Aalto Building Virtual Worlds
December 2024
In fall 2024 I was involved in teaching two courses of the Extended Reality (XR) and Virtual Reality (VR) focused Aalto ARTS minor subject titled “Building Virtual Worlds”. On both courses we had ~25 students from diverse backgrounds with a roughly even split between arts and engineering.
First class ever in Marsio XR Studio. Photo: Timo Ovaska
Coding Virtual Worlds
This 6-week course is focused on developing individual technical skill for implementing solutions to various common challenges in XR such as locomotion and interactions.
Course structure and materials were originally created by Sebastian J. Schlecht for the four previous iterations of the course. This year I was responsible for content and teaching. The slightly adapted and updated materials I created are available for self-study at aaltovirtualworlds.xyz.
An early highlight of the “Coding…” course was delivering the first class ever in the brand new XR Studio in the newly-opened Marsio building at the heart of the Otaniemi campus.
Designing & Creating Virtual Worlds
During this 6-week course the students form interdisciplinary groups and go through the process of creating a full virtual world. The process includes e.g. concept creation, storyboarding, defining information architecture, implementation and final presentation.
The course is taught by Prof. Lily Diaz-Kommonen. A series of guest lecturers were invited to provide the students with context of larger projects and practical tips on aspects such as sound in XR. My role was to help the course run smoothly via coordinating equipment, lecturers and schedules, as well as provide students with some additional technical guidance and direction.
Media Lab Demo Day
To wrap the semester I got to present the results of our students’ work at Aalto Media Lab Demo Day in the form of two sizzle reels:
Other awesome projects by Aalto students can be found on the Media Lab Demo Day page (for posterity: 2024-winter). The full 3.5 hour livestream is also available directly on Panopto and embedded on the Demo Day livestream page.
Huge thanks to Lily for trusting me on this and to our students for putting in the hard work to immerse themselves in creating for a new reality!