Oculus VR hosts its inaugural Connect developer conference in September. The company has remained quiet about the schedule until recently posting the initial itinerary which features keynotes from John Carmack (CTO), Michael Abrash (Chief Scientist), and Brendan Iribe (CEO), along with a birthday toast for Palmer Luckey (Founder) on the conference’s opening day.
As far as industry conferences go, Connect has a somewhat unique schedule. The event will start on Friday, September 19th (the birthday of Oculus VR Founder Palmer Luckey), where doors will open at 3pm to 8pm, followed by an entire day—8am to midnight—on Saturday, September 20th.
Oculus Connect is a developer focused event which will be held in Los Angeles at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. The company solicited developer registration in July, with tickets running $250. In an interview earlier this month with Road to VR at Gamescom 2014, the company said that nearly all invitations have been sent out.
See Also: Gamescom 2014: Oculus VR Interview – Oculus Connect, DK2 Launch, and Smash Bros. Rivalry
The company recently posted the days’ events on the Oculus Connect website, with some time slots yet to be announced:
Friday, September 19th
5:00 PM – Building the First Rift Development Kit
Nirav Patel, Engineer @ Oculus
5:00 PM – To Be Announced
5:00 PM – To Be Announced
6:00 PM – Welcome Reception
Palmer Luckey, Founder @ Oculus
Please join us for food, drinks, and a birthday toast to Oculus founder, Palmer Luckey. Palmer will share welcome remarks and a quick overview of Connect before we celebrate his birthday and enjoy a drink with fellow attendees. The reception closes at 7:00pm. The Demo Lounge will remain open until 10:00pm.
7:00 PM – Demo Lounge Opens
Share your latest work with fellow developers at the Demo Lounge. This lounge will be open throughout the course of the conference with content to share. There will be a limited number of PCs and DK2s available for use.
Saturday, September 20th
9:30 AM – Keynote by Brendan Iribe
Brendan Iribe, CEO @ Oculus
10:45 AM – Keynote by Michael Abrash
Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist @ Oculus
11:30 AM – Keynote by John Carmack
John Carmack, CTO @ Oculus
12:00 PM – Demo Lounge Opens
1:00 PM – Lunch
2:15 PM – The Future of VR
Moderator: Nate Mitchell, VP Product @ Oculus
An open discussion on the future of virtual reality from some of the leading visionaries in the industry. Questions from the audience and social media via Twitter (#FutureOfVR) will be welcome!
Panel Speakers:
- Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist @ Oculus
- Atman Binstock, Chief Architect @ Oculus
- John Carmack, CTO @ Oculus
- Palmer Luckey, Founder @ Oculus
3:30 PM – Developing for the Rift DK2
Volga Aksoy, Software Engineer @ Oculus & Mike Antonov, Chief Software Architect @ Oculus
This talk is ideal for developers who are looking to utilize the Rift DK2 and the latest Oculus SDK to create better VR experiences. The lecture will focus on the internal implementation details and practical aspects of how new features can be integrated into different game engine architectures, and will also explore more theoretical aspects of technologies still being developed. Focal points will include end-to-end latency tracking, dynamic prediction, judder and latency mitigation strategies, and other visual improvements in the SDK.
3:30 PM – Best Practices for VR Development
Tom Forsyth, Software Architect @ Oculus
Virtual reality is significantly different to monitor-based games in many ways. Many choices that are merely stylistic for traditional games become incredibly important in VR, while others become irrelevant. At Oculus we have collected together our own experiences working on VR titles, and those of other developers working on our platform, and it has taught us a lot of surprising things. Some of these lessons are obvious when looking at the shipped products, but there are many paths explored that ended in failure, and subtleties that were highly complex and absolutely crucial to get right, but may not be apparent when playing the games. In this talk, I’ll focus on a handful of the most important challenges that designers and developers should be considering when exploring virtual reality for the first time.
3:30 PM – Learning from UE4 Engine Integration and Demos
Nick Whiting, Lead Programmer @ Epic Games & Nick Donaldson, Senior Designer @ Epic Games
We’ll give a high-level overview of how we integrated the Oculus Rift hardware into Unreal Engine 4, with a focus on tricks we used to reduce latency and optimize the engine. Additionally, we’ll go through the successes, failures, and learning experiences we’ve had creating VR experiences to premiere Oculus’s prototype hardware.
4:45 PM – Learning from Lucky’s Tale
Paul Bettner, CEO @ Playful Studios & Dan Hurd, Design Director @ Playful Studios
Two years ago we saw the future. Huddled around Palmer’s cluttered desk in 2012, we held a duct-taped device up to our eyes and peered into another world. That moment changed the course of our careers. Soon after, we founded Playful Corp and jumped head-first into the deep end of VR game development. This is our story – from the early days of crazy-rapid prototyping and instant nausea through the ah-ha moment of third-person camera design and the amazing debut of Lucky’s Tale at E3. We’ll show you dozens of prototypes, share our spectacular failures and discuss the surprising successes. Join us for a walkthrough of Lucky’s development and beyond!
4:45 PM – To Be Announced
6:00 PM – To Be Announced
6:00 PM – Introduction Audio for Virtual Reality
Brian Hook, Audio Engineering @ Oculus
6:00 PM – Film and Storytelling in VR
Moderator: Eugene Chung, Director, Film & Media, Oculus
Panel Speakers:
- Robert Stromberg, Director of Maleficent
- Saschka Unseld, Director of The Blue Umbrella
6:00 PM – Demo Lounge Remains Open All Evening
7:00 PM – Closing Night Cocktail Reception and Poolside Party
Please join us poolside to enjoy food, drink, musical entertainment, and great company to discuss the day’s events and the future of virtual reality.
