Teleporting into Mountain Worlds

“It’s addictive!” the 10-year-old girl is absolutely certain. She’s wearing the VR goggles more than anything else this Sunday. She’s visiting this year’s KONVENT’A—the 18th Upper Lusatia Trade and Exhibition Fair, which took place April 27–28 at the Löbau Exhibition Hall—along with her mother and numerous other visitors. The fair is regarded as an innovative exhibition and networking platform for skilled trades, education, services, leisure, and tourism. The presentation by the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences was also innovative on both days.

Even though the exhibition space was significantly smaller than in previous years, the nine square meters available were filled with a lot of energy and a great selection of activities for young and old alike. The only ups and downs came from the main exhibit they brought along—a pair of virtual reality goggles provided by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The girl was almost offended when other visitors wanted to see and experience the latest technology for themselves. She waited patiently all day until she could once again—with the goggles almost larger than her head—be transported into real mountain landscapes, laboratories, or component designs.

Creative Saxony

Meanwhile, in the Blumenhalle, a “WerkSchau” exhibition, in collaboration with regional exhibitors, showcased just how much potential Saxony and the region hold and what great, innovative, and sustainable products are available here. In addition to exhibitors from the cultural and creative industries, bands, DJs, a quiz, a small Kunstbauer cinema, a rally, performers, graffiti artists, poetry slams, and fashion shows provided a perfect supporting program.

Interesting Facts

While the Sandbox had been incredibly interesting last year and drew visitors of all ages to the HSZG booth, the VR goggles stole the show at this year’s Konvent’a. Nevertheless: Whether elementary school students, prospective HSZG students, their parents, or grandparents, people of all ages were fascinated by the possibility of creating their own landscapes and entire mountain ranges. “You can even make it rain,” explains Marco Hartmann. He is a student recruiter for the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and, together with Egmont Schreiter, adapted an open-source blueprint for Zittau, which creates the wondrous, motion-responsive sand coloring. Outstretched palms held above the sandbox are interpreted by the camera as a cloud. Raindrops are generated and turn the sand beneath the hand movements blue.

“This is magic sand,” exclaims Justus, who is just as tall as the sandbox. He digs and burrows with both hands, full of joy. The best part? Red, orange, beige, green, and blue rings and abstract patterns crisscross the sand. Where he piles up sandcastles, the red patches on the peaks reveal the heights of this self-created mountain range. The deep sand trenches, which represent the valleys with their small lakes or rivers, are colored blue. With a single wave of the hand, such a valley can be transformed back into an orange-colored hill.

An infrared camera mounted above the sandbox makes this possible. “It captures a snapshot, from which a value is calculated in the connected computer and converted into an image that is projected onto the sand,” explains Marco Hartmann. “First, you have to set the zero line. The positive and negative ranges then produce the different color schemes. This results in the various colored patterns representing heights and depths. This is a great way to visualize different elevations.”

A Heartfelt Thank You

In addition to the sandbox and the state-of-the-art VR goggles, trade show guests learned about study opportunities at HSZG, tried their hand at highly complex wooden cubes with many components, and enjoyed small souvenirs such as pens and pins.

A big thank you goes out to everyone who helped support the Public Relations Office this weekend, especially to Marco Hartmann from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for overseeing the augmented reality sandbox, and to Matthias Hermann and his team from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering for the VR headsets, as well as to our in-house technicians Henry Beyer and Steffen Günzel.