Work-in-Progress – Design and Development of an Immersive Virtual Reality Laboratory for Electrical Circuits

Abstract

Learning electrical circuits has been challenging for students over various education levels due to the abstract and non-observable nature of electrical phenomena. Immersive virtual reality (VR) offers new opportunities to support circuit exploration through embodied interactions and real-time visualization. This work-in-progress paper presents the development and evaluation of an educational immersive VR laboratory for electrical circuit simulation that allows users to con-struct and manipulate series and parallel circuits using natural hand-based interactions. Developed in Unity and deployed on a Meta Quest headset using hand tracking, the laboratory was designed to support experiential learning through active exploration and real-time feedback. A small-scale user study with seven participants from a university computer science and virtual reality course evaluated usability, immersion, and comfort through observation and standardized questionnaires. The results show that the system was intuitive and engaging and supported a strong sense of presence, demonstrating the feasibility of immersive VR laboratories as a complementary tool for circuit education.