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Comment by mathematically | Hacker News Reader

One use case I can imagine is virtual classrooms where VR is used to provide a more immersive lecturing experience. Most of the technology for doing so already exists and Facebook (Facebook Reality Labs) I think is working on this and trying to commercialize it. That's why a lot of their recent research is about body tracking: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/hand-tracking-deep-neural-netwo.... I think they're working their way towards virtual and immersive office productivity tools but any technology that can be used in office settings can also be used in university lecture halls.

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The “lecturing experience” for most lecture-exam format STEM courses is sitting on your tuchus/tuckus and watching the lecturer. How can that be made more meaningfully immersive than just sitting in a more comfortable chair and watching a video or streaming, which is proven tech? The occasional relevant question is usually more an annoying delay for the entire class than insightful, if the lecturer is at all competent.

Socratic method, dissections, labs with simulated better-than-cutting-edge equipment…maybe there’s some opportunities. The issue is this is second/third generation technology development/refinement (20+ years old from an R&D standpoint) and doesn’t have the sizzle of brand new stuff. It’s more of a slog than a sizzle.

Enhancements like sidebar information providing remedial-related material or AI-driven answers to typed questions, combined with video pausing might be pedagogical improvements but that’s hardly more immersive. Perhaps just better, but available with 10 year old tech. The technology may be outstripping the pedagogy…

My point is that VR combined with body tracking provides an immersive experience that is not possible otherwise. Classrooms are the obvious use cases but there are industrial and medical ones as well. The point is that there are plenty of use cases for remote presence technologies like VR but realizing those benefits is not easy so most applications are focused on entertainment.

You should look at Prisms of Reality, they are advancing core curriculum for STEM. So much potential for the double win of a better result (actual learning/retention) and a better experience (just >a more comfortable chair and watching a video).

[1] https://www.prismsvr.com/

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