The free virtual event’s 2021 theme is ‘Merging Physical and Digital Worlds – The Rise of the Metaverse;’ 3-day program features sessions, keynotes, and demos, all focused on real-time technology and its impact on the workplace and how people connect.
The RealTime Conference (RTC) has released the first look at its upcoming April 26-28 event, centered around the theme, “Merging Physical and Digital Worlds – The Rise of the Metaverse.” The live, online-only show will offer three 14-hour days filled with sessions, keynotes, and demos, all focused on how real-time technology can create new workplaces, new workflows, and new ways of staying connected while remaining apart.
More than 6,500 attendees from over 100 countries are expected to attend, and all sessions will be interactive (no pre-recorded sessions), giving attendees the opportunity to engage with speakers and other participants in real-time. To help support the growing real-time community during the pandemic, all sessions are open to real-time professionals and newcomers alike. Registration is open and free.
The Khronos Group president Neil Trevett will deliver the opening keynote, “Building the Metaverse One Standard at a Time.” Marc Petit, VP, general manager, Unreal Engine at Epic Games, will also give a keynote devoted to “Collaborative Work in Creative Industries,” followed by a panel of CEOs discussing the feedback from a year of pandemic, and where the industry will go from there. Additional topics will touch on virtual production, design, fashion, esports, 3D commerce, architecture, neural rendering, edge computing, cloud computing, haptics and more.
Sessions will be hosted by experts from companies that lead the way in real-time technology, including Facebook Reality Labs, Epic Games, Varjo, Lucid Motors, Volkswagen, Framestore, Intel, True View, Accenture, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with more to be announced soon.
RTC’s April event will also feature live demos highlighting some of the most advanced real-time tools available, including the Omniverse platform from NVIDIA (powered by HP ZCentral), Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman Creator and a demo of Digital Domain’s “Talking to Douglas,” followed by a keynote address titled “The Challenges in Creating an Autonomous Digital Human.”
More speakers and sessions are being added daily. Confirmed sessions include:
- “Collaborative Design in the Metaverse”
- “How Do Architects Contribute to the Creation of the Ultimate Virtual/Physical Workplace?”
- “Scalable Asset Pipelines for 3D Commerce”
- “Redefining the Luxury Automotive Purchase Experience”
- “The Need for Collaboration and Crossing the Bridge Between Fashion and Games”
- “Cloud-Based Real-Time Applications: From Today’s Hurdles to Tomorrow’s Possibilities”
- “Interactive Content Development & Streaming”
- “Virtual Production: Building Real-Time Tools at the Core of Pipelines/Converting the Tests into Radical Changes”
- “How Epic’s MetaHuman Creator Impacts Virtual Production, Storytelling & Prototyping”
- “Enhanced Experiences: New Real-Time Reality for Sports”
- “How the LED Video Wall has Become a Virtual Production Game Changer”
- “The Practical Metaverse – Hardware, Cloud, Edge & Infrastructure as it Pertains to the Metaverse”
- “XR & Live Broadcast Shows”
“RTC is a community driven event, and just one year after launching our conference we have several great partners and speakers in our corner, as well as thousands of attendees from all around the world,” commented RTC founder Jean-Michel Blottière. “With everything happening in the world right now, both technologically and culturally, it just goes to show that it’s definitely the right time for real-time.”
RTC has also expanded its advisory board to include:
- Elizabeth Baron, Enterprise solutions executive at Unity Technology, and director at large at SIGGRAPH. The principal inventor of the Ford Immersive Vehicle Environment (FiVE), a virtual reality experience that enables designers and engineers to delve into the interior and exterior of a virtual vehicle before it is ever built, Baron recently joined Unity. She was recently named one of the top Engineers Who Mattered in 2020.
- Sandra E. Lopez, VP for Intel Sports. Lopez is the co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on VR/AR/XR. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous recognitions, including “Top 100 Women in Tech” (Technology Magazine), “Top 10 Sports Tech Influencers” (SportsPro Media), “Most Powerful Women in Tech” (National Diversity Council), “Top Women in Media” (Cynopsis), “Top 10 Latina Executives” (Latina Style), “Most Influential and Notable Hispanic Professionals in Information Technology” (HiTec) and “Game Changer” (Sports Business Journal).
- Marco Tempest, Director’s fellow at the MIT Media Lab, creative consultant at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Tempest is executive director of the NYC MagicLab, a science consortium exploring illusion and digital technology, and serves as Accenture XR lead consultant.
Sponsors for RTC 2021 include Epic Games' Unreal Engine, Foundry, HP, The Khronos Group, and NVIDIA, with additional partners to be announced in the coming weeks.
A second RTC event will be held November 15-16 and will be immediately followed by the Real-Time Innovation Awards on Thursday, November 18, which will see winners voted on by the RTC community.
Additional information and registration are available here.
Source: RealTime Conference