Unity Launches New Virtual and Augmented Reality Summit

Unity Technologies is launching a new Vision Virtual and Augmented Reality Summit, a conference focusing on the development of Virtual and Augmented Reality products across industries. 

The purpose of the event is to bring together artists, engineers, programmers, designers, musicians, directors and producers, hardware manufacturers, researchers and other innovators to meet, discuss, and explore the potential of these emerging platforms. The event will take place at the Loews Hotel in Hollywood from February 10­-11, 2016.

 

The new Vision Conference will be a developer driven event focused on exploring new opportunities, challenges, and potential presented by current and future VR and AR technology. Unity Technologies will be joined at the event by companies including Oculus, Qualcomm Connected Experiences, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Valve. 

 

The Vision Summit will feature talks and panels aimed to extend knowledge and create discussion on a wide range of topics including conceptual and practical design, technology deep dives, and new challenges facing developers such as interface design and implementation and creating full immersion through presence. 

The event organizers have announced a call for speakers and are currently accepting speaker applications. They offer the following ideas for topics:

- Postmortems: Discuss your VR/AR project from start to finish. What went well? What would you have done differently, given what you know now? What was challenging? These are best presented by two speakers who represent different facets of development, such as art and programming.

- Specific Workflow: Have you perfected one aspect of development, such as music and sound integration or heads-up user interface? Take the audience through the process of implementing your solution. The best workflow talks demonstrate both the need and the solution – why is this important, and how can it be accomplished? A session attendee should be able to walk away from the talk with the ability to implement your solution in their own project.

- Best Practices: Are you the authority on one aspect of VR/AR technology or development? Share your specific expertise in a broader format than a workflow session. A good talk will briefly introduce the topic, then present solutions to known issues and complications. Come prepared with specific, concrete examples.

- Advanced Technical: Good high-level advanced talks are difficult to pull off. It's OK to give very advanced talks for experienced users, but be clear about your audience requirements. Advanced talks are usually "did you know?" material backed up by practical examples. Did you know you can stream content to create endless worlds? Did you know you can write your own inspectors? Did you know you can modify the Maya exporter pipeline?

Showcase – Are you on the cutting edge of VR/AR content or technology? Inspire the audience with a demo that pushes the boundaries of what we thought was possible. Expect these to appear as a series of short presentations in one session, unless you have a very compelling reason to need more time.

Visuals – You have a gorgeous-looking project. How did it get there? What tools and techniques did your team utilize to achieve your look?

Speakers will receive a free conference pass including entrance to Vision VR/AR Awards Ceremony and Vision Party.

Additionally, the Vision Summit will host a competition and give awards to the best VR and AR experiences emerging from some of the most exciting development studios in the world including awards for the best game, best films/interactive stories, and demo scene. Details about the competition including rules, categories, and prizes will be released at a later date.