May 27
08:00 AM - 08:20 AM
Description
Being creative in any industry is hard, but working for businesses that are not traditionally art-oriented adds another level of challenges to artists on top of coming up with brilliant ideas. As more and more businesses investing in XR, a new door of opportunities have been open to the artists that are beyond the traditional entertainment industry. As exciting as it sounds, many artists will also find themselves in a situation having to explain their art and its value to other people at their company who are not used to 3D animation or XR production workflows. In this talk, I would like to share my experiences working as an XR 3D Artist at Verizon, a company I thought I would have no business working for just five years ago. I will share how I adapted to the role, the industry, and how I learned to provide my creative inputs using my past projects as examples.
Speakers
Senior 3D Generalist
,
Verizon 5G Labs
May 27
08:00 AM - 08:20 AM
Description
The latest race in build-once deploy everywhere frameworks is happening around the world of XR. Several frameworks promise to support both AR and VR experiences. The current leading frameworks are MRTK, XRTK and the Unity XR SDK.
In this talk, I will address the three most common questions that developers are asking about these frameworks:
Which XR framework should you choose?
What are the differences?
Why do you even need a framework?
Is this a case where eventually one framework will rule them all? Or will we continue to see the proliferation of more and more specialized frameworks?
Speakers
Senior XR Consultant
,
Project Archer
May 27
08:20 AM - 08:40 AM
Description
We will give a behind-the-scenes tour of our latest AR work, take a critical look at the creative and technical challenges encountered in the last two years of NYT Immersive storytelling and describe how our thinking about this storyform evolved over time.
Speakers
Immersive Storytelling - Graphics and Multimedia Editor
,
The New York Times
Graphics/Multimedia Editor
,
The New York Times
May 27
08:20 AM - 08:40 AM
Description
In this talk we introduce Universal AR - a brand new set of SDKs from Zappar that let you build AR content for the web (or native apps) using the creative tool or platform of your choice. The SDKs support face tracking, image tracking and instant world tracking and are available for ThreeJS and A-Frame (in addition to a pure JavaScript library) and Unity (supporting WebGL build as well as native). Be sure to tune in as we'll be building some content live with ThreeJS and A-Frame!
Speakers
Co-founder & CTO
,
Zappar
May 27
08:20 AM - 08:40 AM
Description
Timoni West, Director of Product, XR at Unity will unveil the latest advancements in Unity's augmented reality (AR) technology that is enabling brands across gaming, entertainment and manufacturing to unlock the next generation of intelligent AR experiences. Included will be new product introductions from storied brand Wallace & Gromit and how they are using Unity's AR technology to reach audiences.
Speakers
Senior Manager, Technical Product Management
,
Unity Technologies
Director of XR Research
,
Unity Technologies
Data Lead
,
Unity Technologies
Creative Product Lead
,
Fictioneers
May 27
08:40 AM - 09:00 AM
Description
MR is the new trendy thing. However, what brings value is having your custom Holograms, aka custom 3D models, in context and experience.
Why does learning this matters? It is similar as creating a picture in Photoshop and then you don’t know how to put in your app or share it.
With Mixed Reality becoming more common, as designers, we need to understand the file formats and how to make it easier for users to create their own content.
But how does someone do that? It is such a complex process not many people know. There are so many CAD and 3D making solutions with different paradigms. I will break it down which ones work best for MR.
Speakers
Senior UX Designer
,
Microsoft
May 27
08:40 AM - 09:00 AM
May 27
08:40 AM - 09:00 AM
Description
In this session, Will Humphrey, Studio Director at Sugar Creative (a Co-Owner of Fictioneers), will walk through how the features of Unity’s Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio (MARS) have underpinned the development of both Dr. Seuss’s ABC AR and Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up, including how the new toolkit has affected their overall workflow.
Speakers
Creative Director
,
Sugar Creative
May 27
09:00 AM - 09:20 AM
Description
When AR and MR devices are released the race for the best immersive content showcase is on - how else should you convince clients and customers to invest in this new technology? This talk aims to outline best practices on how to create a mixed reality platform that actually sells. You will learn how our diverse team of XR developers designed, prototyped, iterated, tested and finally released the immersive collaborative MR platform for interior design that helps brands and customers alike to "test drive" their home make-over.
Speakers
Head of Immersive Development
,
Island Labs GmbH
May 27
09:00 AM - 09:20 AM
Description
Virtual Reality Collaboration and Social Experiences in Virtual Worlds enable us to Learn, Create, Collaborate and Connect. Join Joanna Popper from HP, Katie Kelly from Altspace/Microsoft, Steve Grubbs from VictoryXR and Stephen Phillips from Theia Interactive for a timely conversation as they discuss what works about VR Collaboration and Social Experiences and how to bring the power of VR Collaboration to your company, organization or environment.
Speakers
Head of Engagement
,
Microsoft Mesh
CEO
,
VictoryXR
Senior Media, Ent & Emerging Tech Exec
,
Consultant
Cofounder, CTO
,
Theia Interactive
May 27
09:00 AM - 09:40 AM
Description
No one could have subscribed to HBO for Game of Thrones if they hadn’t known Game of Thrones existed. We know this is true, and yet, the XR industry is still wondering why non-gamers aren’t flocking to headsets. The reason is simple: we not only need content, we need to get the word out. Does a tree fall in a virtual forest if no one’s there to see it?
The goal of this panel is to demonstrate a structured review method that simplifies the way we talk about immersive experiences. It invites the XR party viewers not currently familiar with immersive content available in headsets, and also engages those well-versed in the industry. The panelists’ approach will open people’s eyes to a new way of thinking about XR narrative and allow them to open their mouths and speak more clearly about XR content. It will also give both new and seasoned XR viewers a little something extra to talk about. After all, it is word of mouth that makes content viral, or even just mainstream.
Speakers
Host/Executive Producer
,
The Look Club
Host/Executive Producer
,
Meta
CEO/Creator of Realities
,
Exelauno
May 27
09:20 AM - 09:40 AM
Description
Having overseen the development of prototypes for over 200 concepts, Bernard has learned a lot about the best practices for rapid prototyping with game technology. A recurring pursuit while prototyping for VR is to find a way of interaction that feels 'natural' - as opposed to 'realistic'. By using more intuitive ways of interaction, this can be taken to a new level in VR. Bernard will talk about what he and his team have learned over the years, and will show how these best practices apply to VR projects using a few related project cases.
Speakers
Founder
,
PreviewLabs
May 27
09:20 AM - 09:40 AM
Description
Through my personal journey, the context of the Hispanic population, and having VR Americas as a signatory of the Hispanic Promise, I want to show why the corporations and technology companies should consider this audience as a critical talent source. We account for more than 18.1% of the U.S. population, $2.13 trillion of GDP, 46% of employment growth. Hispanic talent is a great opportunity and a good business for the companies interested in producing and using Exponential Technologies.
Speakers
CoFounder & CEO
,
VR Americas LLC
May 27
09:40 AM - 10:00 AM
Description
The session will focus on how we conceptualize ideas and storylines and how we convert these into AR experiences. The talk will highlight quick prototyping options and approaches, as well as the path to reach full fidelity with the latest PBR workflows and real-time lighting. Modern AR creation pipelines will be discussed and how mobile, desktop, headset and cloud services all come together to provide solutions that scale.
Speakers
Head of Roblox Studio / Gen AI
,
Roblox
May 27
09:40 AM - 10:00 AM
Description
After 4 years in development, MetaVRse is revealing their new web-based 3D/XR rendering engine and online editor. Learn how to create 3D and XR experiences in under an hour in this workshop.
Speakers
Co-Founder & COO
,
MetaVRse
May 27
09:40 AM - 10:20 AM
Description
When we look to sci-fi from decades ago, we see post-racial and post-gender societies. Emerging technologies are effectively shaping our present and our future into something new, but gender gap and minority exclusion still remain in the tech industries.
At the beginning of this new decade, the time has come to take new steps into some of the biggest challenges of a world that's evolving faster and faster. Diversity and inclusion are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet created by the United Nations in 2015.
In January 2020, a diverse group of top-level experts in the cybersecurity industry decided to join into a shared effort to bring D&I into the upcoming era, the one that is being shaped by emerging technologies, such as AI and XR. The immersive new worlds we are building is a replica of the existing society, and this is clear when we look to phenomena like race and gender bias in AI or the self-representation and the harassment in Social VR.
This diversity panel that includes leaders from various leading Diversity and cybersecurity focus organizations, an attempt is made to shed light on the very issues and potentially solve some with strategic collaboration.
Speakers
CEO & Founder
,
Spark Mindset
Global AI Advisor
,
XR Safety Initiative
Interim CEO
,
XR Safety Initiative
Founder & CEO
,
XR Safety Initiative
CEO & Founder
,
Secure Diversity
Co-founder, COO
,
GamerSafer
May 27
10:30 AM - 10:50 AM
Description
COVID 19 has exposed the lack of investment in frontline worker technology making manufacturing and service companies struggle to maintain operational readiness in the face of social distancing, travel restrictions, and an uncertain workforce. AI-based Connected Worker platforms provide the capabilities to address these challenges while providing the foundation for long term digital transformation of manufacturing and service workers. Listen to serial entrepreneur (ThingWorx, Lighthammer, Wonderware) Russ Fadel describe his vision for the future connected worker.
Speakers
Co-Founder and CEO
,
Augmentir