Courses

Virtual reality (VR) is becoming mainstream, with more than 10 million systems used in the United States alone. This course examines VR through a variety of societal lenses, including popular culture, engineering, behavioral science, and communication. We will begin the course by laying a broad foundation for understanding numerous aspects of VR, such as latency, degrees of freedom, eye tracking, frame rates, haptics, head tracking, positional audio, room tracking, and more. Students will also learn a framework for creating their own VR models and transforming existing ones. Through a combination of lectures and discussions featuring guest speakers from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Oculus VR, and Inspirit, we will explore the benefits and drawbacks of VR and augmented reality (AR) as well as potential industry pitfalls involved with extended reality (XR), which is an umbrella term for VR, AR, and mixed reality (MR). Students will leave the course with a broad understanding of this exciting new technology, its uses, and its possible evolution, as well as with new insights into how companies and educators can transform their organizations with the help of VR.