Vision Summit 2016: Time to Go Virtual

Vision Summit is huge. You could have thought that the VR market was not big enough to host a separate event devoted exclusively to VR and AR. However, everything seems to be incredibly serious with VR. Hundreds of developers paid $400 for a ticket and the opportunity to see some cool VR demos, get their hands on some new tech, listen to some of the biggest names in VR-technology world.

The event started off with a very powerful keynote, presented by Unity’s CEO John Riccitiello. He began his talk with a very unusual note. He pointed out that there’s too much analysis of the VR market and most of this analysis is way too optimistic. While he still believes that this technology has enough power to change the whole face of the entertainment market, he’s not sure this will happen in 2016.

There’s still some way to go, before the market will be filled with the necessary amount of content and enough hardware. It’s great to see some realistic approach to this subject and it’s great to hear Unity Technologies having moderate expectations an not blowing this whole thing out of proportion.

The next speaker was Richard Marks from Playstation, who talked a little about Sony’s approach to VR. He also showed an amazing video, which featured some of the best VR games for this platform. Richard believes that VR will become a new platform for game content which will unite great gameplay, technology and new ways to approach storytelling.

Valve was the next big thing at the event. Valve and Unity Technologies actually announced a new collaboration to offer native support for SteamVR in the Unity Platform, giving developers new reach at no extra cost. There’s also a new VR rendering plugin to further enhance functionality. Game Newell promised that all developers attending the event will get their own HTC Vive kit.

There was also a big talk about the new solutions for creation of VR experiences. The company is working on a VR-creative tools, which will allow developers to build scenes directly in VR. A couple of days before Unreal Engine 4 was actually awarded by the same feature.

A huge part of the presentation was the NASA presentation, which showed how you can use virtual reality beyond games. The space agency believes that VR is already a huge part of the space exploration system and it’s a great help for engineers and astronauts.

Alex McDowell – Creative Director, 5D Global Studio – was probably the biggest treat of the show. The artist behind Minority Report and other great movies explained how modern VR technology allows him to build some amazing storytelling experiences. McDowell showed a piece of his demo, which showcased the virtual experience they have created for Sundance Film Festival.

Everything wrapped up after an awesome Q&A session between John Riccitiello and Palmer Lucky. Those guys have a great energy about them. Wish there were more CEO to CEO talks like that around.

We still have some time to study the projects at the expo floor, but it’s still great to see so many people in one place celebrating the technology, that will most probably shape the future of the world.