Agenda

Description

Since 2010, AWE’s mission has been to shepherd the AR and VR (XR) industry into the mainstream; we strive to showcase the best of the best - thought leaders, practitioners, startups, and leading corporations. For the next decade our aspiration is to continue to work with you to guide the industry into becoming an essential part of our lives and work.
In his welcome keynote address, the co-founder of AWE will envision the Spatial World of 2030.
If we know where we are going, we have more confidence in taking the first step.

Speakers

Ori Inbar

Co-Founder , AWE and Super Ventures

Description

The flat web is evolving to become spatial. With standards and browser updates gradually being rolled out and development platforms now available to enable WebAR and WebVR experiences - we are witnessing the rise of the Immersive Web. What is the state of the Immersive web today? What needs to happen to fully usher it in? And what role does it play in our Augmented and Virtual futures? Join Erik Murphy-Chutorian, CEO and Founder of 8th Wall, the leading development platform for reality content on the web, as he shines a light on the massive opportunity of WebAR and WebVR.

Speakers

Erik Murphy-Chutorian

Founder & CEO , 8th Wall

Description

The latest race in build-once deploy everywhere frameworks is happening around the world of XR. Several frameworks promise to support both AR and VR experiences. The current leading frameworks are MRTK, XRTK and the Unity XR SDK.
In this talk, I will address the three most common questions that developers are asking about these frameworks:
Which XR framework should you choose?
What are the differences?
Why do you even need a framework?
Is this a case where eventually one framework will rule them all? Or will we continue to see the proliferation of more and more specialized frameworks?

Speakers

James Ashley

Senior XR Consultant , Project Archer

Description

Said Bakadir, Director, Product Management in XR will talk about the current XR landscape. He will also talk about existing technology trends and requirements and of those in the near future that will need to be addressed in order to continue to grow both the enterprise and consumer XR industries.

Speakers

Said Bakadir

Sr. Director, Product Management , Qualcomm

Description

There is no design standard of interaction for virtual reality which makes it difficult to create intuitive experiences. We will go through use cases based on our learnings at LiveLike building apps for broadcasters to watch live sports events with friends and fans.

Speakers

Jeremie Lasnier

Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer , LiveLike

Description

The digital revolution has changed every aspect of our lives, the very essence of how we live, work and play. It's defied predictions of visionaries and techno prophets where instead of creating an alternative cyber space parallel to our reality, the opposite is happening: information is no longer confined to the pixels on our screens. The entire physical world -- even living and breathing matter -- is being infused with data, demanding new, unprecedented forms of interactivity.

In this talk, Ivan Poupyrev will discuss his explorations of the present and the future where technology, connectivity and intelligence are woven into the very fabric of our lives. He will outline his vision of the world as an interface where everything is connected and interactive, viewed through a lens of projects that cover over 20 years of research and that spans and connects a variety of fields from augmented and virtual reality, haptics and touch interfaces, to radars, smart fabrics and interactive living plants. The talk will present his most recent explorations in creating future ambient computing environments: development of a pico-radar for awareness and touchless gesture interaction (Project Soli), and designing a platform for manufacturing interactive, connected soft goods at scale (Project Jacquard).

Speakers

Ivan Poupyrev

Director of Engineering, ATAP , Google

Description

Join Dave Bushore (Executive Producer, Marvel Studios), Vicki Dobbs Beck (Executive in Charge, ILMxLAB), and Michael Koperwas (Visual Director, ILMxLAB), as they share how Marvel Studios and ILMxLAB expanded and allowed fans to step into the Marvel Cinematic Universe through Avengers: Damage Control. They'll discuss how they brought immersion, developing for an interactive space, and the unique wish fulfillment opportunities and experiences that location-based entertainment offers to Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Speakers

Vicki Dobbs Beck

Executive in Charge , ILMxLAB

Michael Koperwas

Visual Director , ILMxLAB

Dave Bushore

VP, Franchise Creative & Marketing , Marvel Studios

Description

This talk will present a few use cases from Dr. Jayaram’s work at Intel, start-ups, and university to discuss some of the technology and business aspects of bringing VR to two different audiences – 1) to an end-consumer in sports and concerts, and 2) to enterprises for engineering design and manufacturing. What are the challenges in delivering VR based experiences and solutions at scale? What does it mean to weave them into the “normal” way of doing things to arrive at a new normal where VR is a mundane, predictable, and a regular part of entertainment and work?

Speakers

Uma Jayaram

Managing Director and Principal Engineer , Intel

Description

The new medium of immersive computing offers so much opportunities for expression, and at the same time puts creatives in a tricky spot when they have to consider all the parameters that is beyond their control. When every users have different ergonomic and environmental preferences, it's important for us to design and build dynamic experiences that fits into the audience's context. We will explore why proceduralism and machine learning play a crucial role in growing content and experiences in the new spatial medium. Followed up with examples and case studies, we will review the insights and lesson learnt on how to use technology to augment new forms of hardware input and creative directions.

Speakers

Agatha Yu

Senior Design Manager: 3D & Mixed Reality , Adobe

Description

From black and white to color, and desktop to mobile, our electronic devices are visual mediums that have rapidly evolved and advanced over the past century. New device technologies continue to add clarity and mobility, enhancing our viewing experience to be more convenient and closer to our reality. Today, more than ever, these devices have become indispensable information vehicles that are ingrained into every aspect of our daily lives.
The average person is now so acclimated to having these thousands of digital interactions each day, they’re hungry for a more immersive experience. They’re ready for the next medium that will seamlessly enhance their lives and bridge the gap between real life and technology (without a headset). They’re ready for light fields.
In this talk, David will discuss Lightfield as the next generation medium. He will explain how this emerging technology provides users with a fully interactive, lifelike viewing experience by rendering images and videos with 3D depth, and complex, realistic light effects such as sparkles, texture and highlights. He will also discuss how this type of technology will change the game for businesses by empowering them to provide end-users with more immersive and engaging experiences across industries including auto, retail, medical and education.

Speakers

David Fattal

CTO , Leia Inc

Description

ThinVR is an approach to simultaneously provide wide FOV and a compact form factor in a near-eye VR display, through the combination of heterogeneous lenslets and curved displays. This is a research effort and is not currently the basis of a commercial product. In this presentation, I will explain the basics of this approach and show photos and videos shot from working prototypes that prove this approach works. This talk centers around the design process and fabrication challenges we had to overcome to successfully build working prototypes.

Speakers

Santiago Alfaro

Research Scientist , Intel

Description

Coming soon...

Speakers

Bob Fine

Executive Director , IVRHA

Description

Since the mid-1990s, a significant scientific literature has evolved regarding the mental/physical health outcomes from the use of what we now refer to as Clinical Virtual Reality (VR). While the preponderance of clinical work with VR has focused on building immersive virtual worlds for treating anxiety disorders with exposure therapy, providing distracting immersive experiences for acute pain management, and supporting physical/cognitive rehabilitation with game-based interactive content, there are other emerging areas that have extended the impact of VR in healthcare. One such area involves the evolution of conversational virtual human (VH) agents. This has been driven by seminal research and development leading to the creation of highly interactive, artificially intelligent and natural language capable VHs that can engage real human users in a credible fashion. No longer at the level of a prop to add context or minimal faux interaction in a virtual world, VH representations can now be designed to perceive and act in a 3D virtual world, engage in face-to-face spoken dialogues with real users, and in some cases, can exhibit human-like emotional reactions. This presentation will provide a brief rationale and overview of research that has shown the benefits derived from the use of virtual humans in healthcare applications. Research will be detailed reporting positive outcomes from studies using VHs in the role of virtual patients for training novice clinicians, as job interview/social skill trainers for persons on the autism spectrum, and as online healthcare support agents with university students and military Veterans. The computational capacity now exists to deliver similar VH interactions by way of mobile device technology. This capability can support the “anywhere/anytime” availability of VH characters as agents for engaging users with healthcare information and could provide opportunities for improving access to care and emotional support for a wide range of wellness and clinical applications for a variety of populations. This work will be discussed along with a look into the future of this next major movement in Clinical VR.

For more information on this topic, please visit our website: http://medvr.ict.usc.edu/ and YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AlbertSkipRizzo/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=1

Speakers

Skip Rizzo

Director, Medical Virtual Reality , Institute for Creative Technologies

Description

Through my personal journey, the context of the Hispanic population, and having VR Americas as a signatory of the Hispanic Promise, I want to show why the corporations and technology companies should consider this audience as a critical talent source. We account for more than 18.1% of the U.S. population, $2.13 trillion of GDP, 46% of employment growth. Hispanic talent is a great opportunity and a good business for the companies interested in producing and using Exponential Technologies.

Speakers

Rosario B. Casas

CoFounder & CEO , VR Americas LLC

Description

In an ideal world, we would coexist seamlessly with technology, without screens as barriers. Projection mapping is the versatile engine that could power a future where isolating, screen-based experiences transform into communal, interactive ones. In this session, we will discuss the existing role of projected augmented reality, what we believe the near future holds for a blooming immersive industry, and how we at Wayfair are exploring new XR experiences to redefine the way customers shop for the home.

Speakers

Nicole Tan

Creative Technologist , Wayfair