Pardee RAND Students Involved: Will Shumate.
Using VR to Explore “VR Towns”
The concept of a VR town has recently emerged, and it deserves exploration from technical and policy perspectives. These towns are defined by the pervasive access to, and use of VR (and AR). In addition, they entail having short and efficient supply chains for VR development. All software and hardware development is available either within the town or very nearby. These two characteristics raise the question of impact. What is the effect of having AR and VR capabilities at one’s public finger tips? How feasible and beneficial is the idea of returning to a model where manufacturing is centralized within one industrial and residential area? This experiment involves using game engines to develop a prototypical virtual version of a VR town and to explore and communicate the answers to these questions.