BENGALURU:
Three teams from well-known higher education institutes in the city will be making presentations at the upcoming Facebook School of Innovation’s Virtual Reality Demo Day in the city, where they will compete against students from other cities in a contest of emerging technologies’ products.
The programme, to be held on February 23, has been co-created by Facebook and Startup Village Collective (SV.CO). Under this initiative, 21 students from all over India will get an opportunity to exhibit their talent through prototypes designed using Virtual Reality.
Selected from a pool of 1,191 applications covering 25 Indian states, the three teams from Bengaluru who have made it to the top 10 are ‘Marana Mass’ and ‘We Prodigy’from ICAT Design and Media College, and ‘Titan’ from Sri Sairam College of Engineering.
Under the mentorship of industry expert Pradeep RS, the Marana Mass team has developed a VR game titled “Amer Fort”, which will offer a never-before-seen exploration of the historic monument. The team has been founded by Sabarish Kumar M, Prithiv, Sabari P and Praveen M, who are students of ICAT Design and Media College.
From the same institute, the team We Prodigy will be showcasing ‘Time Capsule’, a VR game that will focus on the discovery of little-known aspects of the Indus Valley.
The Titan team, which has been guided by industry expert Pratham Sehgal, has built a VR game called “My Backyard Garden”, which will simulate a backyard garden-like experience where one can plow, sow, water and harvest the plants. The team has been founded by the students of Sri Sairam College of Engineering.
As part of their preparation of the VR Day, which will be attended by industry leaders, vice-chancellors and state startup missions, both the teams have been working for the past six months in building their Virtual Reality applications. They will be competing against 7 other national teams, who hail from Calicut, Kottayam, Meerut, Pilani, Pune and Ghaziabad.
“I have learned a lot during these six months under industry mentors, including how to a more interactivity and easy navigation to my VR application. This has given me the confidence to build more VR games in future” said Sujith Nair, team member,Titan.
The purpose of the VR program, built in collaboration with industry partners Scapic and Unity, is to impart key skills required to build a world-class VR prototypes. Out of the top 10 teams, a panel comprising of an industry expert and Facebook India team will select the best team, the Winner of India VR Day, on February 23in Bengaluru.
Launched in December 2017, the Facebook School of Innovation Programme is designed with an objective to give industry exposure to engineering students in India in emerging technologies and help them to build their ideas into next-generation, globally marketable products and services.
