11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
There are many tasks that require collaboration, with participants that are co-located, remote, or mixed. I will present ongoing research at Columbia University that explores how AR and VR can improve communication between collaborating users, increasing how effectively they work together. Domains that I will address range from maintenance and assembly, to rehabilitation, to urban visualization, and also demonstrate the complementary advantages of different kinds of AR and VR displays.
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
LetinAR is a Seoul-based startup developing see-through optical systems for wearable augmented reality devices. Based on our unique pin mirror technology which has quite different approaches from any other existing combiner optics, LetinAR has demonstrated ultrawide field-of-view more than 80 degrees with 8K high resolution. LetinAR also presented a form-factor-oriented glasses prototype device having the same appearance of normal glasses.
In this presentation, we introduce a pin mirror technology and its benefits and contributions to wearable AR hardware including high image quality without any degradation, visual comfort supporting correct vergence and accommodation, wide field-of-view providing immersive experience as well as cost effective manufacturing process.
We believe that the advantages of the pin mirror technology will not only suffice the optical requirements in future AR devices, but also shorten the beginning of AR/VR/MR era.
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
TAFE NSW, Australia’s largest vocational training institute with over 130 campuses. The TAFE NSW Digital Lab are building VR prototypes and exploring the requirements needed to scale this technology across their organisation. Joe Millward will share what the team has discovered in the first 12 months of this journey. This will cover topics including:
• Building early prototypes and considerations needed scale content
• Fostering and developing advocates and early adopters
• Brand and organisation compliance
• Infrastructure and hardware requirements
• Creating content with longevity
• Adopting a comprehensive analytics strategy
• The importance of experimentation
• Planning for the evolution – steps in change management
• Future-proofing, identifying upcoming changes and trends in XR
Joe will breakdown all of the steps the team are going through as they continue this process. This will give you an insight into areas of focus you need to add to your implementation strategy.
Joe will dive into specific projects to dissect how TAFE NSW is preparing these applications for mass consumption. From developing continuity across multiple applications, what data is important to add to your analytics tool to how to maintain design quality.
He will also share lessons the team has learned as they have revised and improved the applications they have developed over the past 12 months. This including interaction design, audio and aesthetic improvements based on user feedback and analytical data.
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM
The recent resurgence of VR is exciting and encouraging because the technology is at a point that it soon will be available to a very large audience of industry sectors and consumer markets. Yet, it has also been a little bit disappointing to see that VR technology is mostly being portrayed in the public eye as the ultimate gaming environment. But, VR is much more than that; for over twenty years virtual reality has been pushing the edge of innovation in engineering, design, training, and many other areas proving itself as a valuable tool to improve, accelerate, and advance processes and product-to-market operations. Furthermore, VR is also much more than goggles; we need to understand what, how, and where users need VR to then select the appropriate VR platform to deliver the applications. For example, during a product design cycle, team reviews and discussions are necessary, so team-enabling virtual reality platforms like large immersive rooms or walls are more effective platforms as the team can simultaneously share the immersive review experience while maintaining the social interactions of a face-to-face meeting. For VR to become the true new innovation engine, the current market (both consumers as well as technology providers) we need to understand that VR has been pushing the edge of innovation for over twenty years and that many of those advances somehow seem lost in today’s frenzy to bring to market “new and innovative” applications. We need to be aware of the challenges in aspects related to creating engaging, effective, and safe VR applications as well as the challenge to differentiate VR professionals from VR amateurs.
This talk will first present a wide perspective of what VR does as an innovation engine, the options we have today to explore virtual spaces to achieve innovation in different industry sectors, and its potential benefits and limitations when it is integrated in a variety of workflows. The speaker will discuss her over 25 years of experiences on developing VR solutions for specific industries that have been critical to accelerate VR technology development and deployment as well as to quickly determine technology development paths that, although exciting or “cool”, may not yield successful practical outcomes. The talk will follow with a discussion of the speaker’s newest work on bringing social VR systems, those that a single platform allows for multiple users, to the consumer market. These types of platforms used to be complex, expensive, and customized systems. Her work is bringing multi-user VR platforms, like projection rooms and walls, to the ease of use and cost to meet the expectations of today’s VR market. She will discuss specific industry cases that she has lead through collaborations with her research centers in which VR has proven its value to enhance productivity and efficiency. The talk will end providing a vision on the future of VR applicability as a force of change in many industry markets and as a result, its potential to become a key innovation engine to improve many aspects of human life.
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM
With 200 million active users and over $20 billion expected market investments by 2020, Virtual Reality (VR) is inevitably making its way into the consumer market.
With the rise of technologies like VR, Augmented Reality (AR) and mixed Reality (MR), collectively known as XR, researchers are expressing concerns about the safety, privacy, ethics and security. Kavya Pearlman, Co-founder of the XR Safety Initiative is working with such researchers to stay ahead of the bad actors, and help establish security and safety standards for XR technologies. XRSI is conducting research, spreading awareness and building information security and policy framework to address concerning in emerging technologies such as XR.
The Talk will walk the audience thru the following:
-What are the potential threats in XR
-Why should we care about XR Safety
-Who all should be concerns
Additionally Pearlman would share high level overview of some recently discovered "novel" cyber attacks in various VR apps and platforms, to demonstrate how XR technologies are absolutely susceptible to hacking and manipulation.
Finally the closing of the talk with -How can any XR stakeholder get involved and make a positive impact via XRSI.
01:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Sports are timeless, yet with each generation, innovation and changing social dynamics alter and enhance how fans experience them. Today, fans are looking for more ways to engage with their favorite sports– they want to analyze, critique and connect with their teams in real time. With widespread technological advances, including connectivity, portability, livestreaming, mobile and social video, sports fans are consuming media in different, evolving ways. Fanbases are more active and influential, and are demanding new and unique experiences. Can Immersive Media Experiences help enable teams, leagues, sponsors and rights-holders to adapt to these wide-ranging changes?