12:50 PM - 01:45 PM
Athena Demos | Big Rock Creative
Justin Barnett | CyberHub Syndicate
How do you overcome the challenges and benefits of building your own social VR community? Join this expert panel, including VR Dev YouTubers, BCVR (Burning Man VR) World Builders, passionate VR Community organizers, and global management firm employees using VR, as they answer that question and explore how to create a positive experience for users, community managers, and world builders while avoiding the drawbacks of walled gardens like data collection, lack of ownership, and arbitrary limitations and rules. Don't miss this insightful discussion on the future of the open Metaverse!
01:00 PM - 01:25 PM
Coming Soon!
01:30 PM - 01:55 PM
A fireside chat with LAMINA1 CEO Rebecca Barkin and Odeon Theatrical CEO Stephanie Riggs on the unique challenges of concepting, designing, and delivering moving and intuitive experiences in immersive mediums. We’ll dive deep into the design challenges stifling Web3 and the development of thriving open virtual worlds, as well as large-scale interactive experience design, and practical strategies for creating meaningful interaction that invites mainstream adoption.
02:00 PM - 02:25 PM
The increasing popularity of XR applications is driving the media industry to explore the creation and delivery of new immersive experiences, while pushing engineers and inventors to address the challenges of real video content manipulation. Considering this reality, the talk will discuss these challenges and introduce key technologies that leverage open standards to enable large scale distribution of new immersive experiences.
A volumetric video is comprised of a sequence of frames, and each frame is a static 3D representation of a real-world object or scene capture at a different point in time. Volumetric video is bandwidth-heavy content that can be presented as dynamic point clouds, multi-view plus depth, or multi-plane image representations.
These bandwidth requirements can be achieved through dedicated compression schemes that produce data rates and files sizes that are economically viable in the industry. Standards play a crucial role in ensuring interoperability across these different types of content and experiences, and this talk will spotlight the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Visual Volumetric Video-based Coding (V3C) standard as an open standard solution for efficient streaming of volumetric video.
To enrich XR experiences, inventors and industry must synchronize to create and distribute additional media
and interactions mechanisms alongside all the volumetric video components. In fact, the MPEG-I Haptics and MPEG-I Scene description standards are currently under development and will soon propose solutions to industry.
From the perspective of real content creation, it remains challenging but crucial to enable technologies that cover 3D capturing, calibration, depth processing, format conversion, transmission, and rendering. This session will explore two creation pipelines that leverage the aforementioned standard codecs: (1) a real-time pipeline for telepresence using depth and color cameras; (2) an offline pipeline for sports and media applications using color cameras and prior geometric information.
02:30 PM - 03:15 PM
John Gaeta is the legendary creator best known for his Academy Award-winning work on the original Matrix Trilogy and creator of Bullet Time. John, now Chief Creative Officer of Inworld AI will talk alongside Chief Product Officer and Inworld Co-Founder Kylan Gibbs about their incredible new concept demo. Called ‘Origins’, the demo allows players to take on the role of a detective in a sci-fi world. Using your mic, you’re tasked with questioning witnesses, uncovering the narrative, and cracking the case. All of the NPCs use generative AI to create dynamic conversations, meaning you can ask them whatever you like, and the NPCs will react accordingly - whilst staying in character. John and Kylan will give you an insight into this fascinating new technology, set to revolutionize games and immersive media
03:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Join us for an enlightening fireside chat featuring Paul Raphael, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of the Emmy-winning Felix & Paul Studios.
In conversation with Amy Jupiter, a renowned Creative Producer, VFX Supervisor, Experience Designer, and Disney Imagineer. Paul will delve into the theme: "Lessons Learned from Pioneering Presence-Based VR Storytelling." This is an opportunity for anyone eager to learn from the masters of immersive experiences.
Over the past 10 years, Felix & Paul Studios has pushed boundaries and achieved numerous milestones in the VR industry, including the creation of the first-ever VR film, Strangers with Patrick Watson.
Gain a better understanding about the past, present, and future of VR narrative experiences from the studio that has created dozens of productions that have transported audiences to places usually reserved for a select few, such as a limo ride alongside rapper Eminem in Marshall from Detroit, a tour of the White House with the Obamas in The People’s House, and traveling and living in outer space with the award-winning Space Explorers series developed in partnership with NASA.
Their recent venture, the next-generation VR location-based experience, Space Explorers – THE INFINITE, continues to push the boundaries of what's possible in immersive storytelling for a wide audience.
Paul will share insights gleaned from these projects and discuss the creative and technical evolution the studio has undergone over the last decade with a look to the future. Guided by Amy Jupiter's expertise, the conversation will unpack the nuances of VR storytelling and its potential to transform the way we engage with narratives across touchpoints including, immersive installations and events, theme parks, and public spaces.
This talk promises to be a deep dive into the potential of VR, full of practical insights and creative inspiration. Don't miss this chance to learn from the pioneer who continues to be at the forefront of the VR storytelling revolution.