quite room played on a headset.

[mavhc]

We got the pupils to build a replica of the school in minecraft