Oculus Connect 5 Developer Session Videos Now Online – Part 2
Image courtesy of: Oculus
Last week Oculus’ biggest annual event of the year, Oculus Connect 5, took place in San Jose, California, where developers and VR creators from around the world gathered together to explore new ideas, learn about breakthrough VR technological advancements, and inspire even more people to help shape the future of virtual reality and push the industry forward.
Recently, Oculus released a series of developer session videos online from OC5 that is worth watching for anyone that has an interest in designing and developing virtual reality content and groundbreaking immersive experiences. See also: Oculus Connect 5 Developer Sessions – Part 1
React 360 & Oculus Browser: Uniting the Web with VR
Speakers: Andrew Mo – Product Manager (Oculus)
‘Learn how to create immersive experiences that better serve your existing users on mobile and web while delighting new users in VR too. This session will cover new features in the Oculus Browser—one of the most popular apps in VR–and highlight how React 360 can be used to easily create engaging experiences that reach more people across VR and non-VR devices.’
The Future of Home for Rift: Developer & Roadmap Updates
Speakers: Brandon Dillon – Product Manager (Oculus), Nancy Kiao – Product Manager (Oculus) , Lizzy Donahue – Software Engineer (Oculus)
‘Learn about the new features coming to the Rift Home experience, including opportunities to better engage and retain your audience. We’ll walk through implementation how-to’s, best practices, and the latest updates to the Rift software platform.’
Blood, Sweat, and Tears: A Tale of VR Esports
Speakers: Christopher K. McKelvy – Head of Esports (Oculus)
‘Catch up on the latest and what’s next for Oculus’s journey into VR esports. During this talk, developers and business leaders will learn what makes a great VR esports title and how to capitalize on industry trends. Attendees will leave with a deep understanding of Oculus’ long-term strategy to revolutionize every aspect of esports, including gameplay, competition, and viewership.’
Video That Doesn’t Suck: Stereo(scopic) 3D-180° for VR
Speakers: Eric Cheng – Head of Immersive Media (Oculus)
‘Bringing great-looking video experiences to VR can be challenging, and container apps are only half the battle. 3D-180 video allows for higher-quality stereoscopic experiences with fewer resources spent on production. We’ll cover best practices for creating 3D-180 video for distribution and playback in Oculus Go through a live workshop. During discussion about camera hardware, software tools, real-world differences between 180 and 360, and spatial audio, we will actually shoot, edit, and distribute a short video for viewing in Oculus Go.’
Training, Transformed: Walmart Explores VR at Scale
Speakers: Andy Mathis – Head of Partnership (Oculus), Yelena Drabkin – VP of Product (STRIVR), Brock McKeel – Senior Director of Digital Operations (Walmart), Andy Trainor – Senior Director of Walmart Academies (Walmart)
‘Walmart employs more people than any other company in the world. Ensuring that each employee has access to best-in-class training and education is not just a priority, it’s paramount. Walmart’s on a journey to bring VR training to 1 million employees, and early signs are good, with happier employees and more effective education. Join leaders from Walmart, STRIVR and Oculus for an in-depth discussion and insights on everything from design considerations for recreating real-life scenarios to tips for successful deployment at scale.’
Spatial Audio for Oculus Quest and Beyond
Speakers: Tom Smurdon – Audio Content Lead (Oculus), Pete Stirling – Audio Engineer Lead (Oculus)
‘The Oculus Audio SDK provides tools to spatialize audio in VR. We’ll cover how to create high fidelity audio experiences for Oculus Quest and Rift, then go over some more advanced spatial audio features and look at the future technology coming to the Audio SDK.’
Preparing Your App for Launch
Speakers: Peter Greenspan – Developer Strategy (Oculus)
‘Learn best practices to prepare your game, app, or experience to launch on the Oculus Platform. We’ll review how to develop a meaningful launch strategy for your project, key pre-launch action items and timelines, and plans for post-launch maintenance and support. You’ll walk away with some useful tools and resources to help you plan for a smooth launch of your latest product.’
Oculus Go: Developing and Partnering for Mass Market VR
Speakers: Tina Tran – Developer Relations Specialist (Oculus), Melissa Swanepoel – Producer (Farbridge), Paul Raphaël – Co-Founder/Creative Director (Felix & Paul Studios), Ben Samuels – President & GM: North Amera (MelodyVR)
‘Learn how three developers (Felix & Paul, MelodyVR, and FarBridge) design, build, and promote mainstream consumer experiences for Oculus Go. This panel discussion will cover best practices and the significance of developing entertainment and education apps for the mass market.’
Authentically Us: Providing a Platform for Unrepresented Voices in VR
Speakers: Paula Cuneo – Director/Brand & Community Programs (Oculus), Jesse Ayala – Director & Immersive Storyteller (Fovrth Studios), Shannon Scott – President (United Equality Consulting), Jeremiah Allen – Project Director with Pride Foundation (TRANStorm Washington)
‘The team behind “Authentically Us,” a series that invites viewers into the lives of three transgender people, will explore VR’s ability to promote change. The team will discuss tips for creating social good content through VR.’
Creative Ways to Get More Eyes on Your App
Speakers: Caitlin Bigham – Developer Ecosystem (Oculus), Peter Howell – Solo Developer | Lucifer’s Mask (HoneyPixel), Lucas Rizzotto – Creator | Where Thoughts Go, Tess McCrea – Producer (Martov)
‘The VR industry is still in its early days, and distribution can feel like a bit of a black box. What more can you do to get your app discovered after launching it in the Oculus Store? In this series of lightning talks, you’ll hear from Caitlin Bigham (Developer Ecosystem at Oculus) and three Oculus Start members. Each will discuss the tools and strategies they’ve deployed—from film festivals to social media marketing to leveraging past experience in the music industry—in order to drive downloads and build and foster a community of users.’
Using Deep Learning to Create Interactive Actors for VR
Speakers: Kevin He – Founder & CEO (DeepMotion)
‘Physical character interaction is hard to fake–whether it’s between two in-world characters, between users and characters, or between a character or avatar and its environmental surroundings. Nevertheless, interaction is central to user-driven storytelling and building immersive VR and AR experiences that suspend disbelief. DeepMotion will discuss the challenges of, and science behind, building an interactive character authoring tool, as well as how developers can integrate intelligent character simulation into their own experiences.’
Integrating Locomotion in Unity, Unreal, and Native Engines
Speakers: Tom Heath – Developer Relations Engineer (Oculus), Luke Thompson – Director (Sigtrap)
‘Oculus and Sigtrap Games are pleased to announce and provide open source plugins and tools to readily incorporate a range of locomotion comfort techniques into your Unity, Unreal, and native applications. We’ll explain how to easily integrate these solutions, and explain the theory behind why they work.’
Fireside Chat: Creating the Metanarrative of VR with Tender Claws
Speakers: Ichha Arora – Associate Producer (Facebook), Samantha Gorman – Co-Director (Tender Claws)
‘Join us for a chat with Tender Claws, the studio behind Virtual Virtual Reality and PRY for iOS. We’ll hear about their approach to multi-layered interactive narrative and taking cues from other mediums to seamlessly blend story and interactivity.’
Developing Bigscreen for PC and Mobile: Lessons on Cross-Platform Social VR
Speakers: Darshan Shankar – Founder & CEO (BigScreen)
‘Bigscreen is a popular social VR app where people hang out and watch videos together on PC and mobile VR headsets. This session will cover technical and design lessons learned when implementing avatars, environments, UI, and networking for Bigscreen, with an emphasis on Unity and cross-platform VR development. We’ll also share pitfalls and surprising discoveries about porting from Rift to mobile VR.’
Unlock the Visual Potential of VR Using Unity’s Scriptable Render Pipeline
Speakers: Tony Parisi – Global Head of VR/AR Brand Solutions (Unity Technologies), Brad Weiers – AR/VR Technical Product Manager (Unity Technologies)
‘VR’s future is being transformed by stunning visuals and new rendering capabilities made possible by advancements such as Unity’s Scriptable Render Pipeline (SRP). As seen through Unity’s Book of the Dead demo, these technologies are now available in VR for the first time. Unity’s award-winning Demo Team developed Book of the Dead, a first-person interactive demo showcasing the capabilities of Unity 2018 for powering high-end visuals for game productions. In this session, learn how SRP provides enhanced customizability of Unity’s rendering architecture and can put more control in the hands of developers.’
On Creative Development for Emerging Platforms
Speakers: Ruth Bram – Producer (Oculus), Robin Hunicke – Co-Founder (Funomena)
‘In this fireside chat with Funomena’s Designer & CEO Robin Hunicke, we will discuss the lessons she has learned about creative development while working on emerging platforms. We’ll cover everything from working on in-flight hardware and the communication and team cultures required to remain calm in the face of moving targets, to designing for new affordances without leaning on tired UX tropes. Robin will also share about developing a studio that embraces iteration and the ways in which inclusive and diverse hiring helps increase a team’s ability to problem solve under uncertainty and navigate towards blue ocean ideas.’
VR for Everyone: Lessons for Building Compelling Social VR Experiences
Speakers: Cecile Eskenazi – Product Manager (Facebook), Mike LeBeau – Product Manager/Site Lead: London (Oculus), Cody Sumter – Product Manager (Facebook)
‘A series of lightning talks focused on bringing people together and building communities in VR. From helping people express themselves by sharing in new ways, to early lessons from the launch of Oculus Venues, to discovering use cases for VR beyond gaming, Facebook speakers will share their latest and greatest lessons from exploring the frontier of social VR.’
For more coverage on the latest Oculus news and updates, keep checking back with OVRnews. Stay tuned!
