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At a glance

 

 

After implementing Igloo Core Engine into its immersive space, UCC has seen:

  • Savings of £5,000 - £6,000 per field trip.
  • Between 15 and 25 students using the space per teaching day.
  • Months of logistics, planning and organisation saved through virtual field trips to otherwise sensitive destinations, such as courtrooms.

The product

The immersive space at UCC was at a crossroads. Without capable software, it sat as an empty shell, capable of doing some warping and blending, but requiring large amounts of technical capability, time, and resources for both content capture and day-to-day operation.

UCC opted to retroactively install Igloo Core Engine, our software platform for operating immersive spaces, to breathe new life into the system. Igloo Core Engine extends far beyond basic warping and blending, opening immersive spaces to a world of both immersive and non-immersive content, as well as leading to significant time and cost savings in running a space. Some of its key features include:

  • True Perspective, a unique-to-Igloo feature that automatically formats all content to display correctly within the space
  • An industry-leading list of integrations, including Matterport, Google Street View, YouTube 360, Revizto, AutoDesk, Gemini, GPT Image, and hundreds more
  • Multi-device operation with support for head-tracking, smartphones and tablets, touch, Mouse and Keyboard, and more
  • A familiar, layer-based design that allows users to mix and match immersive and non-immersive content across a canvas
  • Triggers and Actions, an automation feature that allows users to set defined 'Actions' that result when certain 'Triggers' are met.

 

  

 

"Without Igloo software, it wasn't a functional space. It was just a room with a couple of projectors in it. The software we were using worked for warping and blending, but to actually use it as an immersive space, we couldn't do that until Igloo stepped in.

We saw Igloo, and we've never looked back."

Kevin McGuire

IT/AV Specialist, ASSERT Centre UCC

The result

Igloo Core Engine has transformed the success of the room, leading to massive time savings, cost reductions, and far wider adoption of the system across the university.

The primary use case of the space is to take students on virtual field trips, which is mainly done through the use of its own 360° camera, with UCC able to switch between environments such as farmyards, street scenes, prisons, courthouses and more almost instantaneously.

This has meant that time savings have been one of the immediately felt benefits, with the space saving months of work. One example given was that the university wanted to bring 125 students into a courtroom, the planning and logistics of which would prove to be extremely difficult. However, with Igloo, students can be there instantaneously, and not only that, the situation is infinitely repeatable to make sure the lesson sticks.

This has also led to a significant reduction in cost. UCC estimates each field trip would equate to around £5000 - £6000 per trip, and with the room's ability to run six to eight simulations a day, it represents the elimination of a huge financial outlay.

Igloo's reliability and repeatability are another big draw. A typical teaching day will see between 15 and 25 students use the space, with scenarios saved as sessions and able to be loaded from cloud storage near instantly. Igloo's unique True Perspective also helps considerably here. As the space is unconventional in design, with flat spaces and curved corners, other software platforms struggle with mapping curved corners to be visually correct, but True Perspective is able to do this for each content type at the press of a button, leading to less time spent configuring, and more time spent teaching.

Another issue solved by Igloo Core Engine is that of engagement. Staff at UCC have expressed that the previous software felt almost CGI-like, leading to a lost sense of immersion amongst participants. Now, staff can easily transport students into environments such as hospitals for medical and surgical simulation, getting instant buy-in and engagement without the need to maintain a level of facade.

 

 

  

 

"If you think of how many professionals are involved in the planning [of a field trip] for weeks and months - it's an astronomical number. Whereas now, that's a repeatable experience over and over."

Kevin McGuire

IT/AV Specialist, ASSERT Centre UCC

Going forward

UCC is continually expanding its library of training scenarios by capturing new environments with a Titan 360 camera. This enables students to immerse themselves in an ever-growing range of realistic, high-quality scenarios, helping to create more engaging and authentic learning experiences while improving the validity and effectiveness of their training.

With the ability to simply drag and drop new content directly into Igloo Core Engine, adding fresh training material is both quick and straightforward. This streamlined workflow ensures that sourcing and deploying new environments remains significantly more practical, cost-effective and logistically efficient than organising traditional field trips, while allowing training content to be updated and expanded as requirements evolve.

Testimonials

"The ASSERT Igloo Room is anything you want it to be. 

We have all done training in environments that are blank rooms where you're expected to imagine you're in a different location. For example, a first aid course. You practice on a mannequin in a hotel room or a lecture theatre, and you're told: 'Imagine you're on a building site and Johnny has fallen down.'

The Igloo Room takes away the imagination. We take our participants and drop them into a virtual environment that can be anywhere, the room becomes that location."

Mike Cronin

Clinical Industrial Liaison Officer, ASSERT Centre UCC

"If you wanted to bring 125 students in to experience prison and what it feels like to be delivering bad news to an inmate, you couldn't do it. It's just not feasible.

But we got 125 students in three days through our doors here and they all left with the experience of being in prison, delivering that bad news to an inmate, and what it feels like in a safe space, where they can make mistakes and do it over and over again without having the fear of repercussions."

Kevin McGuire

IT/AV Specialist, ASSERT Centre UCC

"The goal is to fully immerse the participant in the environment that they're being trained to work in. 

When we train in a neutral environment, we focus purely on the task in hand. But when we're out in the real world working, we're not in a pure environment. We have loads of distractions going on around us. The world is a 3D world. 

We want to take training to the next level where the skills are practiced in as close to a real-world environment as possible."

Mike Cronin

Clinical Industrial Liaison Officer, ASSERT Centre UCC