Virginia Tech® home

Using VR to amplify the voices of White and African-American World War II soldiers in a segregated US Army

Using VR & AR to Transform Public Engagement with the Humanities

With a VR headset, audience members will have the opportunity to explore in an immersive environment uncensored commentaries by American soldiers in World War II. This museum prototype brings into focus the experiences of US troops serving in a segregated army in a war for freedom and democracy.

We began with an existing VR/AR prototype, called Immersive Space to Think, or IST, that allows users with a headset to explore and harvest textual document sets. IST was originally designed for analytical purposes alone. It is being redesigning for broader application, allowing museums, archives, and curators to create public exhibits for displaying humanities collections, including very large ones, such as the remarkable World War II document sets showcased in the prototype.

Learn more

More exhibits

Organization

  • Virginia Tech Department of History 
  • Center for Human-Computer Interaction

Team

  • Ed Gitre, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, History
  • Lee Lisle, College of Engineering, Computer Science
  • Chris North, College of Engineering, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Computer Science
  • Doug Bowman, College of Engineering, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Computer Science
  • Phyllis Newbill, Institute for Crativity, Arts, and Technology
  • Ishraq Quasem, College of Architecture and Urban Studies