VR@Polito: the virtual reality initiative of Politecnico di Torino – the experience of the Virtual tour for foreign students

Immersive content overcomes traditional multimedia one-way communication, encouraging visitor participation, combining 360° visuals with interaction and movement. Virtual Tours evoke emotions in a virtual reality, augmented with additional multimedia information: an amplified experience where the prospect student not only sees the place but he or she feels to be there and can preview what his or her life will be once there. Developed by VR@Polito, The Virtual Reality Initiative of Politecnico di Torino, PoliTour takes its origin in a Master Degree Thesis in the Departement of Control and Computer Engineering: it is the «virtual replica» of the actual tour that the incoming students actually have with Incoming Students Office when they arrive at Politecnico. Paper presents the experience of the virtual tour and discusses the growing role of VR and AR in research and education: the use of a such disrupting technology in engineering, like in all the fields of knowledge, requires that technical schools and universities provide the tools and the skills to understand and to be leader in this new technological environment.