UTAR Division of Community and International Networking (DCInterNet) and the School of Culture and Media, Xi’an Eurasia University (EU), China jointly organised a webinar titled “VR for Future” on 21 October 2020 via VOOV Platform.

A total of 49 EU students participated in this webinar. The purpose of the webinar was to enable the participants to learn more about the current and future technology of virtual reality (VR) especially, in cultural preservation. The speaker, Dr Aloysius Yapp, was from the Faculty of Creative Industries and the chairperson of Centre for Immersive Technology and Creativity.

According to Dr Aloysius Yapp, virtual reality technology is used to create an immersive experience that can help educate and even entertain the users. Meanwhile, heritage and cultural preservation using immersive and creative technology such as virtual reality requires the understanding of local content. He then gave an example of the project he worked on, namely the Iban longhouse. “Another lecturer, Lim Chai Kim and I were invited to share our knowledge of immersive technology in culture and heritage preservation at the University of Computer Studies, Yangon, Myanmar. During the visit, we led the University's research centre as well as the media and web centre to develop and organise game competitions,” he said.

The webinar was followed by a Q&A session. The webinar was moderated by EU School of Culture and Media lecturer Qu Wenjing.