VR Experience: Music Salon is a part of my ongoing research internship with Prof. Amber Bartosh at Syracuse University. It focuses on the reconstruction of a historic music salon designed by Charles Renne Mackintosh in Virtual Reality using Unreal Engine and examines the cognitive load and heart rate of the user while being immersed in this space. I have been using Hewlett Packard (HP) Reverb G2 Omnicept head-mounted display (HMD). This project looks at understanding human cognitive interaction in an immersive space, scale, wayfinding, and materials.

The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept HMD allows for the measurement of real-time data for the cognitive load (the amount of mental effort that’s required to perform a task or learn something new) and the heart rate of a user.

My role as a research intern is to work on recreating the music salon in Unreal Engine making sure to get the right environment and scale of the space to the user. In collaboration with a doctorate student at Syracuse University, I also work on creating blueprints in Unreal Engine which is a form of visual coding that activates various sensors on the VR device.

To be compliant and qualified to collect human data, I've undergone University-sponsored training through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative program (CITI) which will help me in understanding the ethical and legal foundations and requirements of working with human subjects.