Virtual Reality in Spanish.
By Jackson
Last week in Spanish the class did an activity that I never knew even existed. At the start of class we got some glasses to wear. These were not ordinary glasses, instead they were virtual reality glasses. A VR headset is glasses that have screens for lenses so it feels like you are actually in the game. The virtual world is 360 degrees so you can look in any direction you want like in real life. Also, you hold motion controlled joysticks that are like hands in the game. The first day of using the VR headsets we logged in and we learned how to use the headset in an app called First Steps. In First Steps, we are in a futuristic room with a lot of color and objects flying above your head. There is a narrator that tells us what to do and what buttons to press. The narrator tells us how to hold the joysticks, how to look around and do different stuff in virtual reality. The next day we played a game that had something to do with Spanish. At first it was hard because I didn’t know how to tighten the headset so everything was blurry. Eventually I got it to work. Once the game loaded I was on a train talking to a friend that I haven’t seen in a while. The friend was just an AI with everything he said preprogrammed. The VR headset had microphone so I could actually talk which was pretty cool. It felt like I was actually in a Spanish Speaking country. After talking with the AI I got off the train and I was in a train station. The station was very detailed so it was very believable. Then I walked outside and into a taxi. Sadly I had to stop because doing VR for an extended period of time is bad for your eyes. I think I learned a lot of Spanish and I hope I can do it again before school ends.