On September 4th, we were delighted to welcome Arno Freeke and Luuk Goossen to introduce us to TU Delft’s XRScaleKit – a virtual toolbox which allows users to easily access, share, and manage XR content. With services such as safe and secure authentication, remote control, and tutorial levels, amongst others, the toolkit is flexible, intuitive, and aims to be completely open source in the future.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Arno Freeke is the coordinator and co-founder of the XR Lab at TU Delft’s NewMedia Centre.
Luuk Goossen is an XR developer and consultant at the NewMedia Centre.
Motivation Behind the Toolkit
While developing and experimenting with XR, Arno and Luuk became accustomed to encountering obstacles in terms of organisation, templating, repository, and control, ultimately shaping their priorities in terms of the ScaleKit’s features. Above all, they wanted to create a tool which would facilitate structured templating for simplifying the set up of new projects as well as provide a place where (newly developed) applications could be stored. Moreover, this tool had to give teachers a feeling of control when employing XR in an educational setting.
Spurred on by their “just do it” mentality, they then built several applications in-house, combining them into a single multi-faceted online repository and toolkit.
XRScaleKit Tools
During the Meetup, Arno and Luuk gave a live demo of the XRScaleKit, showcasing a selection of its features.
Library
The Library is XRScaleKit’s homepage for applications, publications, recourses, and the XR community. Moreover, it is a place where both teachers and students can reserve headsets in a similar fashion to reserving books at the University Library.
Launcher
The Launcher connects to XRScaleKit’s Library to help users manage and configure devices, install and update XR content, and start applications, all automatically and remotely. Together, the Library and Launcher create an MDM (Mobile Device Management) without having to install additional software.
Remote Control
A big goal of the XRScaleKit was to give teachers back control. With this in mind, the Remote Control feature has many elements, including both a mini map displaying all connected headsets and the option to turn off visuals inside users’ headsets. The latter is particularly useful in classrooms, both to avoid students becoming distracted and to provide additional feedback during immersion.
Auth
Since simple Single Sign-On (SSO) methods for VR did not exist when development began on the ScaleKit, the NewMedia Centre team worked together with SURF to create an SSO which would be solid, secure, and intuitive to use. With Auth, users can easily log into applications while wearing their headsets.
UI
Another novel development is XRScaleKit’s UI (User Interface), specifically designed with the XR user in mind. This is especially beneficial for teachers, who lack the often necessary time to explain exactly which button does what. Now, they can fully focus on educating.
What’s next?
The XRScaleKit is currently in use at the XR Zone at TU Delft, but there are ambitions to open it up to all those interested. The team at NewMediaCentre is currently working with DashXR to create a managed cloud service with an SLA (Service Level Agreement), meaning that hosting and updates will be managed for users instead of by users. They also aim to publish an open pilot to test the toolkit at a limited number of schools and they will collaborate with SURF to ensure that the Library is supported by the Content eXchange Platform. This will make sharing content even easier.
We would like to thank Arno and Luuk for their ambitious and comprehensive presentation! To access the recording of the full presentation, please don’t hesitate to contact us via xrcommunity@llinc.leidenuniv.nl.
