Giving autistic children the opportunity to experience a major sporting event in a safe environment is the latest project in IT supplier CGI’s virtual reality (VR) operation.
The supplier’s pro bono work has already seen it provide students at a special educational needs (SEN) school in Cheltenham with VR technology that helps them learn to interact with the real world.
In its latest work with the Brighton Marathon and the National Autistic Society, CGI has created a VR experience designed to help neurodivergent participants feel more prepared and confident ahead of race day.
The projects, which recreate real-life environments through VR headsets, have some of CGI’s “top technologists” working on them, according to Matthew Grissoni, vice-president at CGI. They are a taste of a future where VR will find its place is many sectors.
He said scenes are recorded from across the Brighton Marathon using GoPro devices and “knitted together” to create an app that can then be viewed through a VR headset. “You record the film and then we built the application subsequently where you have the various kinds of scenes,” said Grissoni.
Users can click on the course map to experience what’s going on in different places. “There is sound and people around them, and they can look around,” he said. “This will make users much more comfortable about what they’re going to experience.”
In its earlier project at the SEN school in Cheltenham, CGI used VR to help students on the autistic spectrum at Bettridge School practice their interactions and communication in a local shop.
In the past, the school would have taken photographs, and occasionally videos, of environments to show students before gradually introducing them to the real ones.
The environments are mapped out and an identical VR version is created to ensure it’s the same as the real-world shop they will visit.
Virtual reality projects like these pro bono environments give a taste of where the technology can go.
Future of VR
VR technology and its like enable intuitive visual and auditory landscapes ranging from simple graphical representations of rooms and participants to complete immersion into realistic environments.
Virtual surroundings will make it natural to interact in ways that resemble real-life behaviour. Sound and sight will provide directional understanding, and sensor fusion will add layers of environmental, equipment and system data from the real world to virtual environments. Increasingly accurate and authentic representations of actual objects and phenomena will blur the lines between the real world and virtual representations.
CGI has a team of about ten of its “top technologists” working on these projects, which is currently a very niche operation, but the future could be different with organisations in very different sectors looking at the technology.
Grissoni, who is an emergency responder outside work, said emergency services can use virtual reality to prepare first responders for environments they might experience.
“You can use the technology to help people experience an emergency situation so that you can do an assessment and then go in,” he said.
“If it’s all around you, then you can know you’re in the dark, you’ve got the flashing lights, you’ve got people in front of you and you’ve got people panicking,” said Grissoni. “This is absolutely invaluable for training.”
Customer insight
Preparing people for environments is not just about coping with dangerous situations. It could also simply provide customers with a taste of what to expect.
Grissoni said Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club have looked at the technology as a way to show concerned families what the fan experience is like from areas in the ground for families.
“Certainly, in football, things can be a little bit uncomfortable for younger people, but this is a way of showing people what to expect [in a family area] and encouraging them to come to an event,” he said.
More broadly, organisations in the events and entertainment space are looking at the technology, with VR being used to allow people to explore stadium, for example.
