What is ‘Immersive Tech’?
Immersive tech, or Extended Reality (XR), is an umbrella term used to describe user or audience immersive experiences, such as Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) using hardware such as eye goggles, headsets or immersive spaces.
What are VR and AR?
VR (Virtual Reality) uses digital screens in close proximity to a user’s eyes, paired with tracking technology to display a computer generated world that moves with the user, allowing them to simulate existing in another place.
AR (Augmented Reality) employs similar concepts used by VR, but blended with the real world, such as smart glasses, which can enhance a users pre-existing vision by generating virtual images that complement what is being viewed with the naked eye.
Immersive Tech is a rapidly expanding field with new uses in the humanities fields coming to light every day. It has uses in fields including history and archaeology, as well as virtual tourism, lifelike film and gaming experiences, fine arts, and is employed as a new tool in teaching and learning, both within the humanities and across many other disciplines, such as science and medicine.
With so many new uses of Immersive Tech being implemented by companies across the board, becoming familiar with VR and AR is becoming an increasingly important skill in new career fields.
To learn more about Immersive Tech, and methods that are used to create 3D virtual objects, go to https://www.mq.edu.au/faculty-of-arts/news/news/interns-and-pace-students-trained-in-3d-scanning to learn about PACE internships that teach 3D scanning methods.
To see artefacts that have been digitised using these methods at Macquarie University, go to https://mq.pedestal3d.com/
This page was written by students. Contributors include: Cat: Undergraduate BA Ancient History Alumni
This content is proudly written by students for students and does not necessarily represent the views of the Faculty or the University