Realising Education through Virtual Environments and Augmented Locations

State-of-the art Virtual Reality (VR) technologies designed for gaming offer new opportunities for social and economic benefits in their application to education. This project will pioneer the use of mainstream PlayStation VR technologies for innovative educational applications which engage world-wide audiences in the Europe’s rich historical and scientific heritage. Supported by the R&D team at Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe (SIEE), it will actively inform and map the processes and technologies required for SMEs to successfully bring new gamified VR applications to Sony’s online PlayStation Store. The resulting technology and tools will provide an infrastructure for creating educational VR experiences and generate new business opportunities outside of traditional gaming activities on the PlayStation platform. In the process it will create inclusive narrative-driven VR experiences which improve the social and physical accessibility of cultural heritage and contribute to the digital preservation of historical sites.