Lessons With Serra

We had a few cover lessons with Serra, one of the VR teachers.

Serra had not used or heard of FMOD and usually implements sound elements herself which I found interesting, though this is likely due to her not needing middleware, and being capable with her coding abilities.

She showed us some of her work, as well as others’ work, touching on the topic of presence and immersion, something we already covered in Ingrid’s lessons, but it was interesting to see the different examples she showed us, focusing also on AR.

She briefly mentioned the use of XR to help solve crime scenes, and be used in courts.

She talked about the idea of your ‘digital/virtual twin’. Its something im kind of uncomfortable with. I already find the whole self-identity forming chamber of social media to be strange and alienating enough, but the idea of creating a digital representation of myself that is also so explicitly tied to the databank of a tech company is a bit icky (be it Meta or Epic Games).

It was also helpful as it was our first lesson using unity itself. While I have plenty of experience with unity, it was very good for the others in our group who were there in the session (Maria, Hanifa and Jacob) to get an idea on how unity works, and how our sounds will inevitably be implemented and spacialised.

Here are some maybe interesting articles below…

https://futurism.com/metaverse-completely-falling-apart

https://futurism.com/the-byte/virtual-reality-failed-connect-teens