History of the Development

Virtual Courtroom Prototype

The initial version of Virtual Courtroom was a multiplayer VR application custom-designed to provide an alternative solution to visiting an actual courtroom for the law students at the University of San Francisco.

Professor Eugene Kim (School of Law) is USF’s first faculty member to design his own custom Virtual Reality application for use in his Fall 2022 class, Advanced Legal Writing: Federal Civil Pre-Trial Motion Practice.

After participating in the AR/VR working group in Spring 2022, Eugene partnered with ETS technologists to develop his vision into a Virtual Courtroom that his students can visit anytime to familiarize themselves with the real world courtroom setting. Replicated from an actual courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Virtual Courtroom provides exact layouts and arrangements of the courtroom so the students can visit as many times as needed from anywhere using a VR headset (Oculus Quest 2).

Eugene also designed an asynchronous learning activity led by a virtual robot assistant who provides a guided tour of the different areas of the courtroom. Students can immerse themselves in the courtroom setting to experience practical aspects of courtroom procedure, including how to check in with the courtroom deputy, where to wait for a matter to be called, etiquette on interactions with opposing counsel and courtroom staff, and other norms that aren’t taught in books and must be experienced first-hand to be fully understood.

Using the group practice room, Eugene’s students can practice motion hearings without being restricted to a specific time or location, helping them gain familiarity, comfort, and confidence in courtroom environments.

After 3 years, New Immersive Design developed a new version of Virtual Courtroom to promote VR in Education based on the latest development software, implementing the safe rate of FPS (Frames Per Second) to human vision, Full body user-profile Avatar for better representation of individuals, Virtual tablet device that can bring up the user's notes from google doc or similar and better connectivity based on the industry leading multiplayer game engine, Photon Network.