visitor testing the vr project

Virtual Reality project presented at VR_Sci Fest 2017

Nico Reski, doctoral student in media technology and member of the VRxAR Labs research group at Linnaeus University, presented ongoing research efforts towards exploring Open Data in a Virtual Reality environment at the VR_Sci Fest 2017, the first international virtual reality festival dedicated to science.

Virtual Reality (VR), a technology that immerses the user in fully digital environments, is one of the currently hot topics in the IT and technology fields. While it is interesting for consumers for entertainment purposes, it can also be used as an application tool for scientific scenarios.

During the weekend 12-14 May 2017 Nico Reski, doctoral student in media technology at Linnaeus University, attended the VR_Sci Fest in Stockholm to present ongoing research efforts from the VRxAR Labs research group towards exploring Open Data in a VR environment. The festival was hosted for the very first time and was entirely dedicated to VR and science, and was organized by the Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH). During the weekend, the public had the possibility to explore and interact with VR projects from VR university labs, research & development centers at organizations, and startups, from Sweden and abroad.

Following the invitation from KTH, Nico Reski presented an interactive tool to explore open data in VR to visitors, engaging in meaningful conversations.

– The tool enabled visitors to visualize and explore data from the United States' presidential election in 2016, obtained from online sources such as Wikipedia and the New York Times. "Oh, this is totally different from what everyone else is doing" was one of the most frequent comments I got, says Nico.

The tool developeded by VRxAR Labs aggregates data from multiple sources into one unified interface, while making the data explorable in the VR space.

– The festival was an excellent opportunity to get in contact with a diverse set of people from a mixed set of disciplines, says Nico.

Try it out yourself

If you are interested in the developed VR tool and want to try it out yourself, you have the possibility to do so. VRxAR Labs are currently conducting a user interaction study, gathering data about the tool in action. Signup details and more information about the study can be found below.

More information