Course Description
In this project-based course, you will use an immersion framework to design, create, and evaluate immersive virtual environments and the interaction between the user and the virtual environment. To do this, we will combine hands-on fundamentals with interaction, animation, and immersive virtual reality design and theoretical and research concerns. Your project will serve to both motivate and implement/showcase these aspects. The course will culminate in a final interactive project showcase and project pitch (oral/video) of your team project.
see SFU’s Teaching & Learning blog for a news story on my first offering of this course in 2013, entitled: “How a SIAT course in immersive environments exposed students to the real world”
Next Offering by Bernhard: Spring 2025
details will follow, see below for documentation of prior course offerings
Spring 2022 offering (in-person)
Virtual Experiences - Real Impact: VR4Good IAT 445 Project showcase, Tuesday April 12
on Tuesday April 12, the students from my course on “immersive environments” (IAT 445) will be presenting their final VR projects that they worked on for this semester.The topic was Impact: Using immersive experience design to contribute to meaningful solutions to real-world challenges. That is: what is a topic that you (and your team) care very deeply about that would help create a better world? A topic you care about so deeply about that it might be worth making a purposeful/transformative immersive VR experience out of it?
You have 2 options to participate:
In-person VR showcase: 2-4pm
where you get a chance to try out the different VR experiences yourself, talk to the project creators, and mingle with other visitors!
Located on the SFU Surrey campus, in room 3140, see directions, and the map below).
note: VR headsets will be cleaned before each usage. Please wear a mask to keep everybody safe.
Live-streamed online showcase: 4:30 - 6pm: Zoom link
- 4:30pm: Introductions from Instructor and TA, overview of the course and the projects in the showcase
- 4:40 — 6:00: Project trailers & live team interview. Moderated VR showcase featuring video trailers, video footage from the VR experiences, and live interviews with the VR designers
- Team 1–1 4:40
- Team 1–2 4:55
- Team 2–1 5:10
- Team 2–3 5:25
- Team 2–3 5:40
- afterwards: Closing: Final Q&A, audience questions, closing
if you missed the showcase, here’s a recording:
Details about the VR Projects:
Standoff
Nobody duels at high noon…without a good reason
Razor: A narrative driven experience where players will embody different characters in a town held frozen in time by a standoff to discover what has happened, and that everyone has their own version of the story to tell.
Trouble is brewing at high noon, and everyone has taken a side. You’ll explore each facet of the conflict by jumping into the shoes of anyone in town. Navigate challenging perspectives to move deeper into the narrative, and between the characters in town. When the clocktower hits 12, and hammers fall, who will you stand with?
Video trailer:
Full project video:
West City
Green or Grey? You Decide.
Razor: Players will understand, value, and experience what it’s like to re-immersify themselves in nature after spending prolonged time in an urbanized area
Reconnect is an environmental nature experience where users engage with an environment that has 2 different forms. With the choice to switch between urban and natural environments, users ponder the debate of — is urbanization bad?
Video trailer:
Full project video:
Sheltered
More than just a cute pet
Razor: An explorative VR experience that allows the user to witness the tragic lives of 4 dogs that were abandoned in a shelter
Sheltered Pasts is an immersive VR experience that takes the user through a crowded animal shelter. As the user approaches the cages, the unimaginable happens. The user is transformed into the dog, and they get to see the world from their point of view. The user will witness the tragic past that put the dog in its cage today.
Video trailer:
Full project video:
Darkness in the Corner
Women chained in dark corners, who hears your cries?
Razor: A narrative-driven VR experience adapted from real-world cases that immerse the player as a trafficked woman, who is seeking to escape from her darkest days in a village in an unknown place and back to her normal life.
Darkness in the Corner is a VR role-playing game about the topic of woman trafficking. By getting into another place in the world and being another person, players would need to observe, think, collect, risk, and make sure not to be found by the people who brought the woman here, to solve any challenges and dangers, and successfully escape from where she is locked in and reveal the evilness hidden in the corners that no one knows.
Video trailer:
Full project video:
ForeSight
Let’s nurture nature for a better futur
Razor: An open-world adventure VR experience that allows the immersant to traverse and protect a forest with the ability to see into the future.
Foresight is a VR experience that reflects upon the impacts of climate change, specifically deforestation and how human activities have irreversible consequences on the planet. Embodying a character who has the ability to switch between present and future timelines, immersants will be able to unveil clues from the future to prevent the destruction of the forest. Our team aims to incite reflection within the immersants through the stark visual contrast in colours and life through switching timelines, along with a fox companion that assists the immersant throughout their journey.
project trailer video
Full project video:
Project Posters
Impressions from Showcase
Documentation from earlier course offerings and showcases
(first taught in Spring 2013)
Course Objectives, Learning Goals & Outcomes
In this course, you will learn and be prepared to:
- Examine the history and conceptual frameworks surrounding “immersion” and “immersiveness” and what this means for digital immersive environments and their users.
- Apply a conceptual framework in relation to your own immersive project/experience and use it to critique other immersive projects.
- Demonstrate moderate proficiency using appropriate software (currently: Unity) to design and build interactive (including user interaction and animation) immersive 3D virtual environments and experiences and display them on off-the-shelf computational devices/displays such as head-mounted displays (HMDs). Be able to present and explain your project and underlying code to others, and explain/defend your design decisions and how they are based on relevant frameworks/theories.
- Reflect on and apply suitable agile processes and team-based, collaborative practices used in VR experience design including ideation, project goal-setting and scoping, prototyping, iterative revisions, user testing/evaluating, and critical reflection as the base for an iterative and collaborative VR design cycle. This includes finding ways to effectively address challenges that can occur in team-based environments while being respectful and constructive. (This could include collaboratively resolving challenges that commonly occur in team-based projects, such as balancing between leading/following, communication challenges, conflicts that arise, ensuring all team members contribute meaningfully, engaging all team members, ensuring all care for the project and each other, getting people on the same page, and figuring out a shared vision/purpose that all can care about).
- Argue how this effectively takes advantage of the unique affordance of immersive VR to foster user experiences that would otherwise be impossible (or not as easily accessible), to impact users’ emotions, cognition/perspective and/or behavior in a positive direction
What’s in it for you?
You will learn how to design, build, and iteratively refine an immersive and interactive VR experience that should blow the user away and positively affect them in a meaningful way. To do this, you will use the popular Unity 3D game engine and guidance from an immersion framework. You will most likely be implementing this for head-mounted displays so you’ll be able to showcase it wherever you go – including your next job interview and your next party. Combining a public project showcase with an executive summary and a final project video can further improve your resume/portfolio and marketability.