Oculus is three weeks away from the second Oculus Connect event, and the company has now revealed what we can expect out of the event. Oculus Connect 2 will run from Wednesday, September 23 through Friday, September 25. During the three-day event, dozens of experts will take part in more than 30 talks and workshops, discussing the latest trends and innovations in virtual reality.
Day One
The first talk of the event, "Making Great VR: Lessons Learned From I Expect You To Die," will start at 1pm PT and will be hosted by Jesse Schell. Jesse has been making VR experiences for over 20 years, and is the founder of Schell Games, the developer behind I Expect You To Die. The talk is scheduled for 25 minutes, but there is another discussion scheduled for the same time slot.
"New Techniques for Streaming VR Video" is hosted by David Pio from Facebook. This talk is also scheduled to start at 1pm, and this one is a full hour long. It will focus on making VR video content into streaming video, as well as focusing on enabling 4k+ content playback on mobile devices.
The schedule of the event continues like this through the duration of day one, often having multiple sessions occupying the same time slot. It will not be possible to take it all in, and attendees will have to decide in advance which talks are most important to them.
At 1:30pm, two more talks are scheduled to start. "Game Design Un-Rules: Examining Design Failures in Time Machine VR" hosted by Patrick Harris of Minority Media, and "Hearing With Our Eyes: Interactive Music for VR" held by Justin Moravetz and Jake Kaufman of ZeroTransform, which both fall into the Game & App Design category. These two talks are scheduled for 25 minute blocks, but there is a gap after they conclude.
The overlapping talks continue on through the day, with two scheduled at 2:30, one of which is an hour long session. There is only one workshop starting at 3pm, but three 60-minute events kick off at 4pm, and three more start at 5:30, including "Shipping Hardware: The Evolution of the Rift" hosted by Caitlin Kalinowski and Stephanie Lue, who work for Oculus, and "Post-Mortem: Building the First Crescent Bay Experiences," with Kenneth Scott and Per Vognsen, also from Oculus.
Day Two
The second day of the event appears to be less crowded. Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus will kick the day off with the Opening Keynote speech at 10am, followed by another keynote speech from Micheal Abrash, Oculus's Chief Scientist. At 1pm, the legendary John Carmack will take the stage for "Conversations with John Carmack."
At 2:30 the workshops start to overlap again. Attendees will have to choose between "Building for the Rift with the Oculus PC SDK," or "The Early Days of VR Game Design: Lesson Learned," which will both be hosted by Oculus employees and are scheduled for a full hour-long block.
At 4pm, the choice will be between "Building Toybox for Oculus Touch," with Matt Alderman and Brandon Dillon of Oculus, or "Introduction to VR Filmmaking From Oculus Story Studio," hosted by Saschka Unseld and Max Planck from Oculus's film production company. There are three more talks scheduled for 5:30 on day two, which focus on social VR, designing standing experience with tracked controllers, and making movies in VR.
Day Three
The third day of Oculus Connect 2 is much shorter, but attendees will be able to get involved. It will start at 9am, with the choice of two hands-on workshops. Ray Davis, Nick Donaldson and Nick Whiting from Epic Games will be going through Unreal Engine, and Carl Calleweart, Mark Schoennagel, and Peter Kuhn will be on hand demonstrating what can be done in Unity.
At 10am, "Live Coding Session" with John Carmack starts. He will demonstrate a new development environment designed for rapid and open development for Gear VR. He will go through the process of making a simple VR application.
The final event will be held at 11:30am and will be hosted by two Oculus employees. Lydia Choy and Brian Sharp will host "Virtual Reality is a Medium: Creating Art with Oculus Touch."
For the complete schedule and details of each event, you can find the information on the Oculus Connect webpage.
Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
