Dear Colleagues,

 

A beta version of a VR experience with the St Chad Gospels is now available: https://github.com/OUETL/Access-Granted-XR-Manuscript-Viewer/releases/tag/v1.1. This VR experience as developed through a seed grant from my University’s Data Initiative for Social Challenges. As a seed grant, we spent the majority of our efforts designing and developing code that is flexible for use in VR and/or AR. Also, we made sure that it is  easy to load any 3D model into the system and with small effort change the environment. The VR environment is the Chapter House at Lichfield Cathedral, where the St Chad Gospels resides. We simply used a 360 capture versus doing the work to build a navigational area. This will happen in phase two—along with additional ways to engage the manuscript. The 3D models were recently generated by combining photogrammetry with meshes generated by the Artec Eva. The Eva captures enough detail to reveal in the meshes where iron gall ink has etched its way into the vellum.  The 3D models are provided by me through a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

 

For downloading and getting the VR experience running, there are two options. For VR on a computer (we have only tested it so far on the Oculus system, but it should work on other without any difficulty), download the AccessGrantedPCVRv1_1.zip file. It has everything you need, including the executable. If you are using the standalone Quest Pro (which we were developing for), download the AccessGranted Quest2QuestProv1_1.apk. To load this file, you can use an app called Sidequest: https://sidequestvr.com/. It makes it easy. As you move through the loading with Sidequest, the main issue is to make sure that you are in developer mode. Let me know if you have any problems or questions.

 

And I will very much appreciate any comments you might like to send me (bill.endres@ou.edu ).

 

All best,

Bill