UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Imagine flying through the air at the speed of light, leaping over tall buildings and seeing through walls with X-ray vision. For many, being a superhero is a childhood dream, and for Kosho Hoshitsuki, it was no different.
As Hoshitsuki, a junior majoring in computer engineering, grew up, his dream of donning a cape and mask never came true. But thanks to a new club at Penn State, Hoshitsuki is one step closer to superhero status through virtual reality.
Founded in fall 2015, the Virtual Reality Club gives students from a variety of majors hands-on experience with developing virtual reality (also known as VR) games and programs for such platforms as Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard.
For students in the club, weekly meetings are a chance to share ideas, hold game development tutorials and offer feedback on each other’s individual projects.
“Our main goal is to have a place where people can come enjoy virtual reality and talk about new technologies,” said Owen Shartle, the club’s president and a senior majoring in computer science.
Throughout the fall and spring semesters this past year, club members bounced ideas off each other and worked on individual games and projects using such software as Blender, a 3-D modeling tool; Microsoft Visual Studio, used to code computer and mobile programs; and Unity, a game development platform.
The club’s efforts culminated in an end-of-the-year showcase of their work in the HUB-Robeson Center during the last week of April. As interested students gathered around the fish tanks in the HUB, club members demonstrated their finished projects and introduced onlookers to the basics of virtual reality gaming.
Hoshitsuki’s game, “Fe Guy” (as in the chemical element), uses an Oculus Rift and a Leap Motion infrared (IR) sensor to create an immersive virtual world where users feel like they have the power of the superhero Iron Man (hence the game’s name).
Thanks to the Leap Motion IR sensor, participants can shoot targets by moving their arms to aim and fire. When a user raises their left arm in real life, the character in the game also raises their left arm.
In addition to designing games that look visually stunning, club members have also learned to focus on user experience and functionality when designing for virtual reality.
“With virtual reality, there are a lot of major design thought processes that a lot of us didn’t think about when we first started,” Shartle said. “So you might have an idea to make a skydiving game, but then you find out moving fast in virtual reality can make people sick. So there's actually a lot of things you have to think about when designing the game.” And with a field that’s growing so rapidly, club members are always working to stay on top of the latest virtual reality gadgets.
“Staying current with what companies are working on is pretty important in this field,” Shartle said. “One day, you’re using a certain motion tracker, and the next day there's an update and you might miss the boat on getting the newest development kit.”
Not only does the club give students an environment to collaborate and discuss the future of virtual reality, it also provides professional development opportunities.
During the weekend of April 9 and 10, club members participated in HackPSU, a 24-hour event where students worked in teams to develop technology solutions to real-world problems.
“We each picked tasks to work on, and at the end we had to figure out how to throw it all together,” Shartle said. “And one of the best ways to learn is debugging things, so we would try to figure out why things broke and spend hours figuring it out.”
The club’s hard work paid off — they won first place in a challenge sponsored by Erie Insurance after creating a virtual reality game that lets users see the value of insuring their belongings through a virtual robbery scenario. But the club’s innovative ideas didn’t stop once the event ended.
“Afterward, I pitched a virtual reality game to Erie Insurance where you can drive with varying levels of blood alcohol content,” said Matt Young, a junior majoring in computer engineering. “That's pretty easy for us to create on our end, and it's something they benefit from because people can go through this and see you can't actually drive drunk.” According to Conrad Tucker, the club’s adviser and an assistant professor of engineering design and industrial engineering, allowing students to hone their virtual reality skills is a necessary element in the development of the field.
“I think it’s important for students to be actively engaged in the direction of virtual reality, especially when it comes to higher education,” Tucker said. “So I think the club helps to emphasize the fact that this is a bottoms-up initiative where the students are actively involved in the ideas that get put forth.”
As a virtual reality researcher himself, Tucker also hopes the club will attract new individuals to the field.
“One of the things I hope these students are able to achieve is disseminating the value of virtual reality beyond the tech-enthusiasts so that it reaches a more general population,” Tucker said. “I would like nothing more than for individuals who have no experience in virtual reality to become interested and engaged in this domain of education.”
For club members like Hoshitsuki, one of the greatest benefits of being in the club is the ability to make dreams a (virtual) reality through collaboration.
“The number one thing Penn State provides is other students to work with,” Hoshitsuki said. “You might know something that somebody else doesn’t, and they might be able to teach you something that you don’t know. That's what this club is all about.”
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