Université Claude Bernard Lyon opted for a full 360° cylinder with a six-metre diameter and two-metre-high walls which sits within a permanent teaching space, known as the Igloo Lab, allowing for both traditional and immersive learning in one room.
At the centre of the structure is a cluster of six projectors, which map a seamless, full 360° image around the cylinder which fully envelope users and allow for maximum immersion.
By using an Igloo 360° cylinder, if needed, the space can be disassembled and moved to other locations within the university or externally.
The Igloo Lab allows students to conduct live virtual fieldwork, all from one fixed location. Students can be transported to sites across the world, including those that are simply not accessible without specialist equipment, training, and luck with the weather.
One such trip that is often conducted in the space is to the Gulf of Corinth, in Greece. This area is an active zone, with multiple faults and varied geomorphological structures for students to analyse and assess. These locations display excellently within the Igloo with mixed-media approaches such as 4K drone footage and digital models used and can then be traversed intuitively with a games controller fitted with a gyroscopic sensor.
By using a shared immersive space, it is also much easier for students to interpret geological maps, satellite imagery, and topography, all at the same time. Whereas traditional 2D drawings show a simplification of a 3D model, by viewing the original models in the Igloo space, students can easily identify topological differences and come to conclusions much quicker. The space also allows for physical probs to be taken in, heightening the immersion and creating a direct link between scene and subject matter.
Reducing carbon emissions was also a key selling point for the use of a shared immersive system. With the Geosciences department actively looking to reduce its carbon impact, the Igloo allows for significantly less carbon usage through remote fieldwork. Additionally, work conducted in the Igloo provides essentially zero risk to students, as opposed to mountainous field work.
"When geologists are building these maps, there is a 3D component they have to take out to build it. So, the students can forget about this third dimension and the topography.
Here, when you are in the Igloo, they make a direct link with what they can see in the landscape and the map support; they can use their eyes to directly read the geomorphology and the geology through the landscapes, so when they go into the field, they are ready to work.”
Antoine Triantafyllou
Assistant Professor in Earth Sciences
As the university builds out its use cases for the immersive space, they would like to take greater advantage of Igloo Core Engine’s, our software platform for immersive spaces, built-in integrations for the Unity and Unreal game engines to display more complex models inside the space.
The university would also like to extend the interactivity elements of their models with touchpoints providing additional context and questions for students to enhance their learning experience.
Earth Sciences courses are also planning on incorporating the system into the syllabus to expand how they teach planetary sciences. In addition, Astrophysics and Molecular Biology faculties have also expressed an interest in using the system.
“We use a game controller with a gyroscopic sensor that allows us to be really immersed in the 3D models. Then we move with the joystick and buttons, which are configurable in Unity.
We can use the buttons to change the texture of the different 3D models, which can be super interesting for geologists, because you can go from topographic texture on a digital elevation model to satellite imagery, to a geological map that are textured on the same models, and you can switch from one to the other.”
Antoine Triantafyllou
Assistant Professor in Earth Sciences
“360 images, panoramic views, or 360 videos, they are dragged and dropped directly into Igloo Core Engine software and displayed super-fast, super-easy.
What we are diving into more and more right now is developing 3D experiences using game engine software like Unity, for example. When we want to display it in the Igloo, it's super easy through the Igloo Core Engine software.”
Antoine Triantafyllou
Assistant Professor in Earth Sciences
"Whereas traditional lectures we do with students, it's on 2D flat maps, meaning the 3D view on these maps is something they generally ignore or find hard to conceptualise, because it's projected data on a flat surface.
Here, we have the opportunity to keep the 3D view of the model, which students notice.”
Antoine Triantafyllou
Assistant Professor in Earth Sciences
