An airboat zooms across a Florida Everglades damaged by industrial waste, the watercraft's driver fighting off mutated wildlife and deploying seed pods to restore the River of Grass to its original splendor.
Meanwhile, two college students walk the streets of Miami's Overtown, looking at intricately painted murals that reveal the rich history of a neighborhood once known as the "Harlem of the South."
Such would arguably be adventurous journeys for anyone. But in this case, these trips did not occur in a subtropical wetland or revered community but in a college campus ballroom, where the participants donned VR headsets that immersed them in some of the latest extended reality projects created by University of Miami students and faculty and staff members.
It was all part of Miami XR 2026, a two-day conference that featured talks, panel discussions, and demonstrations aimed at highlighting the many uses of and research being conducted in extended reality, or XR—an umbrella term for technologies that blend physical and virtual environments to create immersive, computer-generated experiences. It includes augmented, virtual, and mixed realities.
Educators and experts in XR from across the country attended the Feb. 12-13 symposium, the second to be organized by UMverse, an Office of the Provost-based initiative that encourages the use of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality across campus and is support by the Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing.
"We started planning this conference a year ago, and it was amazing to see how many people are interested in XR—it's not just computer science," said Kim Grinfeder, director of UMverse and professor and chair of the Department of Interactive Media at the School of Communication, noting that several students who are majoring in academic disciplines other than computer science volunteered to help organize this year's event.
During the summit's opening day, held at the Frost School of Music's Knight Center for Music Innovation, Thomas Merrick, associate director of VR/AR Initiatives and an adjunct professor in interactive media, touted the growing number of virtual and augmented reality applications created by students and faculty through the Virtual Experiences Simulation Lab.
In particular, he singled out the First Year Directions VR Experience app, which allows students to use a headset to explore the University in an immersive format—from running through the smoke tunnel with the Hurricanes football squad to playing interactive games with Sebastian the Ibis to rowing across Biscayne Bay with the Miami rowing team.
Merrick also pointed out that some 55 classes at the University are now utilizing XR technology. "We feel like that's a remarkable achievement," he said. "And what's fascinating is that these classes are being taught across the University. We're using XR at the School of Communication. We're using it at the medical school, in the marine sciences at the Rosenstiel School, and we're doing tons of work at the music school. It is our goal to put every University of Miami student through some level of XR technology so that when they leave here, they will either have experienced it, have built it, or have an understanding that it is a skill that will be commonplace by the time they graduate."
When XR initiatives were launched at the University back in 2018, "many still regarded immersive technology as experimental," said School of Communication Dean Karin Wilkins. "How far we have come."
Merrick later moderated a fireside-style chat with Walt Disney Imagineering executives Bruce Vaughn and Kyle Laughlin, who discussed how they got their start in immersive technology and what the global entertainment conglomerate has in store in the AR in VR realm.
Vaughn, the president and chief creative officer for Imagineering, would probably be the first to confess that his journey to leading the research and development arm of the Walt Disney Company was an unusual one. He graduated with a degree in English literature from Colgate University and seemed destined to become an attorney, as he hailed from a family of lawyers.
But he fell in love with filmmaking as a little boy, having watched and become enamored with the "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" movies. And it was a job on the production crew of "Star Trek V" shortly before he started law school that convinced him to follow a dream.
"I fell in love with the depth of storytelling," he said during the chat, noting that he dropped out of law school only a few months after starting.
Recalling the transition from pagers to BlackBerry devices, Vaughn said immersive technology will make life easier and more convenient for many people.
For Laughlin, head of research and development for Imagineering, the path was more direct. He became a tech entrepreneur at 11, and "that passion only continued," he said.
"The pace of innovation (in immersive technology) is happening faster than ever," said Laughlin, adding that Disney's research and development arm has started partnering with others to innovate faster.
Held at the Donna E. Shalala Student Center, day two of the conference featured more keynote addresses; panels that addressed everything from XR's role in industry and health care to XR education at the U; and demonstrations of applications.
