Support for your research or educational project via SOSXR

The group within SOLO that deals with XR is called SOSXR (and can be reached through sosxr@FSW.leidenuniv.nl). There is generally more demand for XR development than that there's time to assist in this. Since the development of XR applications is a time-intensive process, support for your projects through SOLO is relatively limited depending on how occupied we already are (but good news is we make ourselves flexible for you).

Available Hardware

You could find a list of available VR/MR headsets here. Additionally, we have Insta360 equipment available to support prototyping or even creating your final VR experience.

--Under construction -- XR apps (potentially) used in research / education

Publicly available

Anne Frank House

Richie's Plank Experience

Walk The Plank

Goliath

Impulse

Bodyswaps - soft skills training

Human Anatomy VR for Institutions

Gedrag (g)een probleem

Developed at Universiteit Leiden

VR Empathy

KampVuuR

SHINE

GPInteraction

Open Source Packages

On the SOLO / SOSXR GitHub page is a large collection of tools available which you can use freely.

These tools include Unity templates, prefabs, example scenes and scripts, experimental frameworks, and workflow utilities designed specifically for research and educational XR projects. By using these open-source packages, you can significantly reduce development time and ensure your project follows best practices. We can help you determine which packages best fit your needs and how to integrate them into your workflow.

Remote & On-Site Assistance

We provide immediate remote support or scheduled on-site visits for more complex setups. Remote content deployment and management on the headsets are facilitated through ArborXR platform.

We aim to offer beginner-friendly XR workshops from time to time. If no workshops are currently scheduled, feel free to browse the resources we have created so far.

External Help

A possibility is to hire external companies to develop your project for you. This can be an interesting path, since these companies can often bring expertise to the project that are otherwise lacking. However, there's a couple of caveats that need to be addressed, all relating to the situation where you (as a researcher) or we (as the University) are not the owners of the source code. In most situations the external company retains full ownership of the code, making it so that wishes for changes to the project from your end can be either more difficult than imagined, more costly than imagined, or both. You're also not free to distribute the source code (e.g. as Open Source) to colleagues and other researchers.  

Future

In future we would like to consolidate the knowledge of creating XR applications for research and education. We would like to offer a broad base of support, ranging from the initial development of your XR applications, to ongoing support during data collection. However, right now this is not feasible. 

Contact

However, please contact us if you have an upcoming XR project. Even if your idea is still in its early stages, we encourage you to get in touch. A short conversation can help brainstorm ideas together, clarify technical possibilities, risks, expected timelines, and available resources—helping you set up your project for success.

Please let us know if this is something you’re interested in. Contact sosxr@FSW.leidenuniv.nl for more information.