The VR Boardroom Simulator project was conceived by Dr. Timothy Hubbard and Dr. Mike Villano as a way to study boardroom interactions during organizational crises. Being able to manipulate the conditions and directors in a consistent experimental setting is critical to understanding causal relationships in a boardroom. Employing virtual reality allows for high levels of psychological realism while participants engage in boardroom decisions and discussions.
Technological Highlights:
- Realistic directors created with Reallusion’s Character Creator
- Animations created using Reallusion’s iClone
- VR Simulation developed using the Unity game engine and C#.
Data Collection Efforts:
- Successfully ran over 300 students and business community participants through the simulation since January 2021.
- Achieved a mean of 3.5/5.0 realism score.
Motivation for Changing to Unreal Engine:
- The development of MetaHumans in Unreal Engine can help increase the realism of the director characters.
- The integration of Replica Studios AI-generated voices directly in Unreal Engine.
- The integration of NVIDIA DLSS in Unreal Engine to improve frame rates will be critical as we increase the complexity of the scenes.
- Real-Time Ray Tracing technology can help improve the quality of the lighting, rendering, and shadows in the scene.
Here’s an example of the directors:
Who will be placed in this boardroom:
