Each year, the Phenomenology of Digital Perception (PDP) course tackles a new emerging topic in the realm of Virtual Reality and/or Augmented Reality. During the semester students will have hands on experience with Virtual Reality headsets, Mixed Reality headsets, 360 degree cameras, 3d scanning applications, and smartphone/tablet apps. These topics will augment the building blocks of the PDP curriculum which includes exploring how video game engines can influence the perception of spatial environments through the examination of interactive spatial software, such as the Unreal and Unity gaming engines, along with a critical reading of the history of gamespaces. Students will begin by propose interactive gaming experiences based around existing architectural precedents to deliberate the efficacy of these interfaces and engineer spatial techniques that are specific to address the latent potency of this medium for architectural exploration. After this initial period of research and analysis, students will embark upon their own efforts to use the gaming engine as a tool for designing and developing experience through the creation of architectural effects. The course requires a laptop computer capable of running the free UNITY game engine (www.unity3d.com) and the free Unreal Engine 4 (www.unrealengine.com). This class engages the act of "level design" in game design terms to create spatial environments for interaction.

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