How can remote field research be experienced on VR glasses?

One main part of the WissKomm project is an application for the VR glasses Meta Quest (previously Oculus Quest). The “Isodrones 360° Interactive Research Site” – a partly guided, partly interactive 360° video tour through the main research site in Costa Rica – was created in line with the concept in the funding application.

According to pre-pandemic planning, a Costa Rican film production partner was also supposed to produce the 360° video recordings. However, the pandemic-enforced concept of helping people to help themselves also came into play here. Thanks to appropriate training, planning and support, the researchers were able to produce the 360° video recordings in addition to their demanding, tightly scheduled scientific fieldwork.

Back in Germany, hundreds of additional elements of the 30-minute tour were created in close collaboration with our partner and 360°/VR specialist Filmflow. The intensive, iterative process, to which the researchers also contributed time and again, led to the creation of scene sequences, speaker texts, animations, UI elements, sounds, graphics, videos and Easter eggs until the whole thing could celebrate its premiere at a specialist conference in Italy in June 2022.

In addition to the interested public, the target audience is the geohydrological research community in particular. For them, the application at specialist conferences offers an unrivalled supplement to papers and lectures, allowing them to immerse themselves in and immersively experience the research situation on site in the field.

The end product was also available to the interested public for the first time at the Festival of Science in October 2022 and was used in amazement by over 100 interested guests in one day.