VRTO 2024 Final Report

Events, General

VRTO 2024: Unveiling the Future of Spatial Media at OCAD University

Toronto, ON – [July 15, 2024] – The 9th Annual VRTO Spatial Media World Conference & Expo returned to OCAD University on July 10-11, 2024, produced by Constant Change Media Group Inc., programmed and produced by Keram Malicki-Sanchez, and co-produced by Aimee Reynolds. This event brought together the brightest minds and cutting-edge innovations in virtual and augmented reality in the heart of Toronto’s media arts district.

VRTO has become a cornerstone for industry leaders, innovators, and enthusiasts shaping the future of virtual and augmented reality. This year’s lineup featured an impressive array of speakers, including:

  • Curtis Hickman, Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer of The VOID, Author & Magician
  • Dave Cardwell, Head of 3D & Immersive Labs at Adobe
  • Caitlin Krause, Author, and Speaker from MindWise and Stanford University
  • Ryan Andal, CEO and Co-founder of Secret Location
  • Lianne Baron, Strategic Partner Manager, Meta
  • Anne Toole, writer, and narrative designer on Asgard’s Wrath 2, Days Gone, Horizon Zero Dawn, The Witcher, and more

Attendees had the opportunity to:

  • Experience Groundbreaking Demos: Live demonstrations and VR, AR, and IoT demos from over a dozen creators and colleges, including Durham, Conestoga, and OCAD.
  • Participate in Interactive Workshops: Hands-on experience with cutting-edge tools and techniques.
  • Network with Industry Leaders: Connect with professionals from various fields to share ideas and forge new partnerships.

The conference covered a wide range of topics, including:

  • Virtual Museums, Archaeology, and Cultural Anthropology
  • Generative AI for Virtual Production
  • Web3D/WebXR Optimization and Advancements
  • Digital Humans and Hyper-Reality 2.0
  • New Advancements and Content Approaches for AR/MR

With over 35 speakers from around the globe, VRTO 2024 was an event not to be missed.

Check out this amazing Matterport volumetric capture of the venue by Scott Bowie at QuickturnVR

Complete List of Speakers:

Confirmed Very Special Presenters Include:

Media Coverage:

Attendee Reflections

Drashti Pandya (Volunteer):

“I was privileged to have the opportunity to video record the event, which allowed me to listen to a plethora of inspiring talks. Some of my favorite sessions included:

  • Anne Toole elevating VR storytelling to new heights and reaffirming my belief in the power of VR narratives.
  • Tendisai Cromwell’s insightful discussion on VR in environmental causes.
  • Debbie Deer’s session on data disparities, crucial for our future AI innovations.
  • Mike Boers’ candid insights into virtual production.
  • Curtis Hickman demonstrating that magic can indeed be created within VR.

I extend my sincere gratitude to Keram Malicki-Sanchez for this remarkable opportunity and to all the organizers and fellow volunteers for their warm welcome and collaborative spirit.”

Nitya Shinde (Volunteer):

“Day 2 at VRTO was full of networking opportunities. I met Justin Baillargeon and celebrated one year of DR. VR. I experienced Debbie Deer’s VR presentation, which was inspiring and motivated me to be creative in spatial experiences. Connecting with AR pioneers Heather Dunaway Smith, Luke Hurd, and Lianne Baron was enlightening and provided valuable guidance on AR, design, and marketing concepts.

The energy, innovation, and collaboration at VRTO were truly inspiring.”

Jason Moore (The Metamovie):

“Huge thank you to the entire VRTO team for an incredible conference. I enjoyed presenting with Nicole Bernard, running a workshop with Whitton Frank, and meeting Carol Silverman & Dario Laverde. It was an uplifting, intimate, and inspiring event. I’m coming back next year!”

Dr. VR (Justin Baillargeon):

“Attending VRTO as a podcaster was unforgettable! Reconnecting with old friends and meeting past guests from Dr. VR in real life was wonderful. Despite technical hurdles, live broadcasting episodes ended up working well. A huge shout-out to the organizers for making this event feel like home. Thanks to the volunteers for their help!”

Ivette Hernandez (Journalist):

“I had the opportunity to attend VRTO and explore Latin American and Hispanic representation in the Tech Industry. Talking with Carlos E. Paz-Soldan added valuable insights to my piece for CHHA 1610AM and Frequency News. I encourage you to explore the Canadian Hispanic-Latin American Virtual Museum exhibition at VRTO 2024.”

Dario Laverde:

“A big shout out and thanks to the VRTO team for a conference unlike any other. The quality of discussions and connections made was unparalleled. Plan to attend next year.”

Carol Silverman, Creator of Belongings:

“Thank you for the opportunity to speak about my room-scale VR experience ‘Belongings’ and designing nonlinear spatial narratives in VR, and demoing to amazing people in the exhibition hall! It was fantastic to hang out with Justin Baillargeon AKA Dr. VR for two whole days. I’m still pinching myself that it really happened.”

Dan Blair of BSDXR:

“This year VRTO was a slice, spent most of my time talking about custom peripherals, haptic experiences, and questioning reality. It was great meeting up with Megha Shah and Abhi P. from my team in Toronto, and hanging with Corey King, Blair Renaud, Robyn Smith, Ashley Huffman, Julie Smithson, Alan Smithson, Justin Baillargeon, Stephanie Greenall, Rob Theriault, and many more. Sponsors should take note because this stuff is taking off. It’s worth exploring.”

Gustavo Sanchez-Perez from the Visual Effects Society:

“An epic experience at VRTO this week representing Visual Effects Society (VES) – Toronto Section together with Josh Miles Joudrie. Thanks to all the panelists for their insightful presentations and to everyone we got to interact with on behalf of the VES.”

Jason Hunter from Durham:

“That’s a wrap! Had a great two days at VRTO. Thank you for another great year!”

Corey King – Co-Founder of ZenFri Inc.:

“VRTO has the highest per capita quantity of cool people I’ve ever seen.”

About VRTO

VRTO (Virtual Reality Toronto) is an award-winning, critically acclaimed conference that has catalyzed new ventures and opportunities in media, arts, entertainment, education, and enterprise since its inception in 2015. Known for its practical approach and positive business and development outcomes, VRTO remains a leading force in the VR and AR industry.

Toronto is renowned as a global hub of innovation and technological prowess. It consistently leads breakthroughs in digital media, artificial intelligence, and immersive technologies. The city’s vibrant ecosystem of startups, research institutions, and industry leaders fosters a dynamic environment where cutting-edge ideas flourish and transformative technologies emerge.

Looking Forward

VRTO 2024 was an inspiring event that showcased the future of spatial media and provided a platform for industry leaders and enthusiasts to connect, learn, and innovate. We look forward to seeing the advancements and collaborations emerging from this year’s conference and eagerly anticipate VRTO 2025.

VRTO 2023 Spatial Media World Conference – Final Report

General

The VRTO Spatial Media World Conference and Expo celebrated its eighth year July 19th-20th, 2023.

Partnering with OCAD U for the second year, the conference occurred at the beautiful new Daniels Waterfront OCADU CO campus. Guests came from as far as Oklahoma, Texas, California, Utah, Washington, New York, and the United Kingdom.

With two days of talks and a wide variety of exhibits to discover, VRTO 2023 surpassed expectations and delighted attendees with a diverse and stimulating program covering the future of spatial computing and how it will evolve to include everyone.

Topics included social VR platforms, performance, and production, UX/UI, Interaction design, GPT, and Generative AI and their use cases and concerns. Opening Remarks were delivered by the Executive Director of VRTO, Keram Malicki-Sanchez, and OCAD University President, Ana Serrano.

“[VRTO 2023] felt like what I hope the VR community will get to in like 5 or 10 years…it was that good.”

-Zimtok5, on the Between Realities podcast

Featured Speakers included:

  • Dr. Tom Furness – Founder of the Virtual World Society and better known as the “Grandfather of Virtual Reality” with Dr. Angelina Dayton, Executive Director of the Virtual World Society, discussed VR as a tool for empathy and healing.
  • Amanda Watson – Creator of Airlink technology for Meta. She delivered a fascinating and challenging talk on how to measure latency, dispelling commonly held beliefs that surprised many veteran developers in the room.
  • Kyle Chivers – Princes Trust Award winner and CCO of Blockade Labs, a company taking the world by storm with its text–to-image 360-degree generative AI environments and where they might need to go from here.
  • Lana Lux – Popular Twitch influencer and solo indie game developer of STRAIN gave a powerful motivational talk about her process, challenges and victories, to rousing, empathetic applause
  • Alan Smithson – Co-founder of MetaVRse spoke on creating their new 3D game engine, The Mall, and the Juicyverse for Wrigley.
  • Ben Unsworth – CTO of Lumeto spoke on the potential of AI and VR to revolutionize healthcare training and how GPT might be used in patient simulations
  • Ashley Huffman – Titan Haptics on the future of haptic technology in XR and demonstrated a one-of-a-kind haptic lightsaber.
  • Daniel Blair – Bit Space Development on the requirements of enterprise XR studios and took a fascinating turn to explore cyber security with headsets, servers and software.
  • AR Dev and Founder of Alientrap, Lee Vermeulen demonstrated a year of AR experiments, including liquid physics interactions, drawing with one’s eyes, AI NPC’s, and portals.
  • Rolando Masís-Obando – Princeton University gave a talk on his landmark research on brain-computer interfaces.
  • TFM Jonny – on radical community building.
  • Patrick Kwok from Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment on leveraging XR in sports entertainment, using volumetric playback to afford pro athletes multiple vantage points of their game for training.
  • David Han and Joel Ong with a collaborative VR art project about capturing the stories of the Jane and Finch community in Mozilla Hubs.
  • Becky Liu from OCAD U with her experiments in mixed reality conversational intelligent agent companions in autonomous vehicles and building better HUDs to work at scale.
  • Tony Bevilacqua from Cognitive 3D discussed how to leverage XR analytics to gather insights from the metaverse.
Ashley Huffman of Titan Haptics demonstrating a prototype for a haptic lightsaber - the first of its kind at VRTO 2023, Toronto Canada.
Ashley Huffman of Titan Haptics demonstrated a prototype for a haptic lightsaber – the first of its kind at VRTO 2023, Toronto Canada.

A room full of attendees at OCAD U Waterfront at VRTO 2023.

“Uniting visionaries and creators, #VirtualRealityTO was an unforgettable event where I got the chance to meet some wonderful people, showcasing cutting-edge tech and fostering collaborations.” – Upcoming Media Inc.

Panels and Discussions included:

  • VR Live Performers Summit and Workshops by pioneers and leaders in the field: Whitton Frank, Ari Tarr, Liam Karry, Jake Runeckles,  Mandy Canales, and Nicole Rigo set out to demystify some of the processes behind the scenes, tracking evolving narratives, and how to handle inevitable glitches in a seamless and entertaining manner.
  • A discussion about reframing immersive storytelling through the eyes of Black creators with Debbie Deer, Tendisai Cromwell, Queen Kukoyi, Kai Little-White, and Nico Taylor veered into a plethora of fascinating XR experiences, including Queen Nefertiti and some health back and forth about the implications of generative AI entering into creative workflows.
  • The evolution of Social VR ecosystems with Chris Madsen (Engage XR), Jaspreet Monga (Mozilla Hubs), Maxx Berkowitz (Nowhere.io), and Ben Erwin (The Poly Awards) and how to develop with an eye towards interoperability, and Metatraversal.
  • A discussion on Generative AI and the law with attorney Amar Sidhu and Keram Malicki-Sanchez explored precedent, transformative use, copyright, through a variety of legal cases and real-world effects
  • A panel with artists using Generative AI, including Blair Renaud, Alex Mayhew, Jeffrey Flores, and Keram Malicki-Sanchez leaned into the creative collaboration with the machine learning tools that include GANs, Nerfs, Generative Art, Generative Pretrained Transformers in art, game design, ideation, writing, and development.
  • Discussions with Tricia Blake, Julie Smithson, Dr. Karen Alexander, and Helen Lundström Erwin from XR Women about how the community grows and shines a light on the creative and productive force that women have had on the XR industry and how they continue to lead it.
Pictured left to right: Orla Garriques, Tendisai Cromwell, Kai Little-White - VRTO 2023
Pictured left to right: Orla Garriques, Tendisai Cromwell, Kai Little-White – VRTO 2023, photo by Zimtok5

On the final day, Keram led an impromptu session where he invited members of the audience to come up to the stage and share their stories, projects, and experience with the crowd. Volunteers of this invitation included Ed Mr. All-In-Wonder Callway from AMD, Nima Zeghani from Leia Pix, Adrien Onsen of Construked Reality, Dario Laverde – head of dev relations for HTC for 12 years, and one of the leaders of the OpenXR initiative, and more.

Left to right: VR Live Performers Summit: Jake Runeckles, Liam Karry, Whitton Frank, Ari Tarr, Nicole Rigo, and Mandy Canales.
Left to right: VR Live Performers Summit: Jake Runeckles, Liam Karry, Whitton Frank, Ari Tarr, Nicole Rigo, and Mandy Canales.

“Attending and speaking at VRTO was something I’ll never forget. Such an amazing opportunity to connect with others passionate about the possibilities and future of VR.”

– Mandy Canales

The Discovery Hall featured interactive demos and exhibits, including a variety of projects from ACE Lab from OCADU, York University’s Sensorium, and Friend Generator. Interactive demos included a dollhouse-sized NBA trainer from Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment, an industrial Chainsaw VR simulator from Winnipeg’s Bit Space Development, and their award-winning indigenous language environments developed for Georgian College and powered by the Engage platform.

Game Developer Lana Lux conducted live VR thought experiments in a secluded room, and AR artist and photographer Stephen Black delighted attendees with his playful AR creations and impromptu headshot sessions. Alex Mayhew’s stunning artwork was on display.

Kelencontent had an exhibit and demo of their content. Games by Stitch exhibited their newly released hand-tracking horror game “Broken Spectre.” Additionally, Alex Coulombe of Agile Lens demoed a variety of cutting-edge VR experiences that included lifelike performative MetaHumans.

Guests mingled in the bright and modern space, enjoying coffee and concessions and posing for pictures in front of the marquee lights.

 

Attendees also enjoyed an opening night reception and a chance to mingle and relax at the IDFK Gallery in the heart of the Toronto Arts District. Renowned DJ Fame Diet and MetaVRse’s Alan Smithson took turns at the decks while delicious vegan food from eco-friendly caterers Inwit and some bespoke charcuterie were served.

“The team behind VRTO has a proven track record of bringing thought leaders and industry professionals together to share ideas and innovations that are pushing the boundaries of spatial computing. The future of XR is bright, and VRTO is playing a significant role in shaping it.”

Attendees enjoyed the fun and eclectic space and the time to talk and catch up with old friends and new ones. Special thanks to Ian Kelso for supporting VRTO with this amazing and important new art space in the city. Of course, we brought the guests there because this will also be home to FIVARS from September 15th through 19th!

 

VRTO 2023 opening night party - full of VR innovators and industry leaders at IDFK gallery, Toronto, Canada. photo by Christian Bobak
VRTO 2023 opening night party – full of VR innovators and industry leaders at IDFK gallery, Toronto, Canada. photo by Christian Bobak

 

Keram Malicki-Sanchez and DJ Shine (Jason Spanu) at IDFK art gallery in Toronto for the VRTO 2023 opening night party. The two are also members of the ambient music project Automated Gardens
Keram Malicki-Sanchez and Fame Diet (“DJ Shine”) at IDFK art gallery in Toronto for the VRTO 2023 opening night party. The two are also members of the ambient music project Automated Gardens

“Definitely put VRTO on your calendar for next year. It’s far more than a regional #XR conference; it’s a vital organ of the industry. VIVA VRTO!” – Ben Erwin, Creator – The Poly Awards

VRTO 2022 Spatial Media World Conference – Final Report

General

For VRTO 2022, Constant Change Media Group (CCMG) ran a 2-day in-person event featuring 50 international speakers who presented in the 350-seat auditorium at OCAD
University in the heart of Toronto’s media district.

It was the first in-person event since 2019, (VRTO having operated as an award-winning virtual events between 2020 and 2021) and included 2 networking lounges, a VIP reception, an exhibits hall, and a private Discord server as an additional tool for networking and resource-sharing.

Here was the teaser trailer for this special event

Media and Influencer Coverage

The event ran 2 days, and featured thought leaders from around the world who represent and lead such companies as Pixomondo, Virtual Production Academy, HTC Vive, Masterpiece Studio, Virtualware, Webaverse, MetaVRse’s TheMall.io, SIRT, LIFT, Trinity Square Video, QuickTurnVR, Dark Slope, Metropolitan, York and OCAD universities, and many more.

The event was covered by a number of industry newsletters, communities, and platforms including Playback, Forbes: This Week In XR, Immersive Wire, XRMust, BlogTO, The Lodgge, Between Realities. The event earned over 300,000 social media impressions.

Event Highlights:

– The reunion of the many old and new Toronto companies and XR enthusiasts
– Introducing visitors from outside Canada to the Ontario tech sector
– First look at hardware and software demos (Tilt Five, VIROO 2.0, HTC’s Mars CamTrack)
– First public behind-the-scenes look at PXO’s production pipeline for McDonald’s and Star
Trek: Strange New Worlds

Check out Between Realities’ coverage of the event

Attendee Testimonials

“I met incredible people pioneering amazing things in XR, made great connections” – Ari Tarr, Active Replica

“Great people and thought-provoking conversations!” – Lucie Lalumiere, Interactive Ontario

“This is the VR / Metaverse event for OGs. I’ve been going for years. If you’re in Toronto, this is the place to be.” – Jonathan Gagne, Masterpiece Studio

“What an incredible opportunity to learn so much in these past couple of days and share the room with incredibly smart people!” – Adrian Onsen, Construkted Reality

“I’ve always found VRTO to be one of the most intelligent, interesting and creative gatherings in the #XR space” – Linda Ricci

As an independent, we continue to lobby for access to all, removing socio-economic barriers to that access, always improving the means of providing that access, and ensuring a safe, open future for the industry and its outputs.

We believe in the importance of symbiotic relationships, particularly in this developing industry. Thank you for your continued support, we couldn’t do it without you.