"More Than Meets The Eye" Animated VR Experience

Meeting with Fiona Fyffe-Lawson, Graham Pullen and Anna Notaro to review the annual report for the University's Research Degree Programme Review. Within the meeting I suggested the idea of a new exhibition and networking event for the PhDs and research community at DJCAD. Preliminary idea to be discussed further. Exciting possibilities!

Supervisor Meetings: Date : 26th November 2018 Meeting no : 3 Present : Phillip Vaughan (1 st ) Fraser Bruce (2 nd ) Andrea McSwan (Student) Tasks set and completed since last meeting: (23 rd October 2018) ·          Weekly update of Blog: https://andreamcswan-phd-lightfortheblind.blogspot.com . 70 posts ·          Permanent desk allocated , as I am class rep! in room 5011 (next to the bridge). ·          Plus a laptop is in the pipeline. ·          Met with Caroline Erolin. Good discussion about VR. Wishes to be copied in on communication. VR training scheduled for 12 th December. Google cardboard purchased and VR apps to be experimented with. ·          Made contact with PhD community and will be one of six who will arrange the research talks in the Research Kit...

Great talk by Fraser Bruce about what we can learn from bees and how they operate. I particularly liked his networking dot-to-dot diagrams that indicated creative and social networks; drawing inspiration from bees. The fact that bees play to their strengths and become excellent at one role, rather than trying to be all things to all bees was great. Calum Kolvin spoke about his working practice. I was struck by this piece and how the objects and lighting play together to create a multitude of lighting options; especially on the flat table top that creates the majority of the face. Notice a photo of the composer looking through the window and Calum captured in the fish-eye mirror to the left. Very inspirational and full of depth and colour. James MacMillan b.1959 Composer - Calum Kolvin (1996)

So for my first meeting with Caroline Erolin (3rd)  https://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/staff/profile/caroline-erolin.php  we spoke about VR. Ahead of VR training with Caroline on the 12th Dec, she suggested I play with Google cardboard for now. Not with the expecation of it being good, or a permanent tool to use, but to get me used to the immersive sensation. I didn't like the Oculus Rift experience and Caroline said this wasn't unusual.  So, hopefully this cardboard device, which is easy to remove (!!) will be a good starting point!

Brilliant. Invisible art direction and acting. Utterly convincing and complete entertainment from the 20th Century Fox intro to the final credits.

I love listening to Radio 4's Life Scientfic.  This week (20 Nov 2018) Dr Caroline Hargrove spoke about her time at McLaren F1, developing and designing their Formula 1 simulator.      https://www.theengineer.co.uk/mclaren-cto-dr-caroline-hargrove/ Using VR, F1 drivers would get accustom to race tracks and their experience would inform and lead the development of the simulator. Motion sickness was overcome by being fed small pieces of chocolate! I was particularly intrigued by the idea of a "Digital Twin" that Dr. Hargrove spoke about. I began to consider how this idea could be applied to my research, with the creation of a digital twin, to enable the blind to navigate a 3D space... Digital Twin - similar to an animation 3D model turnaround! McLaren F1 Simulator - similar to an edit suite! Dr. Caroline Hargrove

Keywords & terms: utlising Thesaurus, Synonyms and  Blind, Blindness, Visual Impairment, Low-level function vision, visual, sight-loss, seeing, eye-sight, viewing, sensory, optical, perceptive, look, sight, beholder, sightless, imagine, vision, watch, observe, unseen, ocular, unobserved, visualisation, imaginary, simulate, myopia, amaurosis, cataracts, presbyopia, purblindness, anopsia, typhlosis, darkness, Sight, appearance, eye, vision, after-image, apperception, field of vision, range of vision, perception, Blind, dark, unsighted, amaurotic, blind as a bat, destitute of vision, eyeless, in darkness, unseeing, visionless. Assistive technology, activities for daily living (ADL), assistive technology (smartphone apps to detect colour, paper currency denominations, navigational assistance, text magnification), differently-abled, enabling technology, haptics