3D video chatting -- future cultural experiences and exchanges

In class, we talked about cultural exchanges and interactive cultural experiences as being almost as good as studying abroad, but generally more affordable. For only $900, you can have an immersive virtual reality environment :D (that's an estimate for 3 kinect cameras and an oculus rift, like the setup in the video below). Something else we talked about in class is how awkward Skype/video conference calls and lectures can be -- you don't know where to look. You end up looking at the video feed of yourself, or the camera, but then you're not looking at a person, you're looking at your computer. It's not a realistic interaction with another human. You can hear them, but you're not really with them. The thing that's really cool about video chatting with another person who's using the oculus rift is you can make eye contact with that person. You can both move through the same virtual reality construct (second life, a VR enviroment I hadn't heard of till I read it in Kayla's blog), or collaboratively look at data with a colleague (that's what I've thought about using it for). 

We live in the future.
Oliver Kreylos (@okreylos) is a very smart and clever scientist -- he's designed all the virtual reality software I've used to create 3D movies of my carbon isotope data sets to explore ocean circulation changes across ice ages. I hope to be able to collaborate with my colleagues using a kinect camera/oculus rift setup to look at data in a video call -- people can explore the same data, and make measurements, all remotely. Below, he demonstrates what 3D videoconferencing looks like in a virtual office using an oculus rift, and 3 kinect cameras set up on tripods in the shape of an equilateral triangle. He talks about his brain being tricked by the virtual table, that he wants to lean on the table, and he can't help but move his legs out of the way of the virtual table leg.



In this video, Oliver is building a molecule in the 3D virtual reality cave (KECKCaves at UC Davis), then watching that 3D video playback in the Cave with the oculus rift...mind blown.



For an immersive cultural experience, this sort of system would be ideal for the language class room. Cultural exchanges could be carried out in 3D where students could have L2 conversations with native speakers, and explore virtual worlds with second life for C2 experiences. One kinect camera would work for a low-tech 3D experience -- the only visible part would be what the camera is pointed at (i.e., the front of your body, but the back of your body would look like a gray shell). I worry that the high cost of this technology might be hard for educators to come by -- it seems like funding agencies aren't too keen on shelling out $$$ for 3D immersive "toys and gadgets" cause they don't fully realize the value as an educational tool, and not just for gaming-fun-time. We live in a 3D world -- our remote collaborations and interactions should seem just as real.

Just for fun: augmented reality sandbox where you can build hills and valleys, elevation lines (contour lines) are projected onto the sand surface, and virtual water flows according to shallow water equations of Saint-Venant. These sandboxes are starting to be used as a teaching demonstration tool, especially for science outreach at schools.