A VR experience I have recently seen was Van Gogh: The immersive experience during the easter break. I was very satisfied with how immersive the exhibition was. There was a mix of incredibly good digital art, didactic information, and virtual reality during the entire exhibit. The VR headsets that were used were the ‘Quest 2’, and it did feel immersive in terms of the quality of the graphics. They were good and there was a sense of depth perception being manipulated, which made it feel more real. The room itself was dark so I could not see anything between the gaps of the headset and my face, so the experience was much more centralized to the headset. This VR experience was sitting down so therefore only 3-DoF (3 degrees of freedom) which does break the presence I have within the experience. I also think the fact that a headset being strapped to my face and head can sometimes be uncomfortable and heavy which will always bring you back to reality and break the presence you had. As well as the feeling of a device being pressed against your face will also make you feel that you are still in a VR simulation. As for the clarity of the headsets, the higher definition the more likely you will not find pixels within what you are looking at. Anything that does not stand for an experience like you would in real life will offset you to remembering that you are in a VR headset and not fully present in what you are experiencing in the headset.
I was given the task to write a short academic essay on any topic that is related to VR. I first needed to define my research question. I am interested in the ethical implications of VR which was also the same reason why I wanted to study the VR course. Thus, I began to do some research within ethics in VR to create a question specific enough to answer within 1600 words. Whilst I was doing my research, I found out that children should not be using VR as it heavily harms their visual perception and brain development. I then began to go down a rabbit hole of articles and research essays on the topic of the negative effects of exposing children to VR. I wanted this essay to show how the current view of VR as another media device should be taken into heavier consideration for how children should use them. I believe that VR and its applications should be moderated and regulated greater than other media devices. I needed to do more research to see if my views of VR and how it should be mandated are supported. I found many articles and research studies that do confirm the concerns VR has for children but also say how VR can be used effectively as a learning and recreational tool. With many sources there was a lot of reading, cross checking with other sources to see if they agree and taking notes of relevant information. During this I was able to devise a plan to structure this essay. It starts with a introduction where I always plan to grab the readers attention with something off topic and then link it to the focus of the essay and what I will be talking about. Essentially lay out what will be on the essay to set the expectations to the reader. I then wanted to narrow the focus of the essay to 3 ideas. The VR exposure issues on a child’s psychological state, psychical state and its future implications within the industry. I mostly did online sources because I felt that it would be easier to get more relevant information and also believed that the books in the library wouldn’t cover enough depth on VR. I did a broad search on Google.com of links related to VR, ethics and children. I read through all of them quickly and copied links of the ones I felt was most appropriate to the essay. When I search for sources I try to find reliable ones from studies, universities, experts and organizations to make my essay well grounded and trustworthy. I took notes from the sources I found valuable which helped narrow the focus of my essay and also help structure the fluency of it. This process took less than a week to do because of the continuous reading and organizing of paragraphs I had to do. I also needed to learn how to do Harvard referencing but that was easy because there’s a lot of information online on how to do it and a online generator that formats the bibliography and in-text citation. Once I was confident with the information I had I then began to write the essay in full starting with the introduction and then body. This didn’t take too much time as I already made a clear plan before hand so I already knew how the essay would flow and link into different points, evidence and analysis. The problem I had with this essay was to reduce the word count as there was so much information I have taken so I needed to shorten down my sentences so I had just enough for the conclusion. The conclusion I felt was really just a summary of everything I had said in the essay put in a nice paragraph that is clear and concise as well as what all the points raised boiled down to. After all of this I spent the rest of the time checking over my grammar and reading the essay to see if it is easy to read. I should have asked one of my classmates to read it over but they were all also busy writing their essays so I didn’t want to disturb them. After all of this I am quite pleased with my outcome of the essay as I was nervous from not haven written an academic essay since IGCSE. I think I became more confident in my essay writing after this and I am looking forward to discussing more about VR in future assignments as this is different from what I normally do in the course. I found the theory classes to be interesting but hard to focus on as it was done online. As the course representative I did ask the course leader to try to make theory sessions in person so that it engages in more discussions as well. It would only be appropriate to do it online if it were in VR!