VRTO – Toronto’s Spatial Media Arts Conference – Returns To Earth This July 20-21

Have you ever wondered how the latest Star Trek series brings their alien worlds to life? How will a new form of immersive, experiential television blur the lines between the real world and the virtual one? And who owns the art that AI is generating? Answers to these questions and more, only at VRTO!

VRTO is a special two-day event featuring a bleeding-edge conference track, fast-track workshops, an exhibits hall comprising the core spatial media community, and a special symposium where attendees will network and learn about Virtual Production, live VR theater performance, Hyperreality TV, natural language Holodecks, next-gen haptics—in short: new and fast-expanding technologies defining the future of production for entertainment, television and film, arts, performance, design, and communications.

The Pixomondo team at work on Star Trek in Toronto
The Pixomondo team at work on Star Trek in Toronto

You will be a part of the behind-the-curtain view of these sectors; consumers have more access to being creators in their own right. Not only will you leave this conference with innovative knowledge of how immersive media is spanning industries, but you will gain the leadership to take these ideas with you and incorporate them into your own user industry.

Event Highlights

Join us in the interactive Exhibits Hall featuring a variety of projects and products pushing the boundaries of this rapidly expanding, complex, and nuanced industry—from multi-user virtual worlds to the latest Augmented Reality art exhibits, (and some free pinball). Be in the same space with today’s startups, and dev studios, playtesting new games before release, and meet companies looking to hire. Be at the centre of Toronto’s tech industry and its key players.

Enter our Workshops featuring instructors that include Award-winning Tisch instructor Ari Tarr and discover the secrets to using 3D web-based and Virtual Reality technologies for live theatre performance and dance, or take a deep dive into the increasingly ubiquitous Virtual Production pipeline with the Emmy-Award-winning team Pixomondo as they show you how they brought the worlds of Star Trek: Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Halo to life.

Learn from our esteemed Speakers including Tim Bettridge (Voice Tech Global,) Michael Rosas (Virtualware,) Shenaz Baksh (LIFT/ SIRT), Ashley Huffman (TITAN Haptics,) Dario Laverde (HTC), and Justin Cathcart (Dark Slope) to name only a few of the rare experts featured at this year’s special summit.

Featured Discussions include:

Virtual Humans & Production | AI, GPT-3, GANs, ML, Processing, Image to Text, Computer Vision, Chatbots | Marketing, Retail, & Commerce | The Spatial Web | Immersive Game & Experience Design | Live Performance & Events in Virtual & Hybrid Worlds | The Future of Work & Play | Education, Training, Metrics & Analysis | Accessibility, Neurodiversity, Design & Communications | Health, Data Capture & Visualization | Enterprise | Law, Ethics, Privacy and much more.

Exhibits hall is free with registration on the event site. For additional information on events, see individual ticket descriptions.

Follow VRTO on social – @VRtoronto and #VRTO2022

https://conference.virtualreality.to/

VRTO 2021 The Flotilla – Final Report

Return to a Bigger, Better Flotilla

report written by Stephanie Greenall and Keram Malicki-Sanchez

In celebration of the 6th annual VRTO, we returned to the virtual Flotilla.  Created by founder Keram Malicki-Sanchez and his team, including Stephanie Greenall who co-produced the event, Bettina Fimio (administrative support) and longtime team members Chrissy Aitchison (executive administrator and graphic designer), and Joshua Miles Joudrie (tech coordinator and live event consultant), the show incorporated lessons from the previous year’s exploration into the spatialized web.

 

“What I really think stands out about VRTO is the way in which the line between the stage and the audience is blurred. We create as many interactive events and opportunities as we can fit and it is always inspiring to see how attendees step up.” – Keram Malicki-Sanchez confides.

 

This year’s participatory and networking events included:

  1.  Immersive Improv workshops featuring attendees who volunteered to learn while on camera and then put on a live-streamed performance on the final day.
    (Image credit: Ana Ballano)

     

  2. Daily “pirate radio” transmission live-streaming from 3D space to Discord (and recorded) featuring Max Noir’s Lunch Hour show, where daily guests were chosen from the attendee list to talk about their work.
    Dean Yeats brings his trombone into the virtual space in Mozilla Hubs on a LIVE session of Lunch Hour with Max Noir.

     

  3. Scavenger hunt in the custom build Crystal Caverns.

     

  4. Photo challenges where attendees took selfies in the many different environments or times of day, in exchange for game key bundles and other prizes.
  5. Every talk included a live Q&A where questions were fielded in realtime and also recorded via the Discord discussion channels
  6.  Eight showcase galleries:
    Pepperdine University (Kate Parsons)
    OCAD University (student projects)
    Trinity Square Video (artist NFT projects, with daily artist talks)

    Image captured by Jose Matute in the TSV gallery
    Image captured by Jose Matute in the TSV gallery

     

    The Pearl Hyacinth Gallery (created and curated by Melody Owen) featuring portals to other 3D virtual galleries (Style, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, Second Life, NYC Music Center)
    The Cream Digital showcase/Dynamic Digital Humans and production gallery (Survivorman, Low-Fi, Wild On w Dominic Monahan)
    the Gregory Panos lidar scan gallery
    – the Bernie Roehl Avatar Museum
    – not to mention the 10 spaces created by Whystler, and Keram for the Hubs world.

Key Learnings:

  • last year having two messaging platforms (Whova + discord) fractured the audience and the team had to manage conversations and content on multiple fronts
  • This year we used Discord as the central arena for the Flotilla with Mozilla Hubs acting as the virtual spaces where attendees could engage with each other and 3D environments.
  • Developed a video wall to house videos after the LIVE sessions rather than using additional services/platforms
  • Pushed Discord to its limits by using its streaming functionality; which we then learned was capped and had to incorporate Google Meets
  • Decided on one ticket and provide access to everyone
  • Building on the success of the machinima contests we developed interactive workshops and performances

Show Highlights Include:

    • NFT Micro Summit featuring superstars of the new art economy:
      Curated and moderated by Michelle Brown, the NFT microsummit comprised two hours of discussion around the new economies and communities growing up around non-fungible tokens and how to find sustainable practices while supporting the work of artists and the hunger of collectors. Featuring Estella Tse VR/AR Creative Director (Oakland, California), Jose Andres Virtual Events Producer, Crux (Santa Fe, USA), Manu Vision Senior UX/XR Designer, Unity Technologies (Montreal, Canada), Sutu Eats Flies Visual Artist, Co-Founder of Eyejack (Los Angeles), David Plant Trinity Square Video (Toronto, Canada), MOON HMZ Visual Artist (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
      MOON HMZ and the NFT summit at VRTO 2021
    • Rhythm & Fitness Game Micro Summit – Both summits showed the importance of developing and leaning on each other to build a successful game or ecosystem (when one of us wins, we all win)
      VRTO 2021 vr fitness games summit
    • Interview with Jesse Schell, CEO and Dave Bennett, Senior Game Designer / Project Director for Until You Fall, Schell Games, interviewed by Kat De Shields, Schell PR Manager

      Schell Games interview VRTO 2021
      Jesse Schell and Dave Bennett of Schell Games interview VRTO 2021 virtual conference

       

    • Immersive Performance Workshop – led by Dasha Kitteredge (Creative Director, Metaforyou and Guest Field Instructor, NYU Tisch (Los Angeles, USA) and Ari Tarr (Lead host and VR acting consultant, Adventure Lab and Active Replica)
    • WebGL + VRML Veteran meetupGregory Panos (former Siggraph LA chair), Bernie Roehl (VRML pioneer and author), Larry Rosenthal (virtual worlds pioneer), James Baicoianu (JanusWeb) 
      An impromptu meetup of the VRML and WebGL veterans including Greg Panos, Larry Rosenthal, Bernie Roehl, and James Baiconianu.

       

  • Pixomondo half-day behind-the-scenes on advances in Virtual Production featuring Asad Manzoor, Zachary Dembinski (huge Fan favourite)
  • Dyscorpia – a sprawling half-day survey of work being done by artists, researchers, galleries, spearheaded by Marilene Oliver and University of Alberta
  • Extensive discussion around Virtual Events and Hybrid Events with the team behind BRCVR

  • Discussions around accessibility and inclusion in design featuring talks with Regine Gilbert (author: “Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing with Accessibility in Mind (Design Thinking”), Max Noir (neurodiversity), AnnMarie “Wirrel” Bartholomaeus, Charles Babb (Fairchild Consulting), OCAD: “Decolonizing the Past: Reimagining the Future” (Priya Bandodkar MDES Graduate, OCAD University (Toronto, Canada), Nadine Valcin MFA graduate, OCAD University (Toronto, Canada), Lilian Leung Designer and Researcher (Tkaronto and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people, Canada)
  • Report on the Immersive Ecosystem in China from FXG’s Nikk Mitchell
     

What Are Our Attendees Saying?

VRTO 2021 AttendeesVRTO 2021 AttendeesVRTO 2021 Attendees 

VRTO_2020_Flotilla banner

VRTO2020 Flotilla Season Pass

By popular demand we are releasing a “Season Pass” ticket for those who were unable to make it to the inaugural launch of the groundbreaking VRTO “Flotilla.”

Gain access to the no-holds-barred, thought-provoking presentations and conversations that VRTO is known for.

Featuring conversations with thought-leaders from around the world who represent and lead such companies as Ford’s Autonomous Fleet, Digital Domain, Cisco, HTC Vive, Metastage, SPINVFX, Pixomondo, Zappar, 8th Wall, among many others.

Check Out Event Highlights!

IF YOU ALREADY PURCHASED A PRO-PASS for VRTO2020 YOU ALREADY HAVE ACCESS AND DO NOT REQUIRE THIS TICKET.

Key discussion tracks include:

Virtual Humans | Spatialized Web | Game & Experience Design | The Future of Work | Education and Research | Climate and Ecology | Accessibility and Communications | Marketing | Retails and Commerce | Business and Enterprise | Law, Ethics, Privacy | Autonomous Vehicle Systems, and more…

The VRTO 2020 Flotilla is a formation of hubs and platforms tethered together to form a powerful multimodal, multidimensional fleet. It comprises different spaces, strategies, aesthetics, technologies, and multimedia exhibits and presentation areas, as we strive to move towards an interoperable future.

Claim Your Season Pass for the VRTO Flotilla