Immersive storytelling is the focus point of the Immersive Lab
Now that the first hype of Virtual Reality is over, the technology is evolving at superspeed, is available to producers and consumers, and the obvious applications have found their way to professionals and individuals. VR is not just a gimmick anymore used as a marketing tool for large companies. It has proven its added value in education, healthcare, safety, culture and so many other disciplines.
The Immersive Lab of AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts centralizes expertise about immersive technologies (Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, omnidirectional video and hologram) and shares it with students, researchers, companies and non profit organizations. The Lab focuses on creative and meaningful content for commercial, educative, cultural and scientific applications and this through integrated, practice-oriented research.
Besides that, the Lab organizes user tests, workshops, lectures and demonstrations. The Lab focuses on immersive storytelling, in which narrative techniques explicitly for VR, AR and 360° video are developed and analyzed to create an optimal, truly immersive experience. Through user testing storytelling methods are evaluated on successfulness, immersive quality, user experience and learning objectives.
, 
The objectives of the Immersive Lab are:
• Stimulate, initiate and support research about immersive technologies for commercial, educational, cultural and scientific applications. The focus lies on integrated and practice-based research. Virtual pain relief during childbirth, AI-driven VR-training and Mixed Reality navigation for firefighters are only a few of the projects carried out by researchers of the Immersive Lab and partners.
• Bundle knowledge that is acquired from its own research or that is collected from external publications, study days, conferences, etc. The lab has a showroom where customized demonstrations, workshops, brainstorming sessions and lectures can be given, for VR novices and experienced producers alike. The Lab is also the home of a Summer School and Postgraduate program in immersive storytelling, as well as interdisciplinary courses in the bachelor degrees.
Facilitate usability tests based on the analysis model developed by the Immersive Lab.
• Share facility, infrastructure and expertise with companies, designers, artists, start-ups, educational institutions through a rental service, collaboration and consultancy. The Immersive Lab houses 250 square meters of state-of-the-art technology, such as a Green Key studio for immersive productions and a Photogrammetry installation for 3D full-body scans.
