This January 16–17, VR Philippines would be hosting the Manila Vive Jam — a virtual reality game jam that will bring together brilliant minds to learn and collaborate on creating immersive virtual reality applications and experiences using room-scale tracking and natural input technology that is made possible with the HTC Vive and SteamVR platform.

The Vive is Valve and HTC’s Virtual Reality solution that allows users to experience fully immersive games and experiences. It runs on Valve’ SteamVR software platform.

What makes the Vive miles ahead of other VR devices is that it is capable of room-scale tracking through its lighthouse technology, which means that users can walk freely around a 4.5mx4.5m space and fully interact naturally with the virtual environment using the two tracked controllers.

For an idea of what the Vive feels like, take a look at the reaction of people in this video from the pre-event meetup and demos we held last December:

Developers and designers of varying skill levels, from students to professional game developers, are all invited to participate either as a team or individually. As long as you have a basic knowledge of either Unity or Unreal game development engines, and the passion to turn your virtual dreams into reality, you’re pretty much qualified for the event.

Registered jammers will get meals for the 2-day jam, an event shirt, lots of cool freebies, and access to one of the only two Vive development kits in the Philippines.

The Vive Jam is not a competition but rather an event where developers will have a chance to learn and develop on the hottest VR platform around. The jam is in the spirit of learning and collaboration, on making cool stuff and sharing ideas and best practices and having fun with this cool new tech.

All teams that will join this event will have a chance to get their hands on their own HTC Vive development kit as we will showcase all of the content developed for the jam and help each one reach out to Valve and HTC to request their own kits to continue their development.

If you are interested in joining the Manila Vive Jam, you can now register on the official event page!

On the afternoon of the second day, January 17th, there will be show and tell presentations and demo sessions where attendees can try out the VR experiences developed during the jam. If you are interested in attending the demo day, you may also register on the official event page.

The second day will also be the premiere of the first 360 documentary shot in the Philippines, Happyland360. We will be setting up Gear VRs for attendees to watch it in 360.