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The first-ever standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference is happening next week, so today organizers want to quickly let you know about more of the great sponsored sessions from leading innovators that you should check out at the show.

We're talking about cutting-edge companies like Google, Qualcomm and Microsoft sponsoring excellent in-depth talks about everything from where VR is now to where it's going -- and how developers can make the most of it.

Devices like Microsoft's HoloLens and Google's Project Tango provide powerful spatial awareness capabilities that go beyond augmented reality to enable "mixed reality" applications. Leveraging these capabilities requires not just an understanding of these technologies, but new ways of thinking about user interface design and gameplay.

At the first-ever standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference this November, Rabbx chief Aaron Pulkka and Ant Hives Games CTO Cyrus Lum aim to provide you with just that in their presentation on "Creating Mixed Realities with HoloLens, Tango, and Beyond."

Pulkka and Lum will share their experiences developing apps for spatially aware devices, including the immersive experience "Behemoth" which won "best spatial mapping" at the SFVR HoloLens hackathon and Ghostly Mansion, a game about solving your own murder which won "best entertainment/game app" in Google's Project Tango development contest.

Registration is open for the 2017 Game Developers Conference, and we already have some great talks from top minds in the game industry that you should know about!

Live games are a critical part of the modern game industry, and time is the core currency for live games -- but humans are notoriously bad at projecting long-term outcomes over time. Thus, MaxPlay creative director Chelsea Howe is coming to GDC next year to deliver a fantastic talk on "The Design of Time: Understanding Human Attention and Economies of Engagement."

This talk covers patterns of human attention and engagement over time and concrete ways to design for those phases, including how to surface time components, approaching engagement with a relationship lens, transitioning from hand-crafted experiences to procedural and social systems, and balancing permanent progress with maintenance mechanics.

Designing a great user interface for your game is no easy feat, and it gets even trickier when you decide to embrace virtual reality.

So if you're making (or thinking about making) a VR game, make sure to come out to the first-ever standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference next month and catch Force Vield VR's Joost Peters' talk on "Designing a HUD for a Third Person Game."

Peters is an experienced UI designer, and his presentation will detail the challenges he and other members of the Force Field VR team ran into while creating a HUD for their third person VR game Landfall. During the session, the challenges they found will be highlighted and their design approach and the solutions they applied will be explained.

Heads up, devs: Submissions are officially open for the 2017 Independent Games Festival, the signature competition for indie games -- and the deadline to submit your entry is next Monday, October 24th!

After submissions close, IGF finalists will be announced in early January 2017. Finalists' games will once again be playable at the packed IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2017 Expo Floor, and will compete for over $50,000 in prizes.

Winners will be announced on stage at the high-profile Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 1st, 2017, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with the IGF Pavilion open from March 1st-3rd, and the sister Independent Games Summit event taking place on February 27th and 28th.

Eager to help the 2017 Game Developers Conference go off without a hitch, and get free entry to boot? Apply now to be a volunteer Conference Associate (CA), and you can earn the equivalent of an All-Access Pass by putting in roughly 25 hours of on-site work.

Next year GDC 2017 runs from Monday, February 27th through Friday, March 3rd. Applicants who are chosen to be Conference Associates will be given pre-conference assignments and asked to attend a required orientation dinner on Sunday, February 26th. This is a paid position, so you must be eligible to work in the United States.

Furthermore, those accepted into the program are expected to be on-site during conference hours from the start of your pre-conference assignments through the end of the conference on the evening of Friday, March 3rd.

What will you be doing, you ask? CA duties may include guarding doors and scanning badges, monitoring sessions, answering attendees' questions, and more. (You will also be given some free time during the show to attend talks or check out the Expo floor.)

To apply, head over to the GDC 2017 CA application page and read the instructions. The deadline for applications closes at 11:59pm PDT, December 23rd, 2016! Applicants will be notified if they are accepted (or not) by January 5th.

As the inaugural standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference this November draws closer, the folks behind the conference would like to briefly showcase one of the great tracks of talks taking place during the event.

VRDC is all about exploring and discussing the latest in virtual- and augmented-reality in entertainment, journalism, retail marketing and beyond, so organizers  to quickly run down a sample of the talks you'll find on the conference's Innovation track.

As an example, consider that SMI's Tom Sengelaub -- an eye-tracking expert -- will dig into the topic in his Innovation track talk "Applications of Eye Tracking in Virtual Reality."

SMI (Sensomotoric Instruments) is a world leader in eye-tracking tech, and in his talk Sengelaub will present how eye tracking can be used to personalize the 3D experience. Developers should also note he'll speak directly to how the ability to track someone's "point of gaze" revolutionizes interaction with a virtual world.