MIT Plans To Be At The Forefront Of Virtual Reality — Here’s How

In recent months, Natalie Pitcher has witnessed a so-called “explosive” interest in the field of virtual reality among undergraduate and graduate students alike at MIT.

Pitcher, a graduate student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has now embarked on an initiative to make MIT a leader in the burgeoning field of virtual reality.

Still a nascent industry, the field of virtual reality allows users to to be immersed into computer-generated simulations of environments through hardware and headsets like the Oculus Rift.

High on the list of goals for the VR @ MIT initiative, which formally launched in February, is to heighten the profile of virtual reality startups being created by MIT students who are passionate about being at the forefront of the technology.

“We believe that by serving the needs of the entrepreneur, we also serve the needs of the broader community who’s interested in learning about this exciting field,” said Pitcher, a former documentary television producer who launched the VR @ MIT initiative in partnership with the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.

Virtual reality startups born out of MIT are being showcased on the VR @ MIT website and entrepreneurs are encouraged to attend events and presentations led by some of virtual reality’s thought leaders. Those include the “Virtually There” event, hosted by MIT’s OpenDocLab on May 6 and the Hacking Arts 2016 weekend-long festival in November.

Virtual reality and its counterpart, augmented reality, which melds the digital world with the real world, are fields of technology currently being mined by startups, entrepreneurs and innovators locally.

A few technology veterans from Harmonix Music Systems, for example, recently raised investor funding for their Cambridge-based virtual reality technology startup virZoom Inc. Tufts Medial Center is working with Connecticut-based virtual reality company Primacy to tour hospitals before arriving or to experience what it’s like to lay in a CT scanner weeks before a patient’s appointment. And recently, MIT Media Lab executive John Werner left his post to join a venture-backed augmented reality startup called Meta.

“The first thing that’s important to know about VR is that it’s impossible to experience it by reading about it,” Pitcher said. “Once you have put on the headset, you’re brought into the potential of what VR can offer.”

MIT-born virtual reality startups are exploring ways for users to be fully immersed into new environments. For example, MIT-born Ovrture is a virtual reality content studio that recently worked with MSNBC on its “Lockup 360” show.

With a Lockup 360 app created by MSNBC and Ovrture, users with virtual reality headsets could go “inside” a county jail in California and experience the documentary series about life as a prisoner in a more immersive way.

Using virtual reality as a way for people to experience different environments and viewpoints that they would normally never be exposed to is becoming a novel and innovative use of technology.

“(Virtual reality) is really touted as an empathy machine,” Pitcher said. “I don’t think that people understand what that means just yet.”

In her role as the founder of the VR @ MIT initiative, Pitcher has also helped obtain the hardware necessary for students to develop virtual reality technology in the media and entertainment space. By the end of this semester, Pitcher aims to offer students the chance to use a computer that has the heavy-duty memory and technical capacity to develop games.

Pitcher said MIT’s students are incredibly gifted in the fields of art and technology, which make it a perfect place to launch a virtual reality initiative.

“I don’t know how many other universities have the same drive and mandate to want to understand what comes next,” she said. “The opportunity to be a change-maker in this new field is part of the spirit of the school.”

Source: Boston Business Journal, Sara Castellanos
Photo: An MIT student experiences using virtual reality at a VR@MIT event, “The Future of Virtual Reality.”
(Tamas Kolos-Lakatos)