Purdue students, faculty create virtual reality experience for swim trials
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowFrom Lucas Oil Stadium all the way down Georgia Street, fans and Olympic hopefuls are celebrating the U.S. Olympic Swim Trials.
While over 1,000 athletes are competing in the pool, two students and two professors from Purdue University have created a way for anyone to race in their own swim meet with the help of virtual reality.
“We made this game in four weeks, which is kind of unheard of when it comes to game development,” Jason Guy, lecturer of computer graphics technology, said. “It just took a lot of hours and hard work.”
The Purdue USA Swimming Live VR Experience allows participants to wear a headset and click a button to make a virtual swimmer travel through the pool all the way to Purdue Pete.
“We made the controls simple. Anybody could come up, put on one of these headsets and play a game,” Guy said. “We’ve got some really talented students that I want to give all the credit for (this), and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
The Experience is free and set up on Georgia Street under a Purdue tent. Purdue is working to make itself known as they dive into the launch of Purdue University Indianapolis on July 1.
“We like to think that the virtual reality can be a bit of a recruitment tool and open the door and let people know that Purdue University has these programs in Indianapolis and West Lafayette where you can be a video game designer if you want to do that. If you want to work for Disney, you can do that,” Derek Schultz, senior strategic communicator and media relations specialist, said.
Four Boilermaker student-athletes qualified for the Trials and are competing for a chance to make the Olympic Team. Purdue engineering alumni helped build the pools inside Lucas Oil Stadium, while others are helping Hoosiers to become water safe.
“I think it’ll be a seismic change for downtown to create a Boilermaker pipeline of talent right here in the heart of Central Indiana – where the business is, where the innovation is, where the employers are,” Schultz said.
The U.S. Olympic Swim Team Trials continue through Sunday.
You can watch Mary-Rachel Redman’s report on the VR program on this weekend’s edition of Inside INdiana Business with Gerry Dick.