{"id":5305,"date":"2015-08-15T19:42:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-15T18:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5305"},"modified":"2015-08-15T19:42:56","modified_gmt":"2015-08-15T18:42:56","slug":"high-fidelity-announce-stem-vr-challenge-recipients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5305","title":{"rendered":"High Fidelity Announce Stem VR Challenge Recipients"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in July High Fidelity lanuched its <a href=\"http:\/\/eduvr.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Stem VR Challenge<\/a>. The challenge was :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>High Fidelity will be awarding up to three $5,000 grants to teams or individuals who, using the High Fidelity platform, can create a unit that is:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>HMD (e.g. Oculus\u2122) featured<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>High school age appropriate<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>STEM focused<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Social (can be experienced by &gt;3 people together)<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>In addition to the dollar amount awarded, grantees will have access to technical support directly from High Fidelity and the option to have their content hosted.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Yesterday <a href=\"https:\/\/highfidelity.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/stem-vr-challenge-grant-recipients\/\" target=\"_blank\">High Fidelity announced who the recipients would be<\/a>, they have chosen two projects to receive the grants. They are\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/highfidelity-site-dev.s3.amazonaws.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/TCars_VR_Challenge.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">T.C.a.R.S: Teaching Coding &#8211; a\u00a0Racing Simulation<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/highfidelity-site-dev.s3.amazonaws.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/FTL-Labs-PlanetDrop-VR.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">FTL Labs PlanetDrop-VR<\/a>. Both projects look very interesting.<\/p>\n<p>TCars is a combination of code and fun and is described as :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>An awesome racing game where you get to interact with JavaScript to\u00a0customize your car&#8217;s handling, create unique power ups and optimize performance through\u00a0editing the programme code with the use of the Blockly API.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The idea behind TCaRS is explained as one that wants people to learn coding by having fun :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The idea for TCaRS is based on the thought that learning coding can be boring but playing\u00a0games is fun:\u00a0\u201cI want to learn to code\u2026 but\u2026.the road from typing, \u2018print my name\u2019 to making \u2018Grand Theft\u00a0Auto\u2019 seems huge and demotivating\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Schools around the world have been using tools like the Raspberry Pi to teach kids coding\u00a0and it\u2019s an essential part of most High School curriculums these days, but the output from\u00a0tools like this is often pretty basic-looking.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>With High Fidelity, we have the chance to change this by creating the first gaming platform\u00a0where users get to see and interact directly with elements of the code in order to gain<\/em><br \/>\n<em>advantage \u2013 so the more you learn, the better you do. And with the benefit of VR to create a\u00a0genuinely immersive experience.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The people behind TCaRS are High Fidelity Alpha users\u00a0Thijs Wenker (Thoys in High Fidelity) Programmer \/ Web Developer (JavaScript, PHP, C#, C++) and\u00a0Dan Grundy (Judas in High Fidelity) Lecturer in 3D modelling using Blender. There&#8217;s a lot more detail in the link.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>PlanetDrop-VR comes from <a href=\"http:\/\/ftllabscorp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">FTL Labs<\/a>, who describe themselves as :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The focus of FTL is to provide transitional technology development for highly marketable technologies emerging in academia and bring new products based on this research to the marketplace.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>PlanetDrop-VR looks like a very interesting project, the core game mechanic is described as :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>PlanetDrop-VR is a networked multi-player game that leverages the\u00a0benefits of social VR through \u201ccooperative asymmetrical gaming\u201d: the virtual environment is shared by the\u00a0<\/em><em>players, but each has specific information related to his or her chosen STEM specialty, provided by\u00a0individualized HUDs. However, unlike a traditional \u201cinformation asymmetry\u201d game, like a card game, the goal\u00a0is not to use unshared information to a players advantage to win, but rather to share that information as quickly\u00a0and effectively as possible to allow the team to solve challenges and advance through a story arc of increasingly\u00a0impressive accomplishments.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The educational angle comes in the form of problem solving but as it&#8217;s multi-player there&#8217;s a shared aspect too, which ticks the boxes of the STEM VR Challenge well. The game concept also looks interesting, here&#8217;s an introduction to that :<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>A team of three to five cross-disciplinary eco-scientist-engineers\u00a0travel to the surface of the ecologically diverse planet Pomona-1 to\u00a0help restore balance and harmony after a 70-year war has left it\u00a0scarred and fragile.\u00a0Gameplay is broken into 10-20 minute missions that start with the\u00a0networked team in orbit, each within the cockpit of their own single\u00a0<\/em><em>seat MechPod vehicle. Each player is in constant communication with\u00a0the other team members through a continuous voice-activated video\u00a0conference (leveraging High Fidelity&#8217;s face tracking capabilities).\u00a0Here, during a Mission Briefing stage, via a HUD-based consensus\u00a0system, they plan their mission and choose their scientific specialty areas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again there&#8217;s a lot more in the link and if you find this kind of thing interesting, the links are well worth reading. High Fidelity&#8217;s VR Challenge is a great concept and demonstrates that people can and will get excited and creative about education in VR. Congratulations to both grant recipients and I look forward to seeing how these projects develop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in July High Fidelity lanuched its Stem VR Challenge. The challenge was : High Fidelity will be awarding up to three $5,000 grants to teams or individuals who, using the High Fidelity platform, can create a unit that is: HMD (e.g. Oculus\u2122) featured High school age appropriate STEM focused Social (can be experienced by &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=5305\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;High Fidelity Announce Stem VR Challenge Recipients&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[551,997,14],"tags":[1034,1018],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6rJUK-1nz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5306,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5305\/revisions\/5306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}