RALEIGH, N.C. — The use of virtual reality (VR) is growing, and that’s not expected to slow down soon. It’s been used in many areas for instructional training, gaming and entertainment.

Now, one North Carolina State University department head is using it to once again push the educational boundaries technologically.

What You Need To Know

  • N.C. State professor creates new virtual reality experience 

  • The immersive project is called Barnstomers: Determined to Win

  • Through the game, users can step into a time of Negro League Baseball when men of color were prevented from playing on a Major League Baseball team

The interactive VR experience is called Barnstormers: Determined to Win. Users can step into the time of Negro League Baseball, when men were prevented from playing on a Major League Baseball team because of the color of their skin.

Derek Ham, department head of media arts, design and technology at North Carolina State University, created the immersive experience.

Ham loves storytelling and technology, and he says it’s that passion that led him to creating this project. He wanted to put the user in that person’s shoes.

“The whole world feels like you’re in black and white. You see the stands, you see the spectacle, and how big of a stage this was for these men who weren’t allowed to play in the Major League baseball. They made this world their own,” Ham said.

Ham said he is constantly looking for opportunities to show the full picture of stories, and introduce important people.

“When you look at these experiences and you see from the perspective of a Negro League Player, and you are transported, and you’re like, ‘woah my hands [are] that of a Black person, it starts to make you wonder what it like is to be Black in America in the 1950s,’” Ham said.

Ham didn’t want to stop the narrative there, though.

“There are scenes in this experience that puts you up front of people heckling you because you are [a] Negro League player, but the majority of the experience is for you to feel the triumph. To feel the, ‘hey, this is our league, we made it and we are playing at the highest level,’” Ham said.

He added that as the user feels all these emotions; they reflect on history and realize these were everyday people who had enormous impacts on the world.

Ham said the use of technology for immersive storytelling is growing, as well as an expanding market for the hardware used. He stressed the need to further explore storytelling in virtual reality.