Getting Started¶

Please read carefully through the following sections. Make sure you complete all of the necessary steps to set up for the course.

Enroll in This Course on Lovelace¶

To gain full access to all of the features of the course, you need to make sure you are enrolled in this course on Lovelace. Scroll down to find our course among the listed available courses and click the Enroll button. Once you are enrolled, the exercises and tasks become visible on the home page of our course: FITech, VR Systems and Humans. Otherwise, only general information is displayed; exercise pages are hidden to unenrolled students.

Communication¶

To communicate with us and your classmates we will use Discord. Rather than emailing questions to us, we encourage you to post your questions there. Don't be shy! On Discord, you will be able to get answers to your questions, help us answer questions from other students, find teammates for projects, and talk to us and each other 24/7.

We have sent you the Discord joining instructions in your enrollment confirmation email.

Textbooks¶

Required: Steven M. LaValle, Virtual Reality, 2016.
Optional: George Mather, Foundations of Sensation and Perception: Psychology Press; 2 edition, 2009.

With accompanying online resources.

Additional Recommended Books¶

Handbook of Virtual Environments: Design, Implementation, and Applications. 2nd Edition. K. S. Hale, K. M. Stanney, Eds. 2014.
3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice. D. A. Bowman, E. Kruijff, J. J. LaViola, and I. Poupyrev. 2014.
Understanding Virtual Reality: Interface, Application, and Design. W. R. Sherman and A. B. Craig. 2012.

Lectures¶

We provide you with the previously recorded YouTube lectures for all of the learning modules in the course here.

VR Headsets¶

To earn 2 or more credits in this course, you’ll need a laptop and access to a VR headset. Whether you decide to buy one or borrow it doesn’t matter; the key is having access to a VR headset for your assignments and the final project. Remember, understanding VR is impossible without firsthand experience. Examples of headsets we use in our on-campus courses include Oculus Quest 2 and Oculus Rift S. However, students have made it work with various other headsets. As long as you can connect Unity with your headset, you’ll be good to go.

Grading Schedule and Deadlines¶

The course operates on a flexible schedule, allowing you to start at any time and progress at your own pace. While the system will immediately grade certain tasks (homework and quizzes), project submissions will be evaluated once a month, specifically on the 15th. Please note that there is a limited number of attempts for homework, quizzes, and project submissions, which will be specified individually for each exercise.

For homework and quizzes in this course, you will be given two attempts to submit the answers to questions, and no answers will be accepted after those two attempts.

Feel free to reach out with any other questions you might have about the course on Discord.

Attained Credits Calculation¶

You will receive the grade "Passed" and (1-5) ECTS credits for this course according to the following calculations:

X = 0.30(Homework) + 0.40(Quizzes) + 0.30(Final Project).

You pass the course and attain 1 ECTS credit if X > 30.

Further ECTS credits are calculated using this scale: 5 if X > 70, 4 if X > 60, 3 if X > 50, 2 if X > 40, and 1 if X > 30.

Examples of credit calculations¶

1 credit - Listen to all the lectures and attempt every quiz to achieve a total score above 30 points. Note that earning 1 credit does not require an HMD since at least one homework assignment can be completed without it to help reach the required points.
2 credits- Listen to all lectures, attempt all quizzes and complete enough homework assignments to accumulate a total score above 40 points.
3 credits - Listen to all lectures and attempt all quizzes and all homework assignments to accumulate a total score above 50 points.
4 credits - Listen to all lectures and either score high in all quizzes and homework or, as an alternative, complete a basic project to accumulate a total score above 60 points.
5 credits - Work on all of the aspects of the course: lectures, homework, quizzes, and the final project to accumulate a total score above 70 points.

Feedback¶

We kindly ask you to leave feedback on our course pages. This will help us to further develop the course and bring the best possible experience to future students!