This weekend, Toronto will play host to Canada’s largest virtual and augmented reality conference, VRTO. The event, which is now in its third year, is set to bring together some of the biggest and brightest minds in the virtual, augmented and mixed reality spaces, as well as indie and AAA game prototypes to try out.
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Malicki-Sánchez says it’s important to have guests like these at VRTO because they can offer perspective on where VR technology has been and where it may be headed. “Imagine what it was like before and after The Mask,” he proposes. “When they made The Mask, it was one of the first times they ever used [CGI] to make photo-realistic human expression on that level. Now we take things like [Avengers:] Age of Ultron for granted. It’ll be very interesting to see what they have to say about where this tech goes in 20 years.”
For Malicki-Sánchez, the real importance of VR and AR technology lies in what it can do for future generations. “We might think ‘okay, big deal, we’ve seen it all,’ but think about what that will be like 30 years from now to be able to watch a 360-degree, 4K video from these times. A lot of the time it’s not necessarily for us, but rather what we’re creating for future generations to be able to look back upon,” he explains.
“I look back to what my parents have for me. It’s these tiny little 8mm jittery films with hair in the gate or whatever. And that’s the most I’ll ever have of their childhood. Now we can do that in complete spherical so you can see not just the subject of the video but also who was shooting it and who else was in the room and what their clothes were like and what the culture was like […] I think that’s the future.”
VRTO will run from Saturday, June 16th to Monday, June 18th in Ryerson University’s Rogers Communications Centre. A full programming schedule can be found here. Tickets are available through the VRTO website.
Source: Mobilesyrup