The VR Cycle Ride is a project that was built by Drexel students and faculty as an assignment aimed at motivating and inspiring creative thinking, collaborative problem solving, and practice of cross disciplinary teamwork by integrating computer graphics and interaction with real world physical, mechanical, electrical, and industrial design challenges.
Students from Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design, VR & Immersive Media, Animation & VFX and Game Design programs collaborated to build a custom “VR Cycle” ride, primarily from found and recycled parts, and developed and integrated original VR games used with the ride.
Exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2018
The completed ride was disassembled, shipped to Vancouver, and reassembled on site for the SIGGRAPH 2018 Conference where students operated the system for conference attendees to ride during the exhibition.
VR Game Designs
Students in Valentina Feldman’s Interactive Immersive Media Design course developed VR game experiences to interface with the ride platform.
Student developers of Electric Boogaloo:
Jennifer Raimondi – Project Lead
Greg Kilmer – Development, Procedural Artist
Jimmy Swanick – Developer, Implementation, Shader Artist
Travis Hove – Soundtrack, UI Designer, QA
Yehonatan “Yohan” Tamir – Vehicle Artist, QA
Raul Brossy – Vehicle Artist
Zoe Wolfe – Environment Artist
Matthew Napolillo – Implementation, QA
Ethan Miller – Environment Artist
Amanda Schiavone – 3D Modeling, Texturing
CJ Kraft – Producer, Level Design, 3D Modeling, Texturing
Michael Howard – 3D Modeler, UI Integration
So-Young Ko – Concept Artist and UI
Joshua Martin – Programming Controller
Tyler Swietanski – Programming Day/Night cycle
Jimmy Swanick – Programming Lead
Product Designs
Product Design students under the instruction of Erik Sundquist developed a variety of design concepts for the outer shell and ergonomic design for the ride.
Jordan Gulbronson
Charles Kraft
My T. Phan
Philip Stephenson
Amalia W. Cowan
Michelle Gibson
Pradyuman Kodavatiganti
Conrad Schmidt
Bernard Sheeran
Early Platform Concept
Engineering students from the Drexel Theme Park Engineering and Design Group (TPED) worked with their adviser Rob Lloyd to test early concepts for the ride’s motion platform.
Students from Drexel TPED’s group working on the bike included Harrison Katz, Kevin Carbone, Freddy Wachter, Will Landis, A.J. Stein, Malcolm Bornmann, and Josh Goldhaber.
