A new game lets you dive deep into the infamous ship’s history.

The golden rule for creating compelling VR content is that you should allow people to experience something that would be either impossible or too dangerous, expensive and/or difficult to do in real life. And by offering up the double-whammy of traveling back to 1912 to watch the RMS Titanic sinking into the cold dark waters of the Atlantic, then letting you explore the wreck which now lies 12,500 feet below the surface, Titanic VR certainly ticks those boxes in spades.

We used motion capture, face-scanning technology and professional voice actors to immerse users in the story
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The game took over 8,800 working hours to create and boasts the largest animated virtual cast of characters ever based on real people inside a single VR experience
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The game was produced by Immersive VR Education (IVRE) a VR/AR developing studio based in Ireland which previously released the award-winning Apollo 11 VR moon landing experience 2016 and more recently completed a VR experience commissioned by the BBC commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the RAF 1943: Berlin Blitz

We wanted to create an accurate portrayal of events, so it is not only educational, but also emotional and very engaging
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Immersive VR Education was founded by husband-wife team – David (CEO) and Sandra (COO) Whelan in 2014, where they proceeded to create a virtual learning platform called ENGAGE for universities and corporate educators. Since then, they have grown their team from 4 people to 34 and worked with clients such as the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the BBC and Oxford University.

“We wanted to create an accurate portrayal of events, so it is not only educational, but also emotional and very engaging,” says David Whelan, CEO of VR Education. “To achieve that we used motion capture, face-scanning technology and professional voice actors to immerse users in the story and to enable them to relate to the people involved.”

The story of the unsinkable ship and its 1,503 doomed passengers and crew is told from a first-person perspective of one of the survivors, and the animation sequences – which show people being loaded onto the lifeboats and then the ship itself sinking from the POV of one of the lifeboats, were created using eye-witness accounts.

The story of the unsinkable ship and its 1,503 doomed passengers and crew is told from a first-person perspective of one of the survivors
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This is an unusually long VR experience, featuring six hours of gameplay
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This is an unusually long VR experience, featuring six hours of educational gameplay. The project has been in the works for two years now, and is the culmination of a long process that involved raising almost $70,000 through a Kickstarter campaign last year. Overall, the game took over 8,800 working hours to create and boasts the largest animated virtual cast of characters ever based on real people inside a single VR experience

“We wanted to create an authentic experience for users around a topic and setting in history that has long captivated people’s imagination. While the technology is advanced, what we are really doing is bringing learning back to basics,” adds David Whelan. “As children we learn to navigate the world through immersive experiences – think of learning a language or learning to cycle, or as we grow older going travelling and backpacking – the sights and sounds that often go unnoticed by our attention, are all taken in peripherally and form a whole context for our physical and mental learning. Learning through VR/AR is similar, in that it’s an absorbing, sensory experience. Aside from being great fun, this project is a fantastic way to illustrate the effectiveness and potential of VR/AR technology for educational purposes.”

The second part of the experience then gets you to explore the wreck using a submersible and ROV to solve various quests if you choose “mission mode.” These include rescuing a lost ROV, creating a photo mosaic, placing research equipment, or cleaning and preserving recovered artefacts. Otherwise you can just look around the ship in all its detail at leisure.

The golden rule for creating compelling VR content is that you should allow people to experience something that would be either impossible or too dangerous, expensive and/or difficult to do in real life
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Titanic VR is currently available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality as well as on a desktop PC version
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There is a lot of attention to detail in evidence here, and this comes through as a labour of love, down to the fact that the team made sure to include a poignant tribute to Lead Environment Artist Tony Meredith who recently passed away:

“Tony was a much loved and now much missed member of the team, whose final creative and powerful artistry on Titanic VR will continue to serve as testament to a truly gifted master of VR art production.”

While such experiences are effective showcases for the potential of VR Education, they are only the start of the company’s much more ambitious plans to “revolutionise education globally” (Their parent company VR Education Holdings plc was recently floated on the London Stock Exchange and is now a publicly listed company on the AIM market ) as Chief Operating Officer Sandra Whelan explains:

“We are dedicated to advancing how educational and enterprise training content is shared and consumed on a world-wide basis”.

Titanic VR is currently available for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Windows Mixed Reality as well as on a desktop PC version. There are also plans to release it on PlayStationVR next month.

There is a lot of attention to detail in evidence here, and this comes through as a labour of love
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While such experiences are effective showcases for the potential of VR Education, they are only the start of the company’s much more ambitious plans to revolutionise education globally
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This article was originally published on VRScout

Exploring The RMS Titanic In VR via @alicebonasio https://t.co/MGRYxg4dyd pic.twitter.com/A1TPrvmJNk

— VRScout (@VRScout) August 23, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Exploring the Titanic in Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

Today marks the Royal Air Force (RAF) centenary, and to celebrate the momentous occasion a historic flypast was conducted directly over Buckingham Palace. This was by far the largest concentration of military aircraft seen over the UK capital in recent memory. The festive occasion was also attended by both Prince William and Harry, with Meghan and Kate looking their best. Us Brit’s love that sort of pageantry…

But if you were unable to be in central London to watch it all live, you can still see it using AR on your smartphone or tablet. The RAF created a RAF100 Flypast free AR app for iOS and Android that allows you to experience all the action.

There are 35 types of aircraft featured on the app, spanning the entire history of the RAF, from the latest, state-of-the-art F35 Lightning, to the iconic Spitfire and the Sopwith Camel. The planes will be released in tranches to mark the different stages of the RAF100 Aircraft Tour. The next installment takes place during the Horse Guards Parade in London from 6th- 9th July.

The planes will be released in tranches to mark the different stages of the RAF100 Aircraft Tour, which is open to the public and will be touring the country over the coming months
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The planes will be released in tranches to mark the different stages of the RAF100 Aircraft Tour, which is open to the public and will be touring the country over the coming months. Visitors will be able to get up close to a mixture of active, heritage and replica aircraft on display, all of which having played a major part in the RAF’s 100 year history and will do so moving forwards. This includes the new F35-B Lightning II – Britain’s new, state of the art stealth combat aircraft that has just come into service.

The app was created in partnership with students from Lincoln University. It was tested with Air Training Corps cadets as well as school children from Lincolnshire to ensure it struck the right chord to engage with young audiences.

Using the app, users will see fully realistic 3D planes flying over their gardens
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Using the app, users will not only see fully realistic 3D planes flying over their gardens, but they’ll create their own flypasts, capture and collect aircraft, view them in scaled augmented reality and learn more about their technical specifications and history.

“They will also be able to find out about the history of each plane, as well as being able to create and collect their own planes and watch the RAF100Flypast from the comfort of their own gardens,” says Air Commodore Chris Jones. “The App is a fun way to showcase the RAF’s use of innovation and technology, and we hope it will inspire the next generation of aerospace pioneers.”

People are also being encouraged to share their own images of their favourite flypasts over the summer using the #RAF100 hashtag. The RAF will choose the best content from younger users and invite them to display their achievements on the big screen in the RAF100 Inspire Zone at the Duxford Battle of Britain Airshow & RAF100 finale on 22nd – 23rd September.

This is not the only use of immersive tech to celebrate the RAF centenary though. The BBC also announced a preview of a new experience that will be available later this year.

1943: Berlin Blitz puts you in the shoes of BBC Journalist Wynford Vaughan-Thomas who joined the RAF on a real-life bombing run to Berlin during the Second World War. The narrative builds up the tension as you travel closer to Berlin, listening to Wynford’s radio programme throughout. The film, which was recorded in the belly of a Lancaster Bomber on its way to Berlin at the height of the war, is an extraordinary piece of journalism that has been given a new life through VR.

It all shows how immersive tech is equally good at helping us to remember the past as it is towards looking to the future
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1943: Berlin Blitz puts you in the shoes of BBC Journalist Wynford Vaughan-Thomas who joined the RAF on a real-life bombing run to Berlin during the Second World War
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It all shows how immersive tech is equally good at helping us to remember the past as it is towards looking to the future. Or perhaps it’s just a good bit of fun watching some amazing airplanes go by…

It is nice to see traditional institutions such as the RAF embracing technologies such as AR and VR – perhaps yet another sign that they are hitting the mainstream. The educational VR experience is expected to launch later this year on unknown platforms.

This article was originally published on VRScout

RAF Launches Free AR App To Mark The Royal Air Force’s Centenary via @alicebonasio https://t.co/yyTUJMhZsh pic.twitter.com/iw9r0cDQVT

— VRScout (@VRScout) July 11, 2018

For companies looking to leverage Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR Tech Trends offers a comprehensive range of Virtual Reality Consultancy Services.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post ARight Royal Occasion appeared first on Tech Trends.