Now in its sixth year, Oculus Connect returns to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center September 25 – 26. And now is the time to register online at oculusconnect.com!

Whether you're building immersive experiences for consumers or businesses, at OC6 you’ll discover cutting-edge innovations, hear best practices to develop imaginative new worlds, and learn how to effectively distribute your work to a growing audience. From storytelling and gaming to training and beyond, join industry experts, fellow developers, and AR/VR leaders at Facebook to see what the future holds and learn best practices for today.

We’ll talk about the future of the AR/VR industry and bring back fan favorites like John Carmack’s App Reviews. OC6 is also an amazing opportunity to see the latest from game developers around the world. Respawn Entertainment (Apex Legends™ and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order™) will join us at this year’s show to reveal a new AAA first-person combat title made in partnership with Oculus Studios, including the first hands-on playable demo.

Of course, we know that learning from each other is one of the most valuable parts of Connect. You’ll hear from ILMxLAB, the creators of Vader Immortal: A Star Wars VR Series, on how they brought this uniquely immersive narrative to Oculus Quest. And here’s a sneak peek at some more of this year’s sessions covering innovation, development, and monetization across the AR/VR industry:

The 3Ds of Immersive Media: Discover, Design, Distribute

Eric Cheng, Immersive Media Lead, Facebook; Asad Sheth, Product Manager, Facebook; Abesh Thakur, Product Manager, Facebook

You spoke, we listened. Workflows, ingestion, and distribution for immersive-media creators have been riddled with friction over the past several years. Join the Facebook AR/VR Media Team to learn about new opportunities and approaches for creation, ingestion, and distribution of your content with the latest products made especially to reduce friction and support VR-first media. We’ll also share ways that you, as a creator, can build a presence and grow your audience.

Bridge Virtual and Real Worlds with AR

Matt Hanson, Spark AR Product Design Manager, Facebook

Learn different ways you can build AR experiences that are connected to real-world locations, environments, or objects. From bringing a game character into the real world to transforming the everyday environment into a scene from your game, attendees will review a mix of Spark AR-enabled activations and learn how these executions can unlock value for businesses and consumers.

Career-Connected Curriculum for Tomorrow’s AR/VR Developers

Cindy Ball, AR/VR Policy Manager, Facebook (Moderator); Justin Rogers, Software Engineer, Facebook

With the goal of creating one of the nation’s first career-connected curricula for VR Creation, public high schools, researchers, and industry have partnered to establish a pipeline for future AR/VR developers—beginning in high school and leading to college or professional opportunities. This panel will dive into what it takes to develop such a VR curriculum, how it can support multi-disciplinary skills, the challenges encountered, how they were solved, and best practices for bringing similar programs to your community.

Creating VR for Everyone: Accessibility and Inclusion in a Virtual Space

Allison Lee, Developer Program Manager, Facebook (Moderator)

Oculus Launch Pad Program Manager Allison Lee welcomes VR developers and industry experts for a discussion on how to design immersive experiences for everyone. VR and AR offer opportunities for new types of expression, which comes with new responsibilities for content creators. Learn how to address these new needs, including how to feature diverse voices, be inclusive to a wider audience, and provide greater access to a variety of people.

Designing for Emotion: The Space Where Stories and Games Meet

Yelena Rachitsky, Executive Producer, Facebook

How are storytellers and game designers converging to evoke specific emotions in VR? Learn about the perfect blend between agency and narrative, mechanics that motivate audiences through emotion—and connect them to characters. The lines between stories and games continue to blur. Join us for a discussion that promises to be equal parts playful and thought-provoking.

From Demo to Pilot to Deployment: Getting Buy-In for Enterprise VR

Tina Tran, Developer Partnerships, Facebook (Moderator)

A panel of leading enterprise VR developers and Global 2000 customers will share their experiences and tips on the path from demo to pilot to deployment. The panelists will discuss the importance of providing compelling demos to stand out and gain traction with potential customers, and identifying learning objectives and key success metrics in order to convert VR pilots into larger VR deployments within an org.

The More Things Change: How Trends in VR Apply to Quest

Deborah Guzman Barrios, Developer Strategy, Facebook; Rade Stojsavljevic, Head of Content Strategy, Facebook

VR is uncharted territory where a growing percentage of developers have found success. As the user base grows, so do the opportunities! What are the key factors that can help ensure success? Join us as we explore key insights learned alongside our closest partners over the past few years. Oculus Quest completes the first generation of Oculus hardware and represents a new market for VR content. We’ll look at the different customer preferences for content on Quest compared to Rift and Oculus Go—and talk about how we expect VR content to evolve in the next few years.

Oculus for Business: Scalable, Professional, Secure

Matt Terrell, Product Manager, Facebook; Isabel Tewes, Product Manager, Facebook

Enterprise VR continues to make waves and prove results as innovate companies leverage the technology for training, collaboration, design, and much more. The logistics of scaling this powerful tech, however, can be daunting. Join the Enterprise product team as they give you a first look at the Oculus for Business solution that will help companies deploy VR in a new professional, secure, and scalable way.

Safety By Design: How to Bake Safety and People into Product Development

Sarah Ryan, Policy Associate, Facebook; Lindsay Young, Product Manager, Facebook

Online abuse—like bullying and harassment—isn’t new, but VR brings a whole new set of immersive and visceral abuse vectors that require bespoke responses from platforms and developers. Protecting people from abuse is especially important for vulnerable groups, including women and people of color. This session will explore how various VR developers are thinking about and tackling user safety—both proactively and reactively—to help build safer experiences. You’ll hear from product and community managers on how they bake safety by design into their products and work with their communities to create safe and welcoming cultures.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Success on the Oculus Store

Bruce Wooden, Content Launch Manager, Facebook (Moderator); Lisa Brewster, Oculus Store Manager, Facebook; Richard Duck, Store Operations Manager, Facebook; Mari Kyle, Content Launch Manager, Facebook; Chris Pruett, Director of Content Ecosystem, Facebook

Oculus has three flagship VR headsets: Oculus Go, Rift S, and Quest. Each platform differs not only in terms of technical capability, but also the type of content players engage with as well as player expectations for quality. This session aims to shine more light on store curation decisions made by Oculus, where your title may fit best, and what to do if your app doesn’t make the cut on the first try.

Technological Tethers: How AR + VR Connect Us to the World

Lisa Brown Jaloza, Technology Communications Manager, Facebook (Moderator)

From dystopian futures to escapist fantasies, the possibilities of virtual and augmented reality are often misrepresented or misunderstood. In this session, we’ll explore how these technologies actually deepen our connection to the world around us.

Women in AR/VR Research

Tara Franz, UX Researcher, Facebook; Ayfer Gokalp, UX Researcher, Facebook

We unfold the significance of carrying women’s voices through the development of VR and AR products that are primarily designed for male users. We share our insights from multiple studies on women’s experiences with integrity features and hardware products.

This is shaping up to be another incredible Connect. We’ll have more details to share as we get closer to the event, so keep an eye out for updates. For now, check out oculusconnect.com for information on hotels and travel—and register to attend OC6, September 25 – 26 in San Jose.

We hope you’ll join us.

— The Oculus Team