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Dr M Gilardi, Dr M Soflano
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (European/UK Students Only)
About the Project
This studentship is part of UWS Immersive, a multi-disciplinary university wide project that explores the potential of virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies and experiences to transform the way UWS teaches, conducts research and engages with society.
The studentship project aims to address the existing gap in end-user tools for authoring VR experiences for education and research. Current solutions can be divided in developer solutions and end-user solutions. Developer solutions, such as Unreal, Unity, and CryEngine, are aimed at games and require a level of computer literacy that generic users may not have and may not be willing to achieve. On the other hand end-user solutions, such as coSpaces, EON Reality, and ENTiTi, are easy to use but limited in what can be achieved with them. In addition, current end-user solutions lack many functionalities that are present in developer solutions that allow to create complex VR objects behaviours and engaging experiences. Although there are some end-user solutions that are specifically aimed at education, there is no specific solution specifically designed to help researchers in developing VR experiments without the help of software developers. VR authoring tools also require to be built around an interactive kernel that allow users to develop the VR experience in execution space. The objective of this research is to design, build and test an end-user authoring tool for VR experiences aimed to be used in education and research settings, such tool will empower end-user to create VR experiences for education and research experiments, favouring the spread of VR in the education and research sector and, potentially, disrupting the newly born market of end-user authoring tools for VR experiences.
As part of the UWS online application, candidates will be asked to submit a proposal, please submit a personal statement in place of the proposal.
The studentship project aims to address the existing gap in end-user tools for authoring VR experiences for education and research. Current solutions can be divided in developer solutions and end-user solutions. Developer solutions, such as Unreal, Unity, and CryEngine, are aimed at games and require a level of computer literacy that generic users may not have and may not be willing to achieve. On the other hand end-user solutions, such as coSpaces, EON Reality, and ENTiTi, are easy to use but limited in what can be achieved with them. In addition, current end-user solutions lack many functionalities that are present in developer solutions that allow to create complex VR objects behaviours and engaging experiences. Although there are some end-user solutions that are specifically aimed at education, there is no specific solution specifically designed to help researchers in developing VR experiments without the help of software developers. VR authoring tools also require to be built around an interactive kernel that allow users to develop the VR experience in execution space. The objective of this research is to design, build and test an end-user authoring tool for VR experiences aimed to be used in education and research settings, such tool will empower end-user to create VR experiences for education and research experiments, favouring the spread of VR in the education and research sector and, potentially, disrupting the newly born market of end-user authoring tools for VR experiences.
As part of the UWS online application, candidates will be asked to submit a proposal, please submit a personal statement in place of the proposal.
Funding Notes
UWS is an inspiring, vibrant place to study with a growing research community; an important aspect of which is its outstanding and committed research students. The studentship offers an annual stipend of £14, 553 per annum for three years and payment of tuition fees. Funding will be considered as part of a competitive round. Studentships are open to Home/EU candidates with a first degree in a relevant discipline. Non-EU students can apply, but will not receive the stipend and will be required to pay fees. Candidates must be available to commence their studies 1st October 2018.