A virtual reality / augmented reality (VR/AR) event was hosted in Rapaporte Treasure Hall on March 5, 2025, from 2:30 to 3:50 p.m. It was primarily attended by the class of COSI 125A, taught by Computer Science professor Dylan Cashman, and primarily organized by Jonghyeon Lee ’26.
Prof. Cashman is an assistant professor at Brandeis, and previously worked as a senior expert in data science and advanced visual analytics at “innovative medicines” company Novartis. Currently, he’s working on columnar data augmentation using knowledge graphs and the human role in classical model selection.
The event was divided into eight stations, each equipped with one to two V.R. devices and a set of instructions to follow. Students were split up into eight groups, with each group being given 10 minutes at each station. This meant each group got to visit every station. Stations had titles such as “Designing a dream kitchen and learning about aircraft engines” and “Vision OS built in features and apps” and contained a variety of different headsets, including the Apple Vision Pro.
At the beginning of the event, Professor Cashman noted that these setups should be relatively intuitive, and that students would hopefully not need much instruction to use the hardware. Many students were able to get popular, immersive VR games like “VRChat” and “Beat Saber” to work well. These games had easy to use controls, like VRChat’s ability to rotate a virtual avatar through the use of physical, handheld joysticks. This meant the game was possible to play while sitting down without having to crane your neck whenever you wanted to look in a different direction and reduced the possibility of getting tangled in wires. When attendees tried to play the game, it was extremely intuitive. The Hoot, and other users, were able to begin playing the game within a minute of donning the VR headset. Other stations were not as immediately successful, as some students spent a few minutes setting up applications.
Despite some hardware and software problems that arose throughout the event, several attendees expressed their enthusiasm for both the technologies and the event itself. One student described the VR devices as “really cool,” and students seemed particularly immersed in the more well-known VR applications that were available at some stations.
