This March the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco will once again feature a curated selection of great stuff for virtual reality developers under the aegis of VRDC @ GDC!
For example, Penrose Studios head of engineering Devon Penney will detail the cutting-edge water tech in the VR film Arden's Wake (pictured) in his talk on "Water Simulation and Rendering in the VR Film, 'Arden's Wake'", in which he'll describe volume rendering solutions for murky underwater environments with spotlights shining through water.
He'll also explain the tech which allows the film to have many interaction effects on the ocean surface, from characters splashing in the water to boats causing wakes across large distances.
According to Penney, Penrose Studios developed a shallow water solver that gave them compelling effects with fast simulation times, and his lecture will share the solver architecture, methods for modeling collision objects, and a foam solver that adds detail to the simulation.
And in "Room for Everyone: The 'Rec Room' Approach to Community VR," Cameron Brown and Jon Gill from Rec Room developer Against Gravity will share what they've learned about managing and empowering the creativity of a diverse and rapidly growing virtual community.
Starting with lessons learned about how to foster a positive environment for players from all walks of life, the session will delve into the various experiments, mistakes and successes they've had, and will talk about the ongoing explorations into empowering players to create and share their own content.
Plus, in their talk on "Designing Human Avatars for Virtual Reality" Google Daydream team members David Bond and Brian Pullen will discuss the lessons they learned designing avatars for YouTube VR, and beyond.
Make time to check this one out, because you'll learn about emerging best practices in designing avatars for AR/VR contexts, and come away with an appreciation of what doesn't work in VR (and why!)
Plus, we have lots more GDC 2018 announcements to make in the coming months. For more information about GDC 2018 visit the show's official website, and subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
