In October 2016, the Ralph W. Steen Library at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas, opened a virtual reality (VR)-based makerspace. The original impetus was the growing availability of consumer-grade VR equipment and the possibilities for its use within an academic setting. The makerspace movement had taken off in the previous few years, and the university was investing heavily in a new STEM building. We thought an emerging technologies area would be a good complement to this initiative.
While a more typical makerspace would encompass 3D printing and electronics, the ability to bring a very new technology (VR) to our students allowed us to leap-frog existing technology initiatives and get in on the ground floor of a new learning experience. Additionally, the university was focusing on transformative learning—another a good fit for VR. As we went about creating a VR-based makerspace, we learned a lot of lessons that I share here.
I had written a proposal for a VR makerspace a few months earlier, so we spent the summer of 2016 obtaining, setting up, and learning the equipment. The idea was to have an ecosystem of sorts where an object could be scanned, viewed in VR, printed, or any combination thereof. Objects such as sculptures could be created in VR and printed. We made many efforts to contact faculty to invite them over to use the new equipment and try to find pedagogical uses.
To begin with, we started with these items:
- Two HTC Vive stations in soundproof rooms
- Four Oculus Rift stations in gaming chairs
- Two Lulzbot Taz 3D printers
- Two 3D Matter and Form scanners
The HTC Vive had just been released the previous summer along with the Oculus Rift, which moved from a Kickstarter campaign to an actual product. Together, these two products represented the best experiences for VR available at the consumer level. The HTC Vive was slightly more advanced since, at the time, it had better controllers and let users have a “room scale experience.” This meant we were able to set up two old soundproof music rooms and convert them into highly immersive VR experiences with the Vive.
The Rift eventually caught up with better controllers, though we have chosen a seated experience, as this works well with programs such as Medium.
Of note is that these stations come with many pieces (goggles, controllers) which need to be secured. Since our lab is in a public area, we chose to mount locking drawers underneath the chairs to store these pieces.
The stand-up HTC Vive stations did not have this issue, since the room itself could be locked away.
In addition to the VR stations, we purchased two Lulzbot Taz 3D printers. The choice of these printers was based heavily on the printer’s use of open source hardware and software as well as its award-winning performance (makezine.com/product-review/taz-6).
For scanners, we chose the Matter and Form model (matterandform.net/scanner), which was also highly regarded. These have turned out to be completely useless in our workflow. We now simply lend them out to interested faculty. The problem comes down to the time required to scan even small objects. Compared to something like the MakerBot digitizer (makerbot.com/media-center/2013/08/22/makerbot-digitizer-desktop-3d-scanner-order-today), this unit has been a poor performer.
