Our roadmap is a list of things we are planning to include in Figments.nrw. This list changes constantly, so please understand if it is not up to date – we try to keep it as updated as possible.
The features listed here are not final, some of them are just conceptual ideas, some are already implemented and some may never be available in the final version of Figments.nrw.
How this roadmap is built
- Transfer and Service: Issues and activities relating to user studies, our website, events and the general communication of project results.
- Figments.nrw: The bulk of our software development happens in here. Internally we further split this category into subgroups relating to different parts of the software, e.g. core components, networking, authoring or teaching.
- Figments.hub: Over the course of the project we produce some content ourself, mainly to have some objects or environments to test on and to facilitate our user studies. On top of that we will make these assets and figments available in-app as well as on our website.
The main goals
The main goal of Figments.nrw is to provide the tools neccessary to facilitate learning with virtual reality in higher education.
As this involves work in many different parts, from software development to training material on how to use Figments.nrw, we also work (and break) on many different parts simultaneously. As Figments.nrw is realized via public funding provided by the Digitale Hochschule NRW we have a timeline to adhere to, that is, a date were we want to be able to say “we are done”. Preferrably before Q4 of 2023, as that is when our funding ends.
To achieve a sustainable state of Figments.nrw over this period and further into the future, we focus on these main goals:
VR in Higher Education
At its core, we want to establish a framework with which augmented and virtual reality can be incorporated in higher education without the need for subject matter experts to aquire specific expertise in technical domains. Content creation, teaching and sharing of didactically and paedagogically authored content should be at least as easy in these enriched and immersive media as it is in conventional settings.
One major inhibitating factor of using Augmented and Virtual Reality in a broader context is the effort needed to create 3D assets and author didactical and methodical effective learning content depending on these assets.
One way Figments.nrw works to compensate this factor is by creating robust authoring tools that can be used by any one, without the need for specific expertise in technical domains like 3D modelling or programming.
Evaluation of software, didactics and methodologies
This framework will be tested and evaluated to meet the needs of our stakeholders in higher education to facilitate good learning and teaching. We work in higher education ourselves and most of us are working on our dissertations as well, so we are committed to keeping the standards of good science practices up.
As we are working closely together with other stakeholders involved in higher education (via our partner universities or our associated partners), we conduct user studies to validate and evaluate our software, our didactical approaches as well as our core concepts and individual components.
Community of Practice
To furthen our first goal, to facilitate VR in higher education, we want to give our partners and associated partnes the information they need in regards to using Figments.nrw as a specific solution, but also in regards to good practices in designing virtual worlds for teaching and learning in general. To realize this goal we currently work on articles and tutorial for technical aspects of VR content creation (e.g. “how do i generate a 3D-model” or “how do i download and import a model from a third-party repository”) as well as on a didactical concept. This concept will not only be a written document, but will be experiencable inside of Figments.nrw (akin to our technical showroom).
Open Source and Open Educational Resources
We are commited to releasing Figments.nrw for free to be used by anyone. Furthermore, we are commited to releasing our source code, open a public issue tracker and using Figments.nrw ourselves in our specifics contexts. Be that in the teaching of students of education, in domain specific subject areas or to develop new features in the future. We want to use a free and open authoring tool to generate immersive and fun learning experiences and we hope you want to too.
Roadmap Timeline
This schedule seems to be constantly evolving, so please understand that it is quite possible that not every item listed here will end up in the initial version of Figments.nrw. Think of it as an insight into our development process. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us!
| Term | Transfer & Service | Figments.nrw | Figments.repository |
|---|---|---|---|
Q3 2022 | Evaluation;Paper MedienPaed (in review) | FileIO;GLTF Import | Environments;Classroom 1 |
Q3 2022 | Evaluation;Paper Handbuch E-Learning (in production) | FileIO;WebDAV API | Environments;Classroom 2 |
Q3 2022 | Evaluation;Study efficiency and acceptance of annotations | FileIO;Update ReadyPlayer.me SDK | Environments;Workshop 1 |
Q3 2022 | Showroom;Technics Corridor (Ongoing) | FileIO;Local File Browser | Environments;Lecture Hall |
Q3 2022 | Website;Integrate RPM Avatar Editor | FileIO;Figment/Assets Spawn Area | Environments;Lobby |
Q3 2022 | Website;Dev-Blog UI | FileIO;Upload Local Files to Repo | Environments;Chem-Lab (in work at BUW) |
Q3 2022 | Website;Dev-Blog Backend Authoring | Interaction;Object Context Menu | Figments;Whiteboard |
Q3 2022 | Website;Dev-Blog Frontend Authoring | Interaction;Object Management (Grouping, etc.) | Figments;Media-Frame (plane to show 2D assets on) |
Q3 2022 | Website;Publications & Talks | Interaction;State Bubbles | Figments;Audio-Annotation |
Q3 2022 | Events;Proposed: QoMEX, Lippstadt | Interaction;Collision Visualisation | Assets;Whiteboard-Variants |
Q3 2022 | Authoring;Scene Creation Frontend | Assets;Props for Demo-Scenes | |
Q3 2022 | Authoring;Player Spawn Area | Assets;Collaboration Props (Notes, Blocks, etc.) | |
Q3 2022 | Authoring;Finalize VR-Authoring Concept | Assets;Fonts & Typography | |
Q3 2022 | Authoring;Environment Templates | ||
Q3 2022 | Authoring;Node or List-based Editing | ||
Q3 2022 | Network;Stabilize Orchestration for easier deployment for UseCase2 | ||
Q3 2022 | Network;Maintenance | ||
Q3 2022 | Network;Session Manager | ||
Q3 2022 | Player;Implement Avatar Cache | ||
Q3 2022 | State;Transitions between environments | ||
Q3 2022 | UI;New MainMenu using UI Toolkit | ||
Q3 2022 | UI;"Tablet" UI | ||
Q3 2022 | UI;Contextual UI Elements in VR | ||
Q3 2022 | UI;Overall UI Concept | ||
Q3 2022 | UI;Explore Worldspace UI Toolkit options | ||
Q3 2022 | Utilities;Fix Agora Bugs | ||
Q4 2022 | Evaluation;User Study II | FileIO;Sketchfab API | Environments;Mirror Scene for Avatar related scenarios |
Q4 2022 | Evaluation;Paper Requirement Analysis (in production) | FileIO;3D-Thumbnails | Figments;Avatar-Recorder |
Q4 2022 | Evaluation;October: IEEE VR 2023 CfP Deadline | FileIO;Integrating an exemplary domain-specific Object Database (e.g. pdb files) | |
Q4 2022 | Showroom; Didactics Corridor (how to create and design virtual worlds from a pedagogics standpoint) | Authoring;Environment Creation | |
Q4 2022 | Website;Knowledge Base | Player;Create Default Avatars in Figments Style | |
Q4 2022 | Events;Proposed: Workshop with associated Partners (Quarterly) | Network;Transition away from SmoothSync | |
Q4 2022 | Events;VRAR Workshop DeLFI | ||
Q4 2022 | Events;xr-week | ||
Q4 2022 | Community;Proposed: Open Mattermost for associated partners |
