The Inaugural Unity Vision VR/AR Summit is taking place in Los Angeles this week. The event will feature dozens of panels, demos and announcements from major names in the virtual reality scene. The show will begin with keynote addresses from giants such as Palmer Luckey, Gabe Newell and others. The complete list of keynote speakers is below:
John Riccitiello
CEO, Unity Technologies
Joachim Ante
CTO, Unity Technologies
Alex McDowell
Creative Director, 5D Global Studio
Dr. Jeff Norris
Mission Operations Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Clay Bavor
VP of Virtual Reality, Google
Dr. Richard Marks
Director of Playstation Magic Lab, Sony
Palmer Luckey
Founder, Oculus
Gabe Newell
Valve
Big Things To Come?
The trio of Luckey (Oculus Rift), Newell (SteamVR) and Marks (PlayStation VR) is especially of note considering their respective companies are releasing competing VR platforms. Joined by people such as Google’s VP of virtual reality and one of NASA’s leading VR innovators, the event will join together some of the most important people in the budding industry.
The VR engine wars are starting to heat up. Last week Epic Games announced it will be launching a suite of in-VR development tools allowing creators to make their experiences with the complete Unreal interface without taking off their headsets. If Unity has been preparing a similar system then this conference would be the perfect place to unveil it. With two VR-specific editors being released into the wild, the arms race to win over the hearts and minds of the world’s most capable developers will truly begin.
The VR convention scene is growing quickly. Long running events like VRLA are becoming more significant and newer events like the Vision Summit are debuting as well. There are more chances than ever for industry elites in VR technology, hardware, and software to communicate directly with the scene’s growing fan base. General events like CES and E3 are still filled with VR news, but these industry-specific events are definitely worth following as they continue to rise in prestige. Keep checking UploadVR throughout the week — especially on Wednesday and Thursday — as we deliver updates.
