The second day of Oculus Connect 2, Hollywood, will be a day many in the virtual reality (VR) community have been eagerly awaiting. Oculus VR will provide 3 keynote speeches that promise updates on the Oculus Rift, Oculus Touch and Samsung Gear VR. Videogame and 360 video design will also be touched upon, along with much more besides. The full line-up of sessions follows below:
10:00am
Opening Keynote
Keynote | Brendan Iribe (Oculus)
In the opening keynote, Brendan Iribe will share the latest news from Oculus, including updates on the Rift, Touch, and Samsung Gear VR.
11:00am
Keynote
Keynote | Michael Abrash (Oculus)
Michael Abrash will reveal for the first time some of the exciting projects underway in Oculus Research and how it’s laying the groundwork for the future of virtual reality.
1:00pm
Conversation with John Carmack
Keynote | John Carmack (Oculus)
John Carmack will give his signature talk about the technical details, challenges, and future plans for mobile VR development.
2:30pm
Building for the Rift with the Oculus PC SDK
VR Engineering | Anuj Gosalia (Oculus)
The Rift is Oculus’ most immersive platform. This talk will help you understand how to get the most out of the Oculus PC SDK. You’ll learn about the design of the API, how the software stack works, and how to design apps that show the true capabilities of the Rift and Touch.
Duration: 60 min
The Early Days of VR Game Design: Lessons Learned
Game & App Design | Jason Rubin (Oculus)
Virtual reality will transform game design forever. Developers will face entirely new challenges when designing for gameplay, locomotion, and input. You have to develop for an immersive world instead of a screen. You have to make the experience comfortable. And you have to take risks. This panel discussion will cover successes and failures from the early days of VR, and help developers bring this new era to life.
Duration: 60 min
4:00pm
Building ‘Toybox’ for Oculus Touch
Game & App Design | Matt Alderman (Oculus), Brandon Dillon (Oculus)
Toybox was the first demo for Oculus Touch and served as the internal prototyping test bed to experiment with new features and social interactions in VR. Toybox helped us understand how people interact in virtual reality, how to build expressive avatars, and how we can deliver social presence. In this talk, you’ll learn everything we learned about designing intuitive, enjoyable interactions for Oculus Touch.
Duration: 60 min
Introduction to VR Filmmaking from Oculus Story Studio
Cinematic VR | Saschka Unseld (Oculus Story Studio), Max Planck (Oculus Story Studio)
The Oculus Story Studio team will share creative and technical lessons learned while making its first two VR experiences, ‘Lost’ and ‘Henry.’ We’ll discuss the creative solutions we’ve come up with while developing narratives for virtual worlds, the technical tricks used to fit content into 90 frames-per-second, and thoughts on how authoring technology today needs to change for VR.
Duration: 60 min
5:30pm
Building Social VR Apps and Experiences
Game & App Design | Gareth Davis (Oculus)
Shared experiences in virtual reality open up a new world of possibilities for interaction, communication, work, and play. At Oculus, we’re building new tools, apps, and experiences to bring people together in VR. We’ll cover lessons learned during the development of these experiences and discuss the tools that Oculus is building to help developers create their own social VR apps.
Duration: 25 min
Being There: Designing Standing VR Experiences with Tracked Controllers
Game & App Design | Alex Schwartz (Owlchemy Labs), Devin Reimer (Owlchemy Labs)
Designing for standing VR with tracked controllers is a novel challenge. True 1:1 motion controls make incredible things possible. Owlchemy Labs shares their experiences designing standing VR experiences learned through the development of Job Simulator. Watch as the team discusses tracked input, considerations for real-world ergonomics, skill transference in VR, accommodating for varied height experiences, designing around the tether, and dealing with the constraints of occlusion and locomotion, among other lessons learned.
Duration: 60 min
Lessons from Hollywood: Making Movies in VR
Cinematic VR | Ikrima Elhassan (Kite & Lighting), Felix Lajeunesse (Felix & Paul), Robert Stromberg (The VR Company), Saschka Unseld (Oculus Story Studio), Arthur van Hoff (Jaunt VR)
From indie documentaries to Hollywood blockbusters, filmmakers all over the world are beginning to explore how VR can fundamentally improve the way we share stories. In VR, the traditional conventions of filmmaking don’t always work. Set designs need to adapt. The actor’s relationship to the audience changes. The way you capture and render live-action scenes becomes more complex. Join some of the top movie directors, producers and writers as they share techniques for making movies in VR.
Duration: 60 min