Dr. Jason Jerald, Principle Consultant
NextGen Interactions

Creating compelling VR applications is an incredibly complex challenge. When done well, these experiences can be brilliant and pleasurable, but when done badly, they can result in frustration and sickness. Whereas limitations of technology can cause bad VR execution, problems are oftentimes caused by a lack of understanding human perception, interaction, design principles, and real users. This session focuses on the human elements of VR, such as how users perceive and intuitively interact with various forms of reality, causes of VR sickness, creating useful and pleasing content, and how to design and iterate upon effective VR applications.

Jan Nordmann, Senior Director Business Development, New Media
Fraunhofer USA Digital Media Technologies Division

Audio is at least 50% of the VR experience, if the audio illusion breaks, so does VR, if its done right, the result is full immersion. The workshop will discuss challenges and opportunities for audio on VR from content production to distribution to rendering over headphones. Real-world examples will highlight current VR experiences that used advanced audio for new forms of story-telling and in addition, the workshop will look at future trends in immersive and interactive audio for VR.

Ben Miller, Director of Content Development
WEVR

While a great deal of attention is invested in how virtual reality looks, there is equal importance in the user can interact with it and its virtual environments.

This workshop will talk about input control and WEVR’s experiences with the HTC Vive input controllers.

James Stewart, Founder,
Geneva Film Company

With the medium being the message, it’s important to understand the nuances of stereoscopic 3D and 360° content creation.

Through experience, James will highlight the nuances that have helped him produce effective immersive stories and experiences.

• Neil Schneider. The ITA
• Martin Lord, OCE

• Sasa Marinkovic, AMD

AMD’s graphics processors are core to consoles likes the Sony PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.  They are also one of the leading graphics card and CPU manufacturers.

This session will talk about the market potential of virtual reality and its strategic importance to the industry at large.

• Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo

Virtual Reality has existed for decades and there have been earlier consumer movements with this technology.  This session will compare then and now and highlight why the modern era of VR is different.

• Jon Peddie, Jon Peddie Research

While virtual reality and augmented reality devices like head mounted displays and glasses are all the buzz, it’s important to see actual market trends and insights with a bird’s eye view.  Dr. Peddie will give a tour of where he thinks things are headed and why.

• Sean Peasgood, Sophic Capital

With the collapse of commodity prices, institutional investors have turned to technology investments to bolster returns. Although virtual and augmented reality are nascent industries from a public capital markets perspective, investor interest is increasing. Sophic Capital will provide an overview of the market size, expectations and opportunities as well as how public and private VR and AR companies should navigate the capital markets to achieve their growth financing requirements.

• Moderator: Alex Davies, Tom’s Hardware
• Sasa Marinkovic, AMD
• Arto Ruotsalainen, Basemark
• Jon Peddie, Jon Peddie Research

While experiencing virtual reality is impressive, understanding what makes it work is even more impressive.  Each panelist represents a unique facet of the market: graphics and CPU chip maker, a benchmarking expert that ensures everything is performing to spec, and one of the world’s top analysts with a bird’s eye view of where things are headed.

• Moderator: Jason Jerald, Nextgen Interactions
• Jan Nordmann, Fraunhofer
• Mary Spio, Next Galaxy Corp.

Audio is easily the most under-represented component in virtual and augmented reality, and yet it’s undeniably important.  Top experts will discuss applicable audio technologies for VR and the ramifications moving forward.

• Phil Chen, Chief Content Officer, HTC

While HTC is primarily known or their roots in the mobile phone world, their interests and activities are far more diverse.  In addition to learning more about HTC’s rich history and how their work has impacted our day to day, we will learn about their interests in virtual reality and what their hopes and dreams are for the not too distant future.

• Ricardo Laganaro, O2 Filmes

The Museum of Tomorrow is a brand new museum in Rio de Janeiro.  Part of this museum is an immersive recreation of human history.  O2 Filmes will talk about this ambitious artistic endeavor.

• Kharis O’Connell, HUMAN

The study of Human-Computer Interaction has been around for longer than twenty years, and has seen the rise of smartphones, the demise of personal computers and the current move toward body worn devices such as smartwatches, VR and AR. With this evolution of form, we require new ways to interact with these systems. New ways to operate with virtual realms. In this talk we go on a design-focused journey that culminates in a rethink of the relationship with our own form, and shows the potential ways we can engage and assimilate these new interactions and behaviours to open up a new paradigm in computing.

• Resh Sidhu, Framestore

Framestore is a leading visual effects studio, and they most recently developed the Avengers 2 360-degree marketing trailer which featured a VR inspired battle scene in Tony Stark’s office.  This presentation will highlight Framestore’s interest in VR and where things are headed in immersive story telling.

• Moderator: Neil Schneider, ITA
• Phil Chen, HTC
• Richard Marks, Sony PlayStation
• Sasa Marinkovic, AMD
• Andrew McGovern, IM360

Featuring the industry’s leaders in HMDs, video game consoles, graphics processing, and immersive cinema, this panel will highlight the exciting future and upcoming challenges in driving the immersive industry forward.

• Prof. Michael Page, OCADU

The next generation of holo-video and high quality, direct-write holographic techniques will aid doctors, medical workers, students and diagnosticians in understanding complex medical conditions and perhaps even save lives.
In the early 1900’s in Canada, many of the medical textbooks used were illustrated by graduates of OCA’s (now OCAD University) Medical Illustration Program.

Professor Page and workers from the PHASE Lab will be showing examples of digital holographic imagery and projecting the future of medical imaging using a newly developed holographic technology.

• Richard Marks, Sony PlayStation Magic Lab

Dr. Marks has been involved with nearly every step of Sony Computer Entertainments’ interest in immersive technology.  Dr. Marks will highlight Sony Playstation VR’s initiatives and share personal insights through his personal journey at Sony.

• Srinivas Krishna, AWE Company Ltd.

As visitors walk across the nine acre grounds of the Fort in downtown Toronto, they experience key events in the story of the city, spanning three centuries, all in less than two hours. Srinivas Krishna will share the epic tale of how this, the largest AR/VR experience of its kind in the world, came to be, from the initial pitch through its various prototypes and iterations, to the development of patent pending technologies and the production of immersive historical recreations, to the final tour that has launched this Fall. You can preview the experience for free, 10 am and 1:30 pm daily at the Fort, through October 30th.

• Jose Luis Navarro, InMediaStudio

It’s becoming more and more popular for movies to have virtual reality tie-ins to help exemplify the excitement these films have to offer.  InMediaStudio co-developed the Mission Impossible 5 and Tomorrowland VR experiences.  These case studies and more will be highlighted to showcase how close theatrical cinema and virtual reality are quickly becoming.

• Moderator: Lucas Cochran, Discovery Channel
• Dario Laverde, HTC
• Ben Miller, WEVR
• Guillaume Gouraud, Starbreeze Studios
• Richard Marks, Sony Computer Entertainment

Video games are highly touted as the lowest hanging fruit for virtual reality and immersive technology.  Moderated by Discovery Channel Canada, this panel features the leading HMD makers, console maker, and…The Walking Dead in VR.

• Andrew McGovern, IM360

IM360 is a company made up from a partnership between Immersive Media and Digital Domain.  Together, they have done everything from streaming Conan O’Brian in VR at San Diego Comic-Con, to earning an Emmy Award for their immersive work with Taylor Swift.  Andrew will highlight IM360’s interests in immersive technology and where things are headed.

• Gord Harris, Christie Digital

While there is a lot of excitement for consumer-grade head mounted displays and virtual reality solutions, Christie Digital specializes in the professional space.  Christie will highlight their latest work with modern virtual reality simulators.

• Josh Farkas, Cubicle Ninjas

Can we utilize decades of research in environmental psychology to build virtual worlds that impact our brains at the root level? Amazingly, yes. Cubicle Ninjas’ Josh Farkas will share simple techniques that they’ve used to build more emotionally engaging worlds in Virtual Reality.

• Moderator: Ana Serrano, The Canadian Film Centre
• Steven Antturi, IM360
• Voltolina Guido, Nokia Technologies Inc.
• Dylan Pearce, Filmmaker
• Tim Dashwood, 11 Motion Pictures

This panel features discussion of the latest technologies and tools used in immersive cinema and broadcasting.  Panelists will also explain how they are telling effective stories through virtual reality, stereoscopic 3D cinema, and other forms of immersive media.

• Mary Spio, Next Galaxy Corp

While social media is abuzz, one day it’s expected we will have our real physical life, and we will have our parallel digital life.  Next Galaxy Corp. will discuss how this metaverse will unfold in the not too distant future as well as highlight new streams of content distribution.