There's a ton of great stuff to see and do at XRDC in San Francisco later this month, so today we wanted to quickly highlight some of the more popular offerings to give you a heads-up on what to see at this premier AR/VR/MR event!
XRDC 2019 will of course be kicking off October 14th and 15th at the beautiful waterfront Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, where you'll be able to enjoy demos and lectures concerning the latest advances in the AR/VR/MR industires in a convivial, vibrant space alongside fellow innovators and experts.
There will be a special Entertainment track session on "Case Study: Ubisoft's Escape Rooms", for example, which offers an exciting opportunity to learn about the market for location-based VR entertainment, master the business and marketing of VR escape room games, and get practical design and production tips from Ubisoft's Cyril Voiron.
Citing real examples from the development of the Assassin's Creed Origins VR escape room Escape the Lost Pyramid as well as the Assassin's Creed Odyssey escape room Beyond Medusa's Gate, Voiron will share data and learnings that you can apply to your own VR efforts.
And in a special talk on "'War Remains': Using LBE to Transport Audiences to WWI" Skywalker Sound's Mac Smith and Flight School Studio's Taylor Williams will share key lessons learned for designing high-quality location-based AR/VR experiences.
They'll share examples from (and walk you through) the year-long production of War Remains, and you can also expect to get a clear rundown of how they overcame key design, audio, and technical challenges while maintaining a high level of historical accuracy – all within a physical space of 640 square feet.
Plus, in "How Skanska Construction Used VR Training to Increase Worker Safety", Unity's Tim McDonough will show you how construction company Skanska uses VR training to put participants "at risk" in a simulated environment without endangering their lives, and how this leads to lasting behavioral change.
Expect to walk away with useful insights into how to design effective VR training sims, what goes into making VR experiences approachable and practical, and what role VR developers and innovators are playing in the evolution of today's construction and heavy industries!
Witness firsthand the power XR technologies have to help people do good in the world by checking out this special Healthcare track talk on "XR Adoption in Senior Care Training: Lessons for Success from Design to Deployment", in which Embodied Labs CEO Carrie Shaw will share her expertise and the top ten lessons she and her team have learned about designing VR training experiences that work.
With a client and partner list of 60 companies and growing, Embodied Labs has learned countless valuable lessons about designing and deploying VR that allows healthcare staff members to embody and experience the visual, hearing and cognitive impairments that residents of aging care facilities face.
Attend this talk and you'll benefit from her unique perspective as she shares lessons learned, tips on finding the sweet spot for pricing, designing UI and UX for non-gamers, setting clients up for success as they implement an immersive platform and much more!
And finally, consider stopping by Tactic founder and director Peter Oberdorfer's XRDC talk on "Branded Marker Based AR Experiences" in which he'll show you how to tell effective stories in augmented reality, and how to gain real user retention with mobile applications.
Oberdorfer will illustrate his talk by walking you through the brand story and technical creation of Tactic's Jack Daniel's AR app, which allows users to take a tour of the distillery, hear stories about Jack Daniel, or learn about how Old No. 7 is made -- with over 10 minutes of total content, told in short segments, right on the product.
Tactic's platform records all of these interactions in real time, giving the brand a real-time view of how users engage with their product, and you'll see how it all works when you come to XRDC later this month!
Still on the fence about coming? Register to attend XRDC now and you'll claim access to a ton of great content, at a lower price than you'll pay at the door! If you're a small team and price is a concern, this year there's an all-new XRDC pass for sale, the Startup Pass, which is nearly half the price of the regular pass and specifically designed to give smaller teams and trailblazing startups a clear path to success at XRDC.
For more details about XRDC, which is produced by organizers of the Game Developers Conference, check out the official XRDC website. You can also subscribe to regular XRDC updates via email, Twitter and Facebook.