Mini-Grant madness: enhancing the LSC experience with the "Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Integration Project"
Each year proceeds from the Foundation's annual golf tournament and StarGala, combined with LSC system funds, are dedicated to fulfilling mini-grant requests from faculty, which fund programs to enhance the classroom experience. The Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Integration project, proposed by LSC professor Marc Gordon, Lead instructor for 3D Animation, Multimedia and Video Editing tracks, provided students with a hands-on experience with groundbreaking industry technology that is still in its infancy.
Virtual reality is becoming more and more popular in the gaming industry as well as the 3D-animation industry. The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality device that allows the user to be "transported" to a virtual environment, typically created by a 3D-artist. The market for these virtual reality experiences is growing exponentially every year and the job market for 3D-artists to create the assets that go into these experiences is growing just as fast. Lone Star graduates with this hands-on experience will have a competitive edge and be more attractive to recruiters in these industries than graduates of schools that do not provide this same experience.
Despite the motion sickness experienced by some, the project was a huge success. In fact, one student won a gold medal in the Visual Communication Juried Show! Pictured to the right, is a photo from the Student Organization Involvement Fair, where the student Digital Media Club exhibited these cutting-edge devices.