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VR Education Startup Raises $12.5M to Teach Math and More Using VR in Schools

February 2, 2023 From roadtovr

Prisms VR, an immersive platform for teaching math, announced it’s raised $12.5 million in a Series A round, which the company says will be used to expand its VR math literacy platform to more schools across the US.

Led by Andreessen Horowitz, the latest funding round brings Prisms VR’s lifetime funding to $19.1 million, according to CrunchBase.

Launched in 2021, Prisms focuses on teaching math in VR through problem-driven, tactile and visual learning. Essentially, it immerses students by confronting them with real-world problems—a far sight from the sort of drab word problems which typically involve far too many watermelons for comfort.

Prisms was founded by Anurupa Ganguly, who has taught math and physics across both Boston and New York City. The app’s development, Ganguly explains, was in response to the US education system, and how math instruction doesn’t appeal to real life situations.

“Technology has failed our students, especially where math is concerned. With new developments in immersive tech, we have the opportunity to make learning experiential and connected to students’ lives,” said Ganguly, founder and CEO at Prisms. “Prisms is the first learning solution that empowers students to experience real-life problems with their bodies versus reading about them divorced from personal experience. They are then able to build up to shorthand abstractions from intuitive visual and tactile experiences that lead to enduring retention and deeper understanding.”

The company says it’s using the funds to accelerate growth and adoption of its product and team in addition to expanding programs to more schools across the US. The company is also currently developing products aimed at higher education and other subjects as well.

The startup’s Meta Quest app is available to parents, tutors and teachers with a seven-day free trial, costing $24 for an annual subscription to its growing library of immersive lessons. For now, it includes around two dozen modules, teaching from middle school fractions all the way to advanced algebra.

To date, Prisms has already been adopted by 100+ school districts across 26 states, the company says, bringing its app to more than 80,000 students.

Filed Under: immersive learning, Investment, math vr, News, prisms, prisms vr, VR Education, VR Investment, vr math education

MLK: Now Is The Time Is Available Now On Meta Quest

January 13, 2023 From vrscout

You can also watch The March 360, a “digital reenactment” of the 1963 March on Washington.

Available now on Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets, MLK: Now is the Time allows you to experience Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech like never before. Brought to us by TIME Studios and Flight School Studios, the thought-provoking VR experience combines real footage of the historic speech with interactive elements designed to teach you more about the issues raised by Dr. King.



Each topic is represented as an interactive vignette designed to hit you on an emotional level while educating you on important subjects such as housing inequality, voting rights, and policing.

“That speech is a calling on the country to consider a baseline for all its citizens,” said Director Limbert Fabian. “I didn’t want you to only stand and listen to his words—I wanted to start you off with them and then lead you into a discussion about how they feel today. And I wanted to find that with each moment in the speech, we were getting closer to him.”

“One of the amazing things about VR and our metaverse work is that it creates opportunities for transformative learning in a way we’ve never experienced before,” added Roy L. Austin Jr, Meta’s vice president of Civil Rights and Deputy General Counsel. “We can simultaneously document, educate, and experience history in a way that furthers our understanding and progress today.”

“At TIME Studios, we believe immersive storytelling allows us to bring powerful moments in history to new audiences while also illuminating larger societal and global issues,“ said Loren Hammonds, Co-Head of Documentary at TIME Studios. “We are proud to bring the words and message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to a new generation with this groundbreaking VR experience, created alongside Meta and in collaboration with IPM, the exclusive licensor of the MLK Jr. estate.”

MLK: Now is the Time is available now on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro headsets. You can also watch The March 360, a “digital reenactment” of The March on Washington. For more information check out the official announcement here.

Image Credit: Meta

Filed Under: horizon worlds, News, quest 2, quest pro, VR Education

VR Takes You Inside Bruce Lee’s Hong Kong Home

August 13, 2022 From vrscout

Enter the Bruceleeverse.

Created in honor of the martial arts legend, “Revival of the Memory: Bruce Lee’s Home in Metaverse” is an upcoming exhibition that will allow you to explore Lee’s old Hong Kong home in VR and participate in a “series of interactions.”

Located at No.41 Cumberland Road, Hong Kong, Lee’s old home, otherwise known as the “Crane’s Nest,” was demolished in 2019. Thanks to the efforts of three students from the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Shatin), however, fans of the martial arts legend will be able to make their own virtual pilgrimage to the Crane’s Nest via the metaverse.

The project is being helmed by the Bruce Lee Club in partnership with PRIZM Group and will be available around the globe on July 20th, 2023, the 50th anniversary of Lee’s death. Moving forward, the space may be used to host various events and activities for fans. How cool would it be to attend a Bruce Lee movie marathon hosted in his old home?

“We want people to know more about Bruce Lee’s last trail via VR technology, and understand more about his ‘Water Philosophy’,” said Wong Yiu-Keung, Chairman of the Bruce Lee Club. “The project collaborates with universities and organizations including three young students hoping to pass on the Bruce Lee spirit from generation to generation in unrestricted formats.”

“Bruce Lee is a representative of cultural exchanges between the East and the West,” added Jeffrey Hau, Director of PRIZM Group. “This exhibition hopes to revive the traditional culture with the enablement of Web 3.0 elements and pass on Bruce Lee’s spirit to the next generation. As a digital marketing company, PRIZM will continue to embrace the latest technology to promote the cultural scenes.”

For more information visit here.

Image Credit: Bruce Lee Club, PRIZM Group

Filed Under: Metaverse, News, VR Education

This Technology Can Turn The Real-World Into Living Art

July 15, 2022 From vrscout

Researchers can take an image and use it as a reference point to create a virtual world, object, or person.

As companies explore having a metaverse presence through a digital twin, the ability to quickly and easily build out stylized 3D content and virtual worlds will only become more important moving forward.

A recently published Cornell University paper explored this growing trend and developed a solution for producing stylized neural radiance fields (SNeRFs) that can be used to create a wide range of dynamic virtual scenes at greater speeds than traditional methods.

Using various reference images, the research team of Thu Nguyen-Phuoc, Feng Liu, and Lei Xiao were able to generate stylized 3D scenes that could be used in a variety of virtual environments. For example, imagine putting on a VR headset and viewing how the real world would look through a stylized lens such as a Pablo Picasso painting.



This process allows the team to not only create virtual objects quickly but utilize their real-world environment as part of the virtual world with 3D object detection. 

It is important to note that the research team was also able to observe the same object via different view directions at the same viewpoint, otherwise known as cross-view consistency. This creates an immersive 3D effect when viewed in VR.

By alternating the NeRF and stylization optimization steps, the research team was able to take an image and use it as a reference style to then recreate a real-world environment, object, or person in a way that adapts the stylization of that image, thereby speeding up the creation process.

“We introduce a new training method to address this problem by alternating the NeRF and stylization optimization steps,” said the team. “Such a method enables us to make full use of our hardware memory capacity to both generate images at higher resolution and adopt more expressive image style transfer methods. Our experiments show that our method produces stylized NeRFs for a wide range of content, including indoor, outdoor and dynamic scenes, and synthesizes high-quality novel views with cross-view consistency.”

Because of the memory limitations of NeRF, the researchers also had to solve another problem of how they could render more hi-def 3D imagery at a rate of speed that felt more like real-time. The solution was to create a loop of rendered views that with each iteration was able to target stylization points more consistently with each passing and then rebuild the image with more detail. 

The technology also improved avatars. The research team’s SNeRF stylized approach let them create an avatar that was more expressive during conversations. The result is dynamic 4D avatars that can realistically convey emotions such as anger, fear, excitement, and confusion, all without having to use an emoji or press a button on a VR controller.

The research work still continues, but at the moment the team was able to develop a method for 3D scene stylization using implicit neural representations that impacted their environment and their avatars. Additionally, their approach of using an alternating stylization method allowed them to take advantage of the full use of their hardware memory capability to stylize both static and dynamic 3D scenes, allowing the team to generate images at higher resolution and adopt a more expressive image style transfer methods in VR. 

If you’re interested in digging deep into the details, you can access their report here.

Image Credit: Cornell University

Filed Under: News, VR Education

This VR Gallery Is Comprised Entirely Of Stolen Art

July 6, 2022 From vrscout

Get up-close and personal with missing works of art from Rembrandt & Van Gogh.

In October 1969, an altarpiece by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio mysteriously vanished from the Oratory of San Lorenzoin Palermo, Sicily. In 1990, two men posing as police officers stole 13 works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, including several paintings and sketches by Rembrandt. 10 years later, the Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England was infiltrated by a lone thief who made off with Cezanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise.

These types of high-profile art heists have become commonplace within the art world. So much so that one company has decided to fight back against thieves using the power of modern VR technology.



First reported by FastCompany, The Stolen Art Gallery is a one-of-a-kind VR app from Brazilian tech firm Compass UOL that immersed you in a virtual art gallery comprised entirely of stolen art from world-renown artists such as Caravaggio, Cezanne, Manet, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. The educational VR experience allows you to get closer than ever before to 5 stolen paintings from the aforementioned Masters.

Using a custom avatar, you can interact with each piece using a variety of useful tools. There’s a magnifying glass you can use to more closely inspect the art as well as a virtual tour guide there to provide additional details about each painting. Those in VR also appear to have access to several additional options, such as markers; presumably to add your own additions to each piece.

“Initially when we thought about the environment of the museum, we thought about building something similar to a typical museum: fancy building with a lot of content around the art pieces,” said Compass CEO and cofounder Alexis Rockenbach. “We ended up choosing a completely different approach, a minimalist approach, where you in this dark space where the only thing you really are paying attention to is the art piece.”

“Exploring things that help you to interact with other people on that specific element that are not able to be done in the physical world are perhaps the most interesting thing that we will see coming,” he added.

The Stolen Art Museum is available now in VR on the Meta Quest though you will need to signup for access. Don’t worry, it’s 100% free. The experience is also available in standard 2D via compatible iOS and Android devices. The app currently supports two languages: English and Português.

Fore more information visit compass.uol.

Image Credit: Compass UOL

Filed Under: Android, iOS, meta quest, meta quest 2, News, VR Art, VR Education

Hologram Patients Allow Doctors To Train Anytime, Anywhere

June 30, 2022 From vrscout

Elegant training for a more civilized age.

It’s no secret that medical training is an expensive and time-consuming process. Thanks to immersive technology, however, healthcare centers around the world are capable of training doctors, therapists, and surgeons at a faster rate while spending less.

GigXR is one such company using cutting-edge immersive technology to train the next generation of medical professionals with its Gig Immersive Learning Platform. Powered by mixed reality devices like the Microsoft HoloLens 2, the platform uses mixed reality technology to project interactive hologram patients over the real world, offering students a way to hone their skills at home or in the simulation lab.

“Mixed reality is increasingly recognized as a useful method of simulator training. As institutions scale procurement, the demand for platforms that offer utility and ease of mixed reality learning management is rapidly expanding,” said Arun Gupta, Director of Postgraduate Education, Cambridge University Health Partnership.

“GigXR has already enabled instructors to better prepare learners with medically accurate simulation for observation and assessment. With HoloScenarios, we’re helping to evolve education from a mentorship-based model to one where students around the world can have equal access to top-flight expertise for mastering invention-based clinical skills.”

Available now for purchase, Gig XR’s HoloScenarios was developed in partnership with the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust. The first set of conditions focuses on respiratory conditions, including asthma, anaphylaxis, pulmonary embolism, and pneumonia scenarios.

Users assist holographic patients throughout the entirety of their healthcare journey, from diagnosis to appropriate intervention and everything in between.

Their performance is monitored by the platform in real-time, offering instant feedback. Instructors can also adjust the settings and update the difficulty for each and every scenario.

“Mixed reality is an excellent way to train. It’s incredibly intuitive. We’ve put customers in apps like HoloScenarios and they ‘just go’ – the experience is instinctual because you simply use your hands and the holograms superimpose over the real world in a way where they look like the real devices, patients or anatomical structures,” said Jared Mermey, CEO at GigXR.

“So our goal is simple: make it easier to create, deliver, and implement more high-quality mixed reality across the spectrum of  healthcare teaching and training.”

As previously mentioned, GigXR’s HoloScenarios currently features several respiratory conditions with implementation scheduled for this Fall. According to the company, Advanced Cardiac Life Support and Neurology modules will be available later this year. For more information visit here.

Image Credit: GigXR

Filed Under: AR, augmented reality, Microsoft HoloLens 2, Mixed Reality, News, VR Education, vr medicine

Harvard Business School Hosted A Class Reunion In VR

June 29, 2022 From vrscout

Are college reunions more or less awkward in the metaverse?

When the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program class of 2017 set out to plan their 5-year reunion back in December of 2021, they had to consider their former classmates taking time off of work, making travel and hotel plans, and a number of other logistics. They also found themselves dealing with travel restrictions due to COVID-19 and were unsure of what the future would hold.

In order to continue their quinquennial reunion while keeping everyone safe, the planning committee made the decision to host the event virtually through the VR platform Mesmerise. 

Harvard alumnus Sean West, who happens to sit on the advisory board of Mesmerise, organized an event that saw 90 Harvard alumni from 28 countries come together for a digital party. The reunion also doubled as a book launch for their former professor Ramsay Gulati. 

Former classmates attended the event using a Meta Quest VR headset pre-loaded with the Mesmerise app. Once there, they were greeted by Gulati who then split them into two separate groups of 45 and spent half an hour with them. From there, everyone moved into Mesmerise’s digital plaza to catch up, reminisce, and even do a little virtual networking.

To make sure no one would get VR fatigue from being in a headset too long, the reunion was scheduled for 90 minutes. Of course, everyone was encouraged to continue to meet up in VR afterward or stay connected the old-fashioned way.

According to West, VR technology offered him and his classmates the unique opportunity to reconnect “in-person” without the hassle of conventional travel. “Nobody had to miss work. Nobody got stuck because they couldn’t get a visa, and no COVID,” said West during an interview with Business Insider. West also explained how no one had to deal with jet lag or the cost of traveling, which was a big bonus!

West also talked about how this metaverse approach was more like a real-life reunion vs a Zoom call. “On a Zoom call, if you want to take people aside to talk to you one on one, it’s exclusionary, I have to create a break room and tell you to join me,” said West. “In VR we just hopped onto the plaza, you’re out of earshot of everyone else, It’s like in real life.”

Though it wasn’t perfect, the metaverse reunion still brought people together. From West’s perspective, the experience can still be a bit challenging for those using VR for the first time.

“Today, VR is a ‘sometimes’ tool,” said West. “The portability and the price of devices can’t be overstated to the importance of the shift.”

Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program class of 2017 are actually scheduling a second reunion in October, only this one will be in-person. However, West thinks the metaverse is inevitable and it’s only a matter of time until these virtual reunions are commonplace. 

I’d listen to the guy. After all, he did go to Harvard Business School.

Image Credit: Mesmerise

Filed Under: meta quest, News, VR Education

‘Immerse’ Brings Live Spanish Courses to Quest 2, More Languages Coming in 2023

June 29, 2022 From roadtovr

Immerse, a startup focusing on teaching languages in VR, has launched their social app on Quest 2 which lets subscribers take part in live Spanish or English lessons, peer-to-peer conversation practice, and weekly community events.

When Immerse first secured a $1.5 million Series A investment in late 2020 most of the world was working and going to school from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The idea: learn a language through full-immersion, with VR allowing you to talk face-to-face with other learners and an instructor while you took on real world scenarios.

In March 2022, the company further secured $9 million in its Series B, which allowed it to develop its app for Quest 2 in addition to partnering with institutions across the world to offer up a full-immersion language learning platform. At the time, the company was focused on teaching English as a foreign language, but now Immerse has launched its app on Quest 2 for users looking to improve their Spanish or English. The membership fee is priced at $45 per month, which includes:

  • 12 Live VR lessons facilitated by an expert Language Guide per month
  • 24/7 access to the Social lounge for Live Conversation Practice
  • Personalized feedback to accelerate fluency growth
  • Weekly events to build new community and cultural insight

Immerse is also set to add French and Japanese to their list of available languages, arriving sometime in 2023. Then, the company will be bumping its membership fee to $60 per month. The app does however offer a seven-day free trial to see if its right for you. For now, the free trial is only available for users looking to learn Spanish.

In defense of the app’s membership pricing, Immerse had this to say in the comments of a user review:

Our membership fee is $45 per month because we provide more than typical language learning apps. Our monthly membership includes 12 live VR classes per month, facilitated by a live expert Language Guide, plus 24/7 access to the Social Lounge where you can enjoy real conversation practice with other learners from around the world.

12 classes on a traditional tutoring platform would cost well over $200, and to experience language immersion in real life would require hefty international travel fees far exceeding $45/month. Our goal is to increase people’s access to that kind of immersive language learning experience, but for a fraction of the cost. We hope you’ll consider a 7-day free trial and book our Orientation to learn more about this new kind of learning experience we have to offer.

The studio says Immerse is also coming to other VR headsets in the future. On its road to greater adoption, the company will pioneer best practices for immersive teaching and learning, and build what it says it hopes will be “a thriving virtual world community that will one day rival the likes of Rec Room, Roblox, and VRChat.”

The studio also released a 6-minute video to show off the app, and some of the things you can do with it:

Filed Under: immerse, immerse vr, language learning, News, VR Education, vr language course, vr language learning, vr spanish

Attend Class In VR With Immerse, A Language App For Quest 2

June 27, 2022 From vrscout

Imagine being late for school in the metaverse.

Immerse is an educational metaverse platform developed in collaboration with top researchers from North America, Europe, and Japan. According to the company, this “battle-tested” language-learning experience was designed from the ground up for VR headsets.

This week the platform made its official launch on the Meta Quest 2, offering subscribers everything from live Spanish and English lessons to community events, a multiplayer social lounge, and various other educational content.



As a member you’ll receive 12 live VR lessons per month, each of which lead by a language expert there to provide personalized feedback in real-time. You’ll also have 24/7 access to a VR social lounge where you can continue to develop your skills with other users via Live Conversation Practice. There are also weekly events the company hopes will help cultivate a community of learners.

“After Facebook rebranded to Meta it became clear that the metaverse was going to fundamentally change how people work, play, and learn,” Quinn Taber, Founder and CEO of Immerse. “The time had come for virtual reality and the metaverse to no longer be thought of as a small add-on to the classroom, but instead for platforms to go direct-to-consumer and disrupt schools head-on.”

“So our team began meeting with Meta’s teams, as well as with top social impact investors, to design a new virtual world built explicitly for a community of learners,” Taber added. “We are now on a mission to build the first thriving metaverse community that learns, teaches, and builds together…with VR language teaching and learning being our starting place.”

Immerse is available now on the Meta Quest 2 via the Quest Store with plans for cross device compatibility scheduled for the near future. While the app itself is free, you’ll need to pay a monthly fee of $44.99 in order to access the aforementioned content. Not exactly cheap, but can you really put a price on a quality education?… Of course not. Well, maybe. Okay, probably.

Image Credit: Immerse

Filed Under: meta quest 2, News, VR Education

This VR Bus Takes You On A Tour Of Ancient Rome

June 26, 2022 From vrscout

Go 2,000 years back in time on the Virtual Reality Bus.

Whoever said time travel wasn’t possible hasn’t heard of the Virtual Reality Bus, a 16 passenger transportation vehicle operated by Invisible Cities that uses powerful 3D technology to transport you back in time for a 30-minute ride through Rome during its heyday. 



What makes this immersive experience so unique is that there are no headsets. Instead, Invisible Cities uses large transparent 4K OLED screens installed in front of each window on the bus to deliver immersive 3D content.

Using the curtains attached to each “window” this Magic School Bus of sorts teleports you back in time to ancient Rome. At least that what it looks like to the passengers inside. When the curtains are raised, passengers see a modern day view of their surroundings. When lowered, they’re instantly transported 2,000 years in the past to ancient Rome.

This isn’t just a visual experience. The VR Bus incorporates other elements to really sell the experience. Along with the 4K OLED screens, the bus is also equipped with a three-axis accelerometer, a magnetometer, a velocimetry, and a surface laser that all come together to capture every bump, turn, and speed the bus is moving, and incorporate it into the virtual experience.

Digital speakers inside of the bus help deliver a realistic audio experience that makes you think you’re driving through a crowd of ancient Romans, while a network of small vents deliver smells like frankincense, myrrh, charcoal, Guaita wood, birch, and vetiver grass as your drive past Temples, and hints of metallic aldehydes, civic musk, and cumin as you pass the Colosseum. 

“The VR Bus project will allow visitors to literally immerse themselves in the history of Rome,” said the city’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri, who described the experience as a “one-of-a-kind initiative” that will take tourists and Roman residents “on a journey to discover Rome’s past.”

Another thing to mention is that the Virtual Bus is also an electric bus, so it’s totally sustainable! 

Invisible Cities VR Bus tours are available now and run every 40 minutes between 4:20PM and 7:40PM and last 30 minutes. English language tours are available at 5:00PM, 6:20PM and 7:40PM. All other tours are in Italian. 

Tickets cost €16 and can be purchased online or at the ticket booth at Trajan’s Column.  Children younger than six ride for free.

Image Credit: Invisible Cities

Filed Under: Location-based VR, News, VR Education

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