UT Austin’s Texas Interactive Institute spends semester in HTC Viverse

The Texas Immersive Institute (TXI), the game development educational program at the University of Texas at Austin, announced that it’s finished a semester-long collaboration with HTC. This pair-up resulted with seven virtual worlds created within HTC Viverse, a first-of-its-kind academic collaboration for HTC. Five of the Viverse projects sprang from the TXI’s Experimental Storytelling course, taught by Professor Rohitash Ray; and two further advanced projects came from the TXI Lab team, which included Professor Erin Reilly, Program Manager Azalea Laredo, alumni Chris D’avilla, and intern Yu Liu. GamesBeat spoke with Erin Reilly, TXI’s founding director, about the project and why they chose Viverse as its platform: “We chose VIVERSE because it’s accessible, browser-based, and powerful—giving students an immediate playground to prototype immersive experiences without barriers. It empowers them to focus on storytelling, not just technology, and prepares them for the spatial era of con ... Read full article.