Agenda

Description

The journey with XREAL Light, XREAL Air and Beyond

Speakers

Chi Xu

CEO , XREAL

Description

Business, social, and educational organizations are just beginning to navigate the
potential of Web 3 for creating communities, including virtual worlds – both screen-based and in virtual reality. And while the drive to develop photorealistic avatars continues, the question of visual biases that persist in our cultures give argument to cases where flexible and individualized avatar design may allow for greater inclusivity, creativity, and engagement. This presentation will touch on current research looking into the opportunities and challenges of avatar design as a tool for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Speakers

Donna Davis

Dir., Oregon Reality (OR) Lab , Univ. of Oregon

Description

In this exciting panel we will be talking to the game legends, Survios, about how they collaborated with Qualcomm and T-Mobile to develop the next generation of AR gaming with the Puzzle Bobble game.

We will explore how Survios utilized the Snapdragon Spaces platform to develop and deliver an outstanding demo of Puzzle Bobble. What game mechanics were used and how the platform was utilized. What considerations made this IP attractive for developing on the Snapdragon Spaces platform.

We will hear from an expert from Qualcomm on the features of the Snapdragon Spaces platform that were used.

We will also hear from T-Mobile’s XR lead, Cerilenne Menendez Mendoza about how connectivity and the T-mobile network has powered this 5G XR game.

Speakers

Kathy Braegger

Director, Business Development , Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Louisa Spring

Senior Manager Innovation & Strategy , T-Mobile

Alex Silkin

Co-Founder & CTO , Survios

Cerilenne Menendez Mendoza

XR Lead , T-Mobile

Description

AR, VR, and mixed reality (MR) are already having a positive impact on the next generation of healthcare, including mental health. While some applications focus on education or training, others are helping patients directly, bringing comfort to the healing process. Every day, creators and companies are building real-time 3D projects that push the boundaries of the real world into the virtual and develop applications with the potential to change lives for the better.

Unity’s Vice President of Social Impact, Jessica Lindl will interview three creators about how their work is making a positive impact on individuals and patients dealing with challenging issues. Specifically, hear from:

Lindsay Watson Co-founder of Augment Therapy, an AR experience that turns children’s physical therapy into a game. Augment Therapy makes physical therapy software that is both fun for kids and effective for clinicians. The AR experience is designed to help children in hospitals, often those with cancer and intense pain, get out of bed to conduct physical therapy and ultimately become well enough to go home. https://augmenttherapy.com/

Dr. Joanneke Weerdmeester, a behavioral scientist working with Explore Deep, the company behind DEEP - a meditative VR experience controlled by breathing. DEEP has been created as an intervention tool for people with anxiety and research is now being expanded to explore how DEEP can support people with trauma, PTSD, functional disorders, long COVID, and youth in forensic care.

Carrie Shaw, MS, is a medical illustrator, public health educator, and CEO & Founder of Embodied Labs, an immersive caregiver training platform for students, healthcare workforce and informal caregivers who are caring for the aging population. Carrie's mission is to accelerate global behavior change for healthier aging at scale by positively impacting the health of self and others through immersive learning experiences. https://www.embodiedlabs.com/

Speakers

Joanneke Weerdmeester

Behavioral Scientist , Explore Deep

Carrie Shaw

CEO & Founder , Embodied Labs

Lindsay Watson

Co-Founder / CEO , Augment Therapy

Jessica Lindl

VP of Social Impact , Unity

Description

In this thought provoking talk we follow the story of John Henry, a character known for his incredible strength and stamina, as he competes against a steam drill powered by artificial intelligence in a high-stakes race to build AI powered XR applications, platforms and even reshape society.

Together we probe critical questions on AI generation of art, music, code, and more.

1. How do these AI tools affect XR creation?
2. What new kinds of applications and services do AI tools unlock?
3. How does AI support new opportunities to scale?
4. What are new kinds of AI enabled business models?
5. What concerns should we have about the rapid deployment of AI to change society?

ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Copilot, Lensa, and 3D XR Asset Creation are just the beginning.

Will AI eat our reality?

Join us as we consider the age-old question of what happens when technology surpasses humanity's abilities in the race to build a new XR reality and how it fundamentally changes our existing one.

Speakers

Nicole Lazzaro

President , Xeodesign Inc

Description

Coming Soon!

Speakers

Shelley Peterson

Founder | XR Industry Pioneer , Wizard Wells

Alex Goldberg

Administrator - XR Systems , Blue Origin

Paul Davies

Technical Fellow , The Boeing Company

Lauren Marble

Solutions Architect , Amazon Web Services

Description

Magic Leap CEO Peggy Johnson will discuss Magic Leap 2, the traction enterprise AR is experiencing in the market and be joined on stage by a few special guests to talk about the enterprise AR ecosystem.

Speakers

Peggy Johnson

Chief Executive Officer , Magic Leap

Maret Thatcher

CEO , Argyle.build

Kimberly Powell

VP Healthcare , NVIDIA

Description

Immersive technology is rapidly evolving, and AR/VR developers must collectively update our design standards. When innovative XR developers create new interactive functionality, those features become adopted across the industry as XR Design Standards. As technology for hand-tracking improves, we will continue to see an evolution of gesture controls and tools.
This session will offer a deep-dive into some of the best interactive features found in XR games and utility experiences. From the "lasso grab" feature in Half Life: Alyx, to the amazing suite of gesture controls in Hand Physics Lab, we will explore best practices for building and maintaining modular tools for designing interactive XR experiences.

Speakers

Finn Staber

CEO , Chicken Waffle

Description

Coming Soon!

Speakers

Ori Inbar

Co-Founder , AWE and Super Ventures

Description

Showcasing the importance of a 3D real-time visualization to improve your workflow in different industries.

Speakers

Thaisa Yamamura

Head of Business Development , Sony

Description

Following the WebXR Summit Series, Meet The Makers moves past the “what and the how”, to focus on the “Who” of the Metaverse; the people building it. This session will debut the new series pilot that featuring interviews that are both personal and technical with World Builder Artsy Marie, XR Engineer Ben Ferns, Generative AI Expert, Author Evo Heyning. Live in person, the team that executed the first volumetric live streamed red carpet and awards presentation at the 3rd Poly Awards, will discuss how they pulled off using Scatter’s Depthkit volume at ZeroSpace to put hosts and guests into the Polys Red Carpet Theater built by Cause+Christi.

Speakers

Julie Smithson

Co-Founder & COO , MetaVRse

Elena Piech

XR Producer , ZeroSpace

Christi Fenison

Co-Founder , Cause + Christi: Immersive XR Design

Austin Cause Caine

Co-Creator , Cause + Christi: Immersive XR Design

Ben Erwin

Creator , The Polys - WebXR Awards

James George

CEO & Co-Founder , Scatter

Description

From 2005 onwards, Forklift University has been at the forefront of training people in Powered Industrial Trucks (PITs). They do both OSHA-compliant training and issue OSHA certificates.

The brain retains more information from real-life experiences. The millennial generation requires training that captivates and teaches in a more visual manner. So, Forklift University needed a captivating solution for Gen Z while being user-friendly and adaptive for Gen Y to the boomers.

Also, when it comes to PITs training, safety is of utmost importance, followed by cost. They needed a solution that would enable their users to learn the dos and don’ts of forklift driving in a reasonably realistic warehouse setting.

Travancore Analytics (TA) has been a critical player in the extended reality domain. When Forklift University approached TA with the problem, TA suggested a combination of Metaverse and VR to achieve the intended needs. TA created a realistic warehouse and sit-down forklift using 3D software. The same was incorporated into a complex, yet user-friendly application developed using Unity. The application works in conjunction with HTC VIVE Pro 2, a VR head-mounted device. The combination allows the user to drive a virtual forklift in a virtual
environment and undertake training curated with OSHA guidelines in mind. With various training modules of varying degrees of difficulty and functionality, Forklift University can provide its users with close-to real-life forklift training with complete safety. With VR technology, we can create multiple PITs training software under various environments that replicate real-life challenges and incorporate several features that, in turn, develop more in-depth training software.

Speakers

Steve Drake

President , Forklift University

Anwer Sadath K K

VP - Engineering , Travancore Analytics

Description

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already having a significant influence on the Metaverse and the intersection of AI and the Metaverse will become increasingly evident as AI evolves and the Metaverse grows.

AI can be used to create more realistic and engaging experiences in virtual worlds, intelligent avatars that can engage with users in a more natural way, and personalized content in real-time. All of this can improve the overall experience for users. Furthermore, AI can be used to create more efficient and scalable infrastructure for the Metaverse, enabling more users to participate and interact with each other.

However, there will be challenges as well, such as biases in algorithms that perpetuate harmful stereotypes, false or manipulated content leading to misinformation, and questions about privacy and security.

This expert panel will discuss the issues and how AI might potentially transform how we interact with others in immersive spaces.

Speakers

Kent Bye

Producer , Voices of VR Podcast

Amy LaMeyer

Managing Partner , WXR Fund

Tony Parisi

CPO , Lamina1

Alvin Graylin

Global VP of Corporate Development , HTC

Description

The term “metaverse” has become the latest corporate buzzword, but how will virtual reality truly integrate into our professional lives?

To answer this question, think back to the late 90s: commercial internet access shrunk the world and established a new playing field for companies to facilitate team interaction, marketing, and product distribution.

Today, executives have a similar opportunity to transform their business’ operations and engage with customers in an immersive environment via the metaverse.

Opening up endless possibilities for communication, collaboration, morale and workplace culture, VR enables coworkers to catch up, watch a presentation, and brainstorm in an array of immersive settings without ever leaving home.

Join Andrew Hawken, CEO and Co-Founder of Mesmerise, and Leslie Marshall, Chief Marketing Officer at Mesmerise, as they discuss how companies can embrace VR for enhanced hybrid work environments. They'll also address the practicality of the medium and current tech limitations.

Speakers

Dan Donovan

Head of Customer Solutions , Mesmerise

Leslie Marshall

Chief Marketing Officer , Mesmerise

Description

At last year’s AWE, leaders of key standards development organizations (SDOs) and industry consortia including the Khronos Group, W3C, OpenAR Cloud, and ASWF discussed the need for more cross-organization collaboration to pave the way for an open, inclusive metaverse. It wasn’t just talk: these organizations have now come together along with hundreds of other SDOs, companies, and academic institutions to form the Metaverse Standards Forum, a venue for cooperation among metaverse stakeholders to foster the development of interoperability standards. The Forum has begun engaging in pragmatic, short-term projects like building a standards registar, coordinating use cases and requirements for input into SDOs, and creating interoperability prototypes, with more to come.

In this panel, leaders of Metaverse Standards Forum member organizations will discuss the interoperability challenges the group is prioritizing today, and how the forum is working to accelerate solutions. Attendees will gain insight into the nuances of topics including 3D asset interoperability; digital fashion; real/virtual world integration; and privacy, cybersecurity, and identity. The panel will explore current possibilities, challenges, and limitations within these domains, and discuss how attendees can contribute to the formation of an open metaverse.

Speakers

Neil Trevett

President , Khronos Group

Anshel Sag

Principal Analyst , Moor Insights & Strategy

Elizabeth Rothman

Advisor , XR Safety Initiative

Kavya Pearlman

Founder & CEO , XR Safety Initiative

Description

The grand challenge of the 21st Century is to create socially and ethically adept hybrid networks of humans and machines. The augmentation of human abilities and global ecological systems will play a critical role in our future. AI agents are already deeply integrated into society and integral to many activities from dating, driving, coding, to policing and Large Language Models and Multimodal AI have already changed the way we communicate, work, and play. But, while Augmented Ecologies are now reaching beyond industry experts and scientists to the rest of us with generative AI, these new hybrid ecologies between humans and machines will diminish individual human autonomy and agency if we do not empower people to create, manage and participate in them. This panel will look at this grand challenge for the future of an Augmented World!

Speakers

Anselm Hook

CTO , MorpheusXR

David A. Smith

CTO, Founder , Croquet

Sean White

Founder , Three Dog Labs

Tish Shute

Co-Founder , AWE

Description

Realistic-looking materials are essential to creating virtual worlds that are tactile and inviting. Creating believable materials for 3D objects is a complex problem with several approaches, many of which are either prohibitively difficult to master or unsuited for transmission over the web. Over the past decade, however, Physically Based Rendering (PBR) has emerged as an artist-friendly, intuitive, expressive, and robust technique for adding material attributes to 3D objects.

As part of its stewardship of the glTF standard, the file format known as the “JPEG of 3D,” The Khronos Group has created formal specification extensions for a variety of PBR materials. In this session, members of the 3D formats working group will present the latest waves of PBR extensions, explaining what they can achieve and best practices for using them to create 3D assets. They’ll also discuss how to test for model performance consistency across 3D viewers.

Speakers

Emmett Lalish

Staff Software Engineer , Google

Leonard Daly

President , Daly Realism

Sandra Voelker

Retail Emerging Technology Automation Engineer , Consultant

Ashleigh Miller

3D SME / Generalist , Amazon

Description

Facial. Vocal. Verbal. Human conversations are complex. Many factors are at work when we speak, including our facial expressions, tone of voice and word choice. Today, companies are operating in a more globalized and virtualized world than ever before. It can be challenging to accurately understand the conversations needed to establish business-critical relationships. The stakes are high – reading a situation incorrectly can lead to miscommunication, confusion and ultimately, the erosion of trust.

Leveraging machine learning algorithms that draw from an ever-expanding database of emotional cues, Multimodal Emotional AI fuses data from all modalities (face, voice, words) together, helping to overcome the relationship challenge. By capturing the complex messages conveyed through emotional cues, we’re now able to identify key moments that influence sentiment and engagement as well as emotional intelligence (EQ) factors that build trust and empathy. It’s like having a coach sensing even the most subtle emotions in the room and making real-time recommendations on how to create the best possible human connection.

Drawing on real-world examples, Umesh Sachdev, Co-founder and CEO of Uniphore will describe how behavioral science and Emotional AI are helping to close the divide between humans and machines to drive deep and meaningful connections built on trust. Umesh will also discuss the potential applications for this technology and how it is being used to derive value from critical conversations across the enterprise.

And, make every conversation count.

Speakers

Umesh Sachdev

Co-Founder and CEO , Uniphore

Description

XR is at the heart of industry, education, health, and social networks. The development of immersive technology will only be successful if it is created by a diverse workforce, empowered to create an XR that represents that experience of all people. As our world is transformed by the prospect of XR, employment opportunities abound for people of all levels of education and experience.

**XR Impact**

Speakers

Naria Santa Lucia

GM, Digital Inclusion & Community Engagement , Microsoft

Kathryn White

Assoc. Dir., Metaverse Continuum Business Group , Accenture

Elizabeth Hyman

CEO , XR Association

Jessica Lindl

VP of Social Impact , Unity

Description

Coming Soon!

Speakers

William Tustin

CFO , Chicken Waffle

Bob Cooney

Author , The Being Virtual Show with Bob Cooney

Chanel Summers

VP Product Development , VRstudios

Jonathan Nowak Delgado

CEO and Co-Founder , Spree Interactive