Category: Blog

VR on Catalina Island

Kyle Penn
Professor Licastro
English 151
24 April 2017

 

In class Pitch on Virtual Reality:

Hello and welcome aboard the Catalina Express. Through this Virtual Reality episode, you will discover a beautiful island that is located between the California’s Channel. The island lies southwest of Los Angeles and is known for its beautiful wildlife, dive sites, and Mt. Orizaba, if you can get to its highest peak. On a clear day, you can see this beautiful island from the Dana Point Harbor, Newport Harbor, and beaches all throughout San Clemente. This island is home to two Harbors that lies to the north of the Island. To the south of the island, lies the city of Avalon, where there are palm trees and cabanas that line the Descanso Beach. Avalon’s circular harbor is home to the famous art deco Catalina Casino, (which is a cultural center, with a movie theater, ballroom, and museum). Through the VR, you will experience the Catalina island zip line eco tour, Island spa experience, island skyline drive, Descanso famous rocky beach, scuba diving/snorkeling, and dolphin/whale watching trips.

Island Zip-line eco tour:
It propels you down 5 separate zip lines, dropping 600 feet above sea level. One line runs 1,100 lineal feet along the coast all on its own.

Island Spa Catalina:
First ever destination resort spa. Reflecting Catalina’s rich history and relaxed seaside vibe it offers. They offer a variety of thoughtfully selected treatments and rejuvenating therapies.

 

Island Skyline Drive:
The exciting drive brings you along in a 1950’s Flxible Bus. WOW! That’s amazing. Takes you ten miles into Catalina’s island protected wilderness area. A beautiful sight.

Descanso Famous Rocky Beach:
A great place to see clear blue water and fish around you.

Scuba Diving/Snorkeling:
Home of great diving spot! Professionals from all around the world go here to scuba dive because of how clear the water is. Hang on tight because you will be traveling 50 feet underwater.

Dolphin/Whale watching:
You get onboard a beautiful 36 foot boat filled with our people and only travel 100 yards out to see some dolphins diving and gigantic whales!! These dolphins and whales are really well known and everyone comes to see them.

 

Surgery 1000

My project pitch is called Surgery 1000. This invention targets medical students and health majors. We as patients can only imagine how doctors are so confident in their work. Of course lots of memorization and practice is involved. However, what f there were a VR head set that let one perform surgeries on virtualized bodies. This new invention would help doctors, surgeons, and pre-med students everywhere to get better at helping people and their performance. The exciting part about this invention is being able to work on a body and make the mistakes without hurting anyone. This is also exciting because it would be to doctors use just incase they wanted to practice before a surgery. Imagine how many successful operations would be performed because of the extra practice this head set would offer. This invention would be accessible for colleges, medical schools, and every hospital. The pricing would be between 5-10 thousand dollars for an entire staff, class room, and college institution. Surgery 100 will bring us into the future of saving more lives and bettering more doctors.

Inside your purchase. Are you wasting your money? or No?

Most people do not buy their first phone on their own till about 16-21 years old. I bought my first Iphone when i was 16, i used all the money i got from my sweet 16 and gave it to my parents so they could get my phone for me. Before i decided to switch over to #teamIphone i did a lot of research because, a new an improved galaxy had just came out at the same time. I wanted to know which one was better. It basically just came down to camera quality for me. But while doing research they seemed very similar, from what the companies actually let us see. When i was comparing the two phones i thought to myself, what if they are the same exact phone and they just look different on the outside? but i did not care enough to keep digging i just wanted a new phone. Now that virtual reality has been introduced, I believe that we can use it to actually see what we are purchasing. In this case, an iphone. People work hard for their money, so i feel like they should know what exactly they are buying. With virtual reality we can actually get inside of an iphone and see what it is that you are paying for. We already know that phones are extremely expensive but maybe if we get inside and see what the phone is made up of and the systems that help it work, we will find out why. People do not really think about why iphones do not have a back or a battery like an android, I think about it all the time when my phone starts to act dumb and i can not do anything to fix it. With my virtual reality creation i will take you through the inside of an iphone. It will allow you to be able to pick, touch, and inspect any parts of the phone to see how it works and what it cost in order to be incorporated in the making of an iphone. It will allow you to be able understand how your phone works, and if it is any different from any other phones out there.

Management, Marketing, and Business World Readiness VR Pitch

With the business world ever changing, it is hard for business students to be able to adapt to the working environment after they finish their degree and leave school.  For example, some of the books and material we use in college are out dated and obsolete.  Other problems include the non-realisticness of the work we do.  What if you could experience what it would be like to be a manager for a day or run a company?  Wouldn’t this help us in these situations in the future and give us the work place experience we need for employers to find us attractive candidates for the positions they are looking to hire in?  Our audience would not only be college students pursuing a degree in business, but for younger aged students that want to get a head start on what the business world is really like.  How would we do this?  We would create a video game that would be educational and would stick the players/students into a realife situation where they would have to display certain characteristics and complete tasks that were asked of them.  Not only is this a way to grade students more accurately, but it just gives students a better chance of being successful as they move forward in their business orientated lives.  It creates that job experience that you can get without having a certain job or an internship.  In an article from techrepublic.com it says “Training will be a major use for VR — there’s potential for everyone from mechanics to surgeons. For younger students though, virtual reality in the classroom could mean virtual field trips, immersive games, and even uses for children with special needs”.  If they are doing it other fields education wise, why can’t we do it for the people preparing themselves to enter the business world after school?  VR is the future and every field is leaning towards using it for there educational purposes.  This type of VR will not only make the learning for students easier, but it makes it more realistic and can improve the students preparation for the real world of business.

 

Drunk Driving

In 2015, 10,265 people died in alcohol-impaired crashes, an increase of nearly 300 from the year before. Every day, twenty-eight people in the United States die in a drunk driving vehicle crash (NHTSA). When you really think about it, that is one person every fifty-three minutes. Lets do something about it. This virtual reality experience will take you through the journey of an intoxicated individual. For example, when the app is first accessed, the user will be able to choose one of six stages of intoxication. One or two shots, Smear phase, Muddy phase, Can’t stand phase, Paralyzed phase, and last the Danger phase. Lets say one chooses the fourth stage. The fourth stage starts at a bar. You are the in the bar with some friends and hours go by and you now have a blood alcohol level of 0.16. That is twice the legal BAC level. You think you are okay to drive; however, you really are not. Users of this will start to feel dizzy or in other words, feel like a drunk person. Users will actually be able to feel how dangerous it is to drive under the influence and the app will be designed to see how difficult it is to drive intoxicated. At some point in the stage, a police officer will approach you and the user of this will have to attempt to walk on a straight line using your own balance and movements. The vision will become blurry and it will actually seem as if in reality you are really under the influence. As the stages increase, so does your risk of being involved in a crash alone or even with someone else. These situations can result in death involving either yourself, whomever you are with, or a total stranger. The purpose of this app is to create a sense of emotion and to decrease or altogether stop the effects of driving under the influence. This is a learning experience for those who do drink and for those who do not drink. By the time you finish all the stages, users will have a different insight as to how mistakes of yourself can affect someone else or how if it were you struct by a drunk driver, how someone else can effect those you love. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Would you want to suffer the consequences because of your carelessness?

 

VR Pitch

There are many rules, regulations, and certifications when it come to the construction industry. OSHA is just one example of a training program for construction workers to learn the prevention of safety and health hazards in the workplace. Another example would be NCCCO which is a commission that makes sure your certified to operate cranes. But what if you could learn all about the safety steps or how to operate machines through seeing it in virtual reality. You would be able to see real life examples of a hazards constructions sites without actually being there, or you would be able to operate a crane without any real risks. This Virtual reality device will give you a real-life experience in numerous fields of construction. Not only will this device allow you to see these tasks but also teach you the correct way to perform them. This ranges everywhere from the more advance task like operating a crane all the way down to using a jack hammer to remove a side walk. The way that this device will operate is through an app. A list of every certification you can earn will appear. You will then choose the type of certification you would like to explore and become an expert in. It will take you through step by step on how everything works and how to operate the type of machine. It will then give you an in-field test where you have to perform every task correctly to pass the course. Once you have passed the Virtually Reality course you will be more than prepared to take a real-life test to earn your certification. The intended audiences would be construction workers or adults looking to go into the construction industry. Gender dose not play a factor and ages between 18 to 50. The way that I will reach my audience will be advertising to people trying to get certified in a certain field, or to people that are having trouble passing their test.

 

Sources

 

http://www.nccco.org/nccco/certification-programs/mobile-crane-operator/written-exam/sample-test-questions

 

 

https://www.osha.gov/dte/outreach/construction/

Avatar

My avatar is a female with red eyes, black lipstick, brown hair, and a dark back ground. Why, you might ask? I did this because the red eyes are to capture the attention of people, and if it was a person in the OASIS then this person would capture attention. This female would put fear into her enemies, and the black lipstick was for dramatic effect. As for the brown hair, I kept a little personal detail of myself to make the person still believable.

Su shi

I chose this avatar to look like this because I wanted her to look different from all the other original gunters (AKA males). I gave her purple eyes because that is my favorite color so I wanted her to resemble something that I like. She has dark lipstick because it looks like she’s ready to hunt. In my opinion she doesn’t look too angry but she looks like she’s ready to get down to business. She has black hair so she won’t stand out too much since she is already a girl. I gave her the name Su shi because it reminded me of Sushi but just separate and something way different from my name. The background gives her a little tougher look since its darker than her face and blue is also another one of my favorite colors.