SIGGRAPH 2019 Conference Will Feature Four World-Premiere VR/AR Experiences

Magic Leap, Disney, and Epic Games are bringing their A-game to the annual tech conference. 

Kicking-off July 28th at the Los Angeles Convention Center, SIGGRAPH 2019 will feature the largest offering of immersive programming since the conference’s creation back in 1973. This year, attendees will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in 48 different experiences scattered throughout their Immersive Pavilion (33 experiences) and VR Theatre (15 experiences). 

“With this latest edition, the Immersive Pavilion cements its status as the perfect place to experience, play, and learn about technological advances across the constantly evolving mediums of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality,” stated SIGGRAPH 2019 Immersive Pavilion Chair Victoria Rege, in an official release. “In addition to fun, quirky projects aimed to entertain, the content our creators will share is often thought-provoking and informative. These platforms are well-positioned as a tool to teach us more about the human experience, and I am so excited to share that with attendees.”

Among these 48 offerings are four never-before-seen projects from some of the most recognizable names in entertainment and immersive technology. Experiences making their world-debut include A Kite’s Tale by Walt Disney Animation Studios (VR Theatre), Undersea by Magic Leap (Immersive Pavilion), II Divino: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR by Epic Games, and Mary and the Monster: Chapter One by Parallux and New York University’s Future Reality Lab (Immersive Pavilion).

“If what we’ve seen this year is where we’re at now, I can only imagine where we’ll be in 20 years,” adds SIGGRAPH 2019 VR Theater Director Maxwell Planck. “As we launch the third annual VR Theater at SIGGRAPH, it’s important to note not only impressive growth in the quantity of submissions, but in the quality as well. I look forward to celebrating the future of a medium that, much like the early days of the Electronic Theater, will only get bigger and better.”

SIGGRAPH 2019 takes place July 28th – August 1st at the Los Angeles Convention Center. We’ll be live on the show floor providing updates on all the best offerings, so be sure you’re checking back with us regularly. Below is a full breakdown of this year’s immersive entertainment:

ARCADE

• Beach Body Bros – While showcasing Oculus Medium as a production-ready sculpting tool, Beach Body Bros takes you on a ridiculous musical journey through a world of pure muscle, intense strength, and stupid greatness.
• Dadum: Experiencing Memories of My Father – Dadum is a wearable AR experience that utilizes spatial tracking of the Hololens1 to produce a unique AR mask-based social artwork. The artwork is a collection of masks, 3D recreations of the artist’s deceased father, where users wear these AR masks as their avatar in a mixed reality multi-user space.
• Gloomy Eyes – When the sun got tired of humans, it decided to hide and never rise again. The darkness awoke the dead from their graves. A zombie kid, Gloomy, and a mortal girl, Nena, fall in love and immerse in a deep connection that not even the most powerful man can destroy.
• Nuclear Dissent – Interactive documentary “Nuclear Dissent” is a cautionary tale about nuclear destruction, told through the lens of some of the world’s bravest activists and experts. From the weapon tests to the protest, the fallout and the propaganda, the documentary explores nuclear impacts and inspires everyday people to take action.
• Pixel Ripped 1989 – A game within a game, original, fun, and packed full of surprises that will keep you guessing along the way. Pixel Ripped truly is a nostalgic, mad trip down memory lane. Search for retro-Easter eggs as you fight the mundane distractions of life and get down to what’s most important – gaming!
• Project Jua –Project Jua is an interactive VR experience that raises awareness of the impact of not having easy access to electricity, taking the player to a rural farm in Kenya to experience firsthand the challenges of living off the grid to discover an African solar power solution that is improving lives.
• Spheres – Space isn’t silent. In fact, it is full of sound. For thousands of years, we’ve looked to the stars to find our place in the Universe, but for the first time we listen to its music. SPHERES is a three-chapter journey to uncover the hidden songs of the cosmos.
• T. Rex: Skeleton Crew – “T. rex: Skeleton Crew” is a multiplayer, wireless VR experience designed for AMNH’s exhibition “T. rex: The Ultimate Predator.” Together, three players assemble a T. rex skeleton and then witness it come to life as the environment transforms from a museum gallery to the Cretaceous world 66 million years ago.

MUSEUM

• City of Sparkles – Through using authentic Twitter messages, City of Sparkles portrays storytelling through a virtual reality experience in New York City and San Francisco. The audiences can feel different emotions through exploring through the world of tweets.
• Heterotopias – Heterotopias is an interactive VR experience based on Michel Foucault’s lecture, Des espaces autres. It leverages eye-tracking technology, transforming blinks into cinematic cuts. Suspended in a hanging chair, the user progresses through a series of virtual spaces resembling an abbreviated life cycle – a well, a garden, and a mausoleum.
• Meu – Meu allows users to connect to their inner emotional states and communicate them to others by providing customizable avatars along with unique algorithms that connect your movements to reactive music, visual effects, and haptics vibrations. Your body language and dances create a Meu that your friends can then experience.
• Reincarnation – Virtual Reality Recreation of Yves Tanguy’s World – Reincarnation is a virtual reality art experience, built upon a series of French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy’s paintings in combination with my creation of pseudo-natural beings. It seeks and argues the animism in various matters and challenges the anthropocentric worldview in an artificial intelligence era.

VILLAGE

• AIR: Augmented Intersection of Realities – An interactive presentation of AR research on the augmentation of the interfaces between computing systems, leveraging physical space as the medium to interact, transfer, and actuate digital content.
• Autism XR – Students with ASD often struggle with social communication and behaviors. Autism XR provides a safe web-based augmented reality (WebXR) environment that allows the user to privately practice their social skills and behaviors on a mobile device.
• Being Henry – After experiencing a stroke that left him paralyzed, Henry Evans uses cutting-edge technology to keep him connected to the things he loves. In this first-person interactive documentary, see the world through Henry’s eyes — and the eyes of his robots.
• Deep Reality: An Underwater VR Experience to Promote Relaxation by Unconscious HR, EDA, and Brain Activity Biofeedback – DeepReality uses biometric information for reflection and relaxation. We monitor real-time brain activity, heart rate, and electrodermal activity to decrease heart rate and respiration by subtle, almost imperceptible light flickering, sound pulsations, and slow movements of underwater 3D creatures that reflect the internal state of the viewer.
• Drawing Sound in MR Space – What if we can draw sound in mid-air? We propose a multi-participant, interactive, audiovisual art experience using mixed reality (MR). In the MR space, participants can draw virtual lines in mid-air to create audiovisual effects.
• Eclipse – Eclipse is a glimpse into the future of entertainment. A hyperreality experience, Eclipse provides a complete free roaming experience on a limited footprint with unique features, such as full body awareness and haptic floors. A collaborative sci-fi experience for two to four players.
• LiquidMask: Utilizing Liquid-based Haptic for Multiple Tactile Sensation in Immersive Virtual Reality – We present LiquidMask, a liquid-based haptic device which can simultaneously produce thermal changes and vibration responses by filling liquid into the mask. To demonstrate our device, we also design a diving game to show the utility of LiquidMask.
• Neural AR: Immersive Augmented Reality With Real-Time Neural Style Transfer – In this project, we propose a method of rendering on a neural network base that enables high-immersion AR and implement that method in demonstrating an AR game that runs interactively in real-time.
• Nitro – Nitro is a mixed reality game for the Magic Leap that lets users drive a small remote control car around a virtual obstacle course using motion controls and hand gestures. They can steer by line of sight or by using a screen attached to their controller showing the car’s perspective.
  
• Ollie – Ollie is a VR animation tool designed for beginners in 3D animation. Ollie introduces key concepts in animation (timing, easing, squash and stretch, and more) to new animators in a highly visual way, making the animation process feel playful, approachable, and encouraging.
• OVS+Tumor: A Tool for Enhanced Lung Tumor Annotation in VR for Machine Learning Training and Analysis – OVS+Tumor creates a seamless VR environment designed for intuitive interaction aiding in the complex task of parsing through 3D CT-scans and annotating candidate tumors. Through interactive subsetting and on-the-fly iso-cloud generation, a wider range of users beyond just domain experts (radiologists/surgeons) can generate a viable machine-learning training dataset.
• Remote Spatial Programming and Collaboration Using a Real-Time Volumetric Capture Space – Collaboratively program a machine through a spatial drag-and-drop interface while being captured real-time in volumetric-video. We explore the future of industrial programming by using AR to build a drag-and-drop spatial interface. One person programs a machine using their phone while another can collaborate remotely through a volumetric-video.
• SkateVR – An installation for those who are ready to jump on a skateboard and collect the maximum points in a virtual world, even if they know to control a real skate or not.
• The Last Oasis – A man-made disaster has devastated much of the earth’s ecosystem. Ogini Orog, a brilliant scientist, has built himself a safe bunker using his wits to survive the hostile environment and is looking for artifacts in order to extract and save the last remains or nature. Explore each room to uncover clues.
• Undersea – Undersea is a room-scale, spatial computing experience for the Magic Leap One headset. Relax and observe underwater life in a dynamically generated, coral reef biome. Distinct vistas and creatures, presented in a photo-real art style, provide an opportunity to feel a sense of presence and connection between the creatures, the environment, and the user.
• VR Minecraft for Art – We have created a VR art museum within Minecraft and added features to make it more interactive and engaging. A scavenger hunt was added, and a player can build a sculpture after completing the scavenger hunt. The user is then provided with different colored blocks to create a painting of their own.
• Wolves in the Walls: Chapter 2, It’s All Over – Not everything is as it seems when 8-year-old Lucy’s imagination proves to be a reality. Based on the work by renowned author Neil Gaiman, Wolves in the Walls draws you into a storybook where only you can help Lucy discover what’s truly hiding inside the walls of her house.
• Worldspace Painting Data Visualization – We invented AR interaction for paintings where they have been historically static, taking greater advantage of AR’s interactive nature to providing a compact and stable mobile experience that is both engaging and minimally intrusive to the art gallery experience. We provide context-specific information on parts of each painting.

Featured Image Credit: SIGGRAPH

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