Today, we take a look back at Oculus Connect 2, the second annual developer conference that bought together an audience of more than 1,500 developers and engineers to share their ideas and learn the latest in virtual reality technology, and techniques to make great immersive VR content.

Oculus has released more developer session videos from Oculus Connect 2 online, and it’s definitely worth watching for anyone interested in virtual reality development, and the future of VR to check out. See also: Oculus Connect 2 Developer Sessions – Part 1

Oculus Connect 2: Designing Standing VR Experiences with Tracked Controllers

Speakers: 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.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Integrating and Profiling VR in your Engine with the Oculus PC SDK

Speakers: Tom Heath (Oculus), Scott Bassett (Oculus)

‘Learn more about integrating virtual reality into a native C++ engine with the Oculus PC SDK. We’ll provide a step-by-step guide on bringing your code into VR, offer trouble-shooting guidance on how to get the integration and VR experience right, and help you avoid common pitfalls that have challenged VR developers around the world. We’ll also explore how to profile your VR app, including an in-depth look at performance analysis using ETW and GPU view.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Making Great VR: Lessons Learned from ‘I Expect You To Die’

Speaker: Jesse Schell (Schell Games)

‘Jesse Schell has been creating VR experiences for over 20 years. In this talk, he shares what he has learned about creating great VR over the years, including many specific examples from I Expect You To Die.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Navigating New Worlds: Designing UI and UX in VR

Speakers: Kristoffer Brady (Oculus), Richard Emms (Oculus)

‘When you’re building new experiences, they have to be intuitive to be truly immersive. We’ll discuss the challenges of designing user interfaces and interactions for an emerging medium and how we approach the constraints and possibilities of VR. We’ll cover design patterns, how to create ideal user experiences in VR, and our vision for the future of VR UI.’

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Oculus Connect 2: The Early Days of VR Game Design: Lessons Learned

Speaker: 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.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Lessons from Hollywood: Making Movies in VR

Speakers: 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.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Stories and Learnings from the Forefront of Virtual Shared Presence

Speaker: Forest Gibson (Pluto VR)

‘We are at the beginning of a new era of communication. Instead of speaking through a phone or screen, we will soon be able to remotely communicate, collaborate and connect as if we were in person. The team at Pluto VR has been hard at work building towards this future and will share their learnings around self-representation, voice, body language, trust, and personal space to create better shared presence in VR applications.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Maximizing Performance for Mobile

Speaker: Chris Pruett (Oculus)

‘Flawless mobile VR demands careful coding and significant optimization. Come learn what it takes to build great experiences for Oculus Mobile. You’ll learn how to maximize the performance of Unity apps on Gear VR and how to master development activities such as mesh design, scene organization, and rendering. You’ll learn tips and tricks (and maybe even a few vulgar hacks) that will help Gear VR apps run at maximum speed.’

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Oculus Connect 2: 3D Audio: Designing Sounds for VR

Speaker: Tom Smurdon (Oculus)

‘3D audio is critical for creating a believable virtual world, and sound design for VR is very different from traditional games or movies. This talk will cover VR audio techniques including building immersive ambiances, attenuation curves, mixing, and player focus. You’ll hear some of the sound design tricks used in the Oculus demos, and learn more about how to work with the Audio SDK to create authentic and compelling experiences.’

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Oculus Connect 2: Post-Mortem: Building the First Crescent Bay Experiences

Speakers: Kenneth Scott (Oculus), Per Vognsen (Oculus)

‘The Crescent Bay demos from Oculus Connect 2014 were designed to demonstrate the magic of presence and show people the power of virtual reality. The result was a series of 10 experiences with unique perceptual, visual and auditory goals. We’re taking you behind the scenes of the Crescent Bay demos, where you’ll learn how we breathed life into an alien creature that reacts to your presence, how we conveyed scale and distance to create a sense of vertigo, and how we optimized VR content for Unreal Engine 4.’

Stay tuned for more coverage on the latest Oculus VR news updates, and Oculus Rift developments coming soon.