XR on Tour at University of Amsterdam

Paul Melis started off the day with a brief presentation on what the XR tour is, why it had come to UvA, and what SURF is up to regarding these curious technologies. With the Meta Quest Pro in his backpack, Paul later showed off some of its capabilities and what he thought of it for the current state of XR. If you want to know more about the Meta Quest Pro, check out Paul’s review here.

XR Projects at the UvA Visualisation Lab was then presented by Robert Belleman. Rob talked about various student led and developed projects that challenged XR use and gave new insight to how it may help in a variety of domains. Not only did Rob show cases of student developed XR applications in psychology, but also cases in chemistry, therapy and communications. Check out more examples and publications of the Visualisation Lab of the UvA here.

The final presenter was Jitte Waagen who represented the Amsterdam Centre for Ancient Studies and Archaeology and the 4D Research Lab.  Jitte’s talk revolved around the idea that education, for example archaeology courses, can benefit from XR technologies by. In a pilot they experimented with a students visiting a simulation of a real archaeological site in Italy. Based on drone photogrammetry highly accurate and detailed 3D models of of the archaeological site have been generated, which students can assess to see and understand what is there. In other words, the dig site in VR is of high enough quality for them to be used as (virtual) educational material. From his survey data, Jitte also showed that overall, the simulated environments are seen as a positive addition to educational material from the students perspective. These simulations were developed and hosted on Mozilla Hubs. See the dig sites yourself and learn more here

After the presentations the entire group went to test these projects and use the new headsets!

Interested in our XR Tour? Reach out via our website or myself at john.walker@surf.nl