Virtual Teaching Environment

Thomas Sentier

Virtual Teaching Environment

Summary

For my bachelor thesis, I analyzed virtual environments for content-focused interactions. This resulted in the creation of an app with Unity where two users can connect via network.
One user (the student) is connected via a Google Daydream-ready smartphone while the other (the teacher) is using the Oculus Rift with the Touch controllers.

Description

Both users can see each-other, use a voice chat to communicate and interact with objects in the room. Furthermore the teacher can show a PowerPoint presentation about level-design.

This project was created in approx. 1-2 weeks. I had to use 3 things I had never used before: GoogleVR, OculusVR and Unity Networking.
Implementing those 3 aspects took most of the time while creating the application. I had to make sure that the GoogleVR API and Oculus API did not conflict with each other when building for PC or Android.
I never used the Unity Network before so this took also quite some time to figure out. After I understood the basic mechanics of this framework, I was able to implement the required functions in a few days.

The voice chat is an open source project that can be found on GitHub. I modified the code slightly so that the chat automatically chooses the correct microphones without any user input required.

At last I improved the whole networking system allowing for a seamless experience. The app does not require the player to do anything like hosting or joining a server as this is done automatically (as long as the daydream-ready smartphone and the PC using the Oculus Rift are connected to the same network).

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