Virtual Reality is a lot of fun, and we have developed a game that children can play in to interact and code objects to move around and solve puzzles. There are, however, a few things that we think you should be aware of.
There are currently no long-term studies on the affects of Virtual Reality. The studies that do exist say "Young children tolerate fully immersive 3D virtual reality game play without noteworthy effects on visuomotor function". However, each manufacturer has set down recommended ages and we use Oculus 2 headsets, which have recommended age of 13+. This is, in the most part we believe, due to the fact that you have to be 13 to have a Facebook account. Obviously we want to do everything we can to keep children safe, but also allow children to experience such exciting technology. All of the safety worries are around the impact of long-term and constant use and exposure, which is not our aim. All VR sessions will be limited to 20 minutes, with a break of at least 20 minutes between activities.
The activity we mostly use in the club requires coding on the computer, and then looking to see what the impact is within the headset.
VR can cause motion sickness in some people. We will encourage all children to tell us if they do and we will adjust how they use the headsets. We have experiences that don't induce motion sickness in even the wobbliest of people. If your child feels woozy we will suggest they take a break, and give them some advice on how we can adjust things for them. Please let us know if they mention anything at home!
When booking, please indiciate that you are happy for your child to use VR. If you are not then please let us know and we will make allowances so they don't miss out on the coding.
Finally - our mums use to say "don't sit so close to the TV or you'll get square eyes" and...well...sorry mum!
