Mixed Reality Dev Days

02/21/2020

13 minutes to read





In this article

We look forward to having you join us at Mixed Reality Dev Days! Get ready for a new event format, tailored to a completely digital experience in 2D and 3D with AltspaceVR, with opportunities to hear from Microsoft leaders, learn from experts, and connect with the mixed reality developer community. Register for the digital experience today, at no cost to you!

Important Details

Date - May 21st and 22nd

Location - AltspaceVR

Registration - FREE

Registration

Register Now

We are very excited to open up registration for Mixed Reality Dev Days. The event is free and being held in AltspaceVR, however, we are still requesting that attendees register so we can send email updates as the event gets closer, as well as to make sure that we are staffed up for the number of attendees.

About Altspace

AltspaceVR is the premier place to attend live shows, meetups, cool classes, and more with friendly people from around the world. All thanks to the magic of Virtual Reality. Altspace became part of the Microsoft family in 2017 and we are very excited to showcase how events in virtual space can be run.

Altspace supports the following platforms: HTC Vive; Oculus Rift, Go, and Quest; Samsung GearVR; Windows Mixed Reality; and 2D Mode on PC. Mac users will need to use Parallels or Bootcamp to use Windows to access AltspaceVR.

Creating an account

There are two ways to create an account:

The most efficient way is to download the AltspaceVR client of choice for your setup, complete the install, and then launch the client. Once you are in the program, there will be an option to create an account. Minimum system specifications can be found here.

The other option is to visit the Online account sign up.

Troubleshooting

If you run into any issues with Altspace, please check the troubleshooting page. If that doesn't solve the issue you are experiencing, please file a support request.

Additional tips

If this is your first time using AltspaceVR, please give yourself time before the first event to go through the tutorial.

(Optionally) we recommend attending one of the AltspaceVR 101 events for more tips and tricks.

Favorite/Register Interest before the event to easily find it later in the client.

Unlike other virtual meetings, AltspaceVR is an immersive environment and as such, you can block other attendees view. Please respect other attendees space and view to ensure everyone has a good experience.

Friend everyone you want to talk to at the event, that way you can invite friends back to your AltspaceVR home to chat privately if you wish.

If you stand near a microphone, your voice will be broadcast to everyone at the event! so take care where you are when talking.

Schedule - Subject to change

All times are Pacific Daylight Time

Networking space

We have a networking space that will be opening after the Keynote on day one, and after the Fireside chat on day two and will remain open until 4pm Pacific time each day. If you would like the "RSVP" for this space, you can do so here. The idea of the networking space is similar to the "hallway track" at a physical conference. A place to meet up with fellow developers, designers, enthusiasts, and even Microsoft staff.

May 21st

Time Session Title Speaker Description Link to Event Page 9:30am - 10:30am Opening Keynote Alex Kipman Come join us as Alex Kipman starts our first ever virtual Mixed Reality Dev Days event. If you are using a VR headset we encourage you to join us in AltspaceVR, and if you are joining from a computer, please check out our livestream at https://aka.ms/MRDDKeynote RSVP Page 10:30am - 11:00am Break 11:00am - 12:00pm Intro to Azure Mixed Reality Services: Azure Remote Rendering Jonathan Lyons, Christopher Manthei, and Marc Appelsmeier Azure Remote Rendering just entered public preview. Learn how you can use ARR to render interactive 3D models with hundreds of millions of polygons and stream them to devices like HoloLens 2 in real-time. RSVP Page 11:00am - 12:00pm Intro to Unreal + MRTK for HoloLens 2 Summer Wu & Luis Valverde Unreal Engine support for HoloLens 2 reached production-ready status with the release of UE 4.25 in May! Alongside UE 4.25, in response to the top ask we've been hearing from developers since Unreal's HoloLens support first shipped in preview, our team released the first component of the Mixed Reality Toolkit for Unreal: UX Tools 0.8. In this talk, we'll provide an overview of the features provided in Unreal Engine 4 and MRTK for Unreal, and how to use them to build epic experiences for HoloLens 2. RSVP Page 11:00am - 12:00pm Getting started with the HoloLens 2 and Unity Dan Miller - Unity Learn the basics of setting up Unity and building for the HoloLens 2. This presentation will cover best practices, basic features of the HoloLens 2 and how to quickly add hand tracking support and interactivity with native Unity API's RSVP Page 12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch 1:00pm - 2:00pm Intro to Azure Mixed Reality Services: Azure Spatial Anchors Archana Iyer & Vicente Rivera An overview of Azure Spatial Anchors (ASA) and relevant scenarios. This talk will go over new capabilities developed in the past year, with code samples on how to use them. We will go over best practices while building with ASA and how you can start integrating it into your products. RSVP Page 1:00pm - 2:00pm Intro to MRTK-Unity Catherine Diaz The Introduction to MRTK session will be a tutorial on how to create a simple MRTK app from start to finish. This talk will go over interaction concepts and show MRTK’s multi-platform capabilities. RSVP Page 1:00pm - 2:00pm Learnings from the MR Surfaces App Lars Simkins Join the engineers behind the MRDL Surfaces app for HoloLens 2 as they talk about the app’s design story and technical highlights. RSVP Page 2:00pm - 2:30pm Break 2:30pm - 3:30pm Azure Kinect Body Tracking Unity Integration Angus Antley Learn how to drive characters in Unity using the Azure Kinect Body Tracking SDK. RSVP Page 2:30pm - 3:30pm MRTK’s UX Building Blocks Yoon Park Deep dive on the MRTK’s UX components that help you build beautiful mixed reality experiences. RSVP Page 2:30pm - 3:30pm MRTK Performance Tools Kurtis Eveleigh & David Kline An introduction to performance tools, both in MRTK and external, as well as an overview of the MRTK Standard Shader. RSVP Page 3:30pm - 4:00pm Break 4:00pm - 5:00pm The State of Mixed Reality -- Where Companies are finding Success Ori Amiga & Matt Fleckenstein Ultra-low latency edge computing, coupled with AI and mixed reality, is the foundation for the next generation of experiences. By blending the digital and the physical worlds into ubiquitous computing experiences, mixed reality is enabling possibilities we could have only dreamed of previously. In this session, Ori and Matt will provide unique insight into the mixed reality market opportunity today and in the future. They will highlight how Microsoft is helping leading enterprises in manufacturing, health care and retail harness the power of mixed reality to drive business efficiency and transform customer and employee experiences. RSVP Page

May 22nd

Time Session Title Speaker Description Link to Event Page 9:30am - 10:30am Fireside Chat Alex Kipman & René Schulte Opening up day two we have invited Microsoft MVP, Regional Director, and community member extraordinaire René Schulte to stand around a fire and chat about the topics the community is interested in. René has been gathering questions from the community for about a week, and we anticipate it's going to be a great conversation. RSVP Page 10:30am - 11:00am Break 11:00am - 12:00pm Designing AR/VR experiences using Microsoft Maquette Ricardo Acosta Designing a phone app or a website has a well-defined workflow. Unfortunately, due to its novelty designing spatial reality experiences can be tricky if you use the same 2D workflow or toolset. Luckily, the new Microsoft Maquette app focuses on helping UX designers to design. RSVP Page 11:00am - 12:00pm MRTK Unity v2 & beyond - How community feedback helped us improve MRTK Bernadette Thalhammer A talk about how we've improved the developer experience over the last year by listening to feedback from the community and how developers can leverage some these improvements. We will dive into the documentation and unit testing, the new object manipulator component, using the migration window and will explore some code snippets around our most frequently asked questions from the dev community. RSVP Page 11:00am - 12:00pm Dark Slope's Unreal Engine plugin for the Azure Kinect DK Ben Unsworth - Dark Slope Learn how Dark Slope is leveraging the Azure Kinect DK and its SDKs to build real-time interactive engagements in Unreal Engine. RSVP Page 12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch 1:00pm - 2:00pm Introducing StereoKit - MR Made Easy! Nick Klingensmith StereoKit is an easy-to-use open-source mixed reality library for building HoloLens and VR applications with C# and OpenXR! StereoKit prioritizes mixed reality application development above all else, allowing for features such as a first-class mixed reality input system, fast performance by default even on mobile devices, quick iteration time on-device, and a runtime asset pipeline that lets users and developers load real assets from the file-system. All of this and more are packaged in a terse API that’s well documented, easy to learn, and easy to write! RSVP Page 1:00pm - 2:00pm Building Immersive MR Experiences with Babylon.js and WebXR Jason Carter & Raanan Weber Discover how easy and powerful it can be to develop MR experiences directly on the web. Babylon.js strives to be one of the most powerful, beautiful, simple, and open web rendering platforms in the world, making it easy to unlock full MR capabilities across platforms, devices, and ecosystems. Come check out the latest developments of Babylon.js and its support of WebXR. RSVP Page 1:00pm - 2:00pm Using Project Acoustics with HoloLens 2 Mike Chemistruck See how Project Acoustics, previously only available for VR and Console titles, can be applied to Mixed Reality! Learn how the system recreates real-world effects such as diffracted occlusion and re-direction of sounds around physical doorways and corners, and reverberation in complex geometries with multiple connected spaces, all within the compute budget of a HoloLens 2. RSVP Page 2:00pm - 2:30pm Break 2:30pm - 3:30pm Holographic Remoting - Rapid iteration & supercharged graphics on HoloLens Brent Jackson HoloLens delivers a revolutionary mobile computing platform like no other, but it’s limited to the processing power of a mobile device. Holographic remoting brings the raw power of a VR capable computer to HoloLens, and with Unity in-editor remoting you no longer have to build and deploy your apps to test them on a device. Learn how Holographic remoting can increase the performance of your applications, and your developers. RSVP Page 2:30pm - 3:30pm OpenXR on HoloLens 2: Cross-platform native mixed reality Alex Turner OpenXR 1.0 is here! Are you building mixed reality support into your own engine or native app from the ground up? If so, learn about the key details of the OpenXR native API surface, the extensions that bring the full feature set of HoloLens 2 to life, and the partners from Firefox Reality to StereoKit already shipping apps and frameworks built on OpenXR! With OpenXR, you can build cross-vendor mixed reality engines and native apps that span the breadth of devices in the industry! RSVP Page 2:30pm - 3:30pm Tips from a Year of HoloLens 2 Development Peter Vale The HoloLens commercialization team will share tips and lessons learned from the past year working with our partners. Gain insight into the most common issues along with best practices and techniques that you can use to get your HoloLens 2 application ready to share with your customers. RSVP Page

Code of Conduct and Microsoft Standard Event Guidelines

Code of Conduct

Microsoft's mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. This includes all Microsoft events and gatherings, including on digital platforms, where we seek to create a respectful, friendly, fun and inclusive experience for all participants.

We expect all digital event participants to uphold the principles of this Code of Conduct, which covers the main digital event and all related activities. We do not tolerate disruptive or disrespectful behavior, messages, images, or interactions by any party participant, in any form, at any aspect of the program including business and social activities, regardless of location. Microsoft will not tolerate harassment or discrimination based on age, ancestry, color, gender identity or expression, national origin, physical or mental disability, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations, and ordinances.

Photography, video or recording of session content or presentations in any format shared in social channels is prohibited. We encourage everyone to assist in creating a welcoming and safe environment. Please report any concerns, harassing behavior, suspicious, or disruptive activity to Business Conduct Hotline (1-877-320-MSFT or buscond@microsoft.com). Microsoft reserves the right to refuse admittance to or remove any person from Mixed Reality Dev Days at any time at its sole discretion.

We encourage everyone to behave responsibly within the AltspaceVR immersive environment as you would at any in-person event. Please respect other users space and do not block other attendees view of the stage when attending the event. Be aware that like any in-person event, anything you say may be heard by other users at the event, if you require to have a private conversation then we recommend you take that to another space within AltspaceVR such as your AltspaceVR home

Frequently Asked Questions

This section will be updated frequently as we get more questions from you!

Q - Can I participate without a VR Headset?

A - Absolutely. While we feel the event will be best experienced with a VR Headset, we want to be inclusive of people who can't join us in that format. Altspace has a PC client that can be used to join the event. Altspace does not currently have a client that works on the Mac platform (we recommend using Parallels or Bootcamp to create a Windows install to use AltspaceVR on a MAC.

Q - How do I join the 2D experience?

A - From a PC you have the option to download the Altspace Client via the Windows Store or Steam. After downloading the client, you will need to create an account, and log in. Info on how to navigate within the 2D experience can be found here.

Q - Who should attend Mixed Reality Dev Days

A - This event is inclusive of everyone who works or plays in the Mixed Reality space. While most of the content is going to be developer-focused, we also know that there is interesting content for a wide variety of roles beyond developers. Please remember to check the schedule for updates to see the kind of content we will be providing.

Q - I cannot find the event in AltspaceVR

A - We recommend following the link on your PC browser, logging in to the AltspaceVR website and clicking "Interested" on the event. This will make the event show up in your "Interested" tab in the Events view of the AltspaceVR client. You should also find the event in the "Featured" list.

Q - I joined the event but have lots of tutorial messages blocking my view

A - If you have joined the event without first going through the first-time tutorial, you will need to complete this to unblock your view. This is why we recommend logging on to AltspaceVR before the event to complete the tutorial to learn the basics to use this immersive environment.