Week 0 – Why Study SIT755?
When I first saw the first Oculus headset, the Oculus Rift Developer Kit 1, I wanted to purchase one – this was way back in 2012. I had the fantastic idea of being able to develop a VR virtual world that anyone could visit and explore – a world within a world and I hadn’t even heard of Ready Player One at that point!
These three words were always the last thing an OASIS user saw before leaving the real world and entering the virtual one:
READY PLAYER ONE
Ready Player One – Ernest Cline (2011)
I signed up to study Games Development and Design at Deakin University in the hopes of doing Virtual Reality, but unfortunately the VR and AR units were only offered to on-campus students and I had to do the standard units around game development – fun to work with, but missing that reality step I wanted. But I always had a desire to do some work in the VR/AR space and when I re-enrolled to do my Masters in Information Technology I saw that VR units and major were again only offered to on-campus students. I went as far as emailing the current VR heads in hope of doing the VR units even as a guinea pig doing them online – unfortunately at that time that wasn’t possible and I ended up setting up my major as software development.
When this year came around, I was emailed about one of my major units of my degree was no longer being offered this trimester and I needed to select a different unit. To my great delight, the unit SIT755 Interactive Application Design was available for me to enroll in and checking the rest of the VR units and the major I was now able to complete them!
References
- Hook, B. 2016, Woman Using Vr Goggles Outdoors, https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-using-vr-goggles-outdoors-123335/, retrieved 7th March 2022
- Cline, E. 2011, Ready Player One, New York: Crown Publishers