CSC 495: University of Minnesota VR REU

This summer I got a taste of what graduate school is like. I definitely had, many ups and downs with this experience, some for the better and some for the worse.  I had multiple issues during the internship, which included not having communication with my advisor, not knowing what my actual research was (which was a result of no communication), and general issues with the software that I was working with. The main issue that I faced was no communication, which really bothered me. I didn't expect us to have our hands held the entire time, but I expected some sort of guidance, especially in the early weeks of the experience. Because of this, I had to learn many things on my own. I had to read other research papers to know the general idea of how research actually worked in the field of computer science. I had to figure out how they formed their own theories, how they developed their studies, and what questionnaires they used in them. Along with this, I had to teach myself the program...

On Thursday, we had our poster symposium. I was very nervous to actually speak to people about my project because I'm not really a public speaker. But it went way better than I thought it would. Quite a few people showed up and people were actually interested in my research and asked me questions about it, which I was very delighted to answer. However, there was one person who was a little rude, but I guess it checks out because the methodology didn't make sense. He asked me, "why were the participants sitting down instead of standing up? Wouldn't it make more sense if they actually walked?" But in order for me to actually do this with VR I would have to have a massive room so that people could walk through it. And another option that is possible is redirected walking but that takes forever to do, and I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic to know how it actually works. But other than that I thought that the presentation went really well.  As for my ongoing...

I have had a very hectic week so far. I have started to run participants in my study. It is harder and more work than I had imagined. I have to keep track of all the participants, make sure the questionnaires are in the right order and have everything to successfully run the experiment. I have messed up a couple of the experiments so those are just throw-away ones. I still don't necessarily feel like my study is all the way complete. It just feels like it is missing something. I'm sure what it is but it's probably the way that I am running people though because it doesn't feel very professional. But I am having fun running people and seeing how they react to the environments that I have made.  Vicki also changed the way that we are running participants through the environments. As of right now, I have coded the program so that I can record the x, y, and z coordinates of the player as they move through the environment. With these coordinates, I can essentially play it so...