OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces High Fidelity CEO Philip Rosedale as Keynote Speaker

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The OpenSimulator Community Conference is pleased to announce Philip Rosedale, Founder and CEO of High Fidelity, Inc. will be a keynote speaker at the second annual OpenSimulator Community Conference, scheduled to take place virtually on November 8-9, 2014 in a virtual conference center designed for the event.

Mr. Rosedale’s keynote presentation will address the question, “What is the Metaverse?” and discuss the opportunity to develop an open platform for virtual reality over the internet, including new hardware devices that catalyze entirely new kinds of interactions between avatars.

In 1995, Philip Rosedale created an innovative Internet video conferencing product (called “FreeVue”), which was later acquired by RealNetworks where in 1996 he went on to become Vice President and CTO. In 1999, Rosedale left RealNetworks, founded Linden Lab and built a virtual civilization called Second Life, fulfilling his lifelong dream of creating an open-ended, Internet-connected virtual world.

Since leaving Second Life in 2010, Rosedale has worked on several experiments in distributed work and computing, including Coffee & Power and Worklist.net. In 2013, he co-founded High Fidelity Inc. to explore the future of a next-generation virtual reality system.

“Philip Rosedale is one of the foremost thinkers about virtual reality and the Metaverse today,” said conference chair Chris Collins. “We look forward to hearing his thoughts on the next generation of open Metaverse platforms, including OpenSimulator.”

Registration for the virtual OpenSimulator Community Conference is free and opens on September 15, 2014.  Sign up to be notified when registration opens!

OpenSimulator Community Conference Announces Principal Scientist at Oculus VR as Keynote Speaker

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steve_zerniki_croppedThe OpenSimulator Community Conference is pleased to announce Dr. Steve LaValle, principal scientist at Oculus VR and professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, will be a keynote speaker at the second annual OpenSimulator Community Conference, scheduled to take place on November 8-9, 2014.

Dr. LaValle will address the exciting race to bring the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset into widespread use for games, cinema, therapy, and virtual worlds. Since Palmer Luckey’s 2012 prototype demonstrated that smartphone-based advances in display and sensing technology can enable a lightweight, high field-of-view VR experience that is affordable by the masses, widespread interest has grown across many industries, research labs, and potential end users of the VR technology. Dr. LaValle’s talk will highlight ongoing technical challenges, including game development, user interfaces, perceptual psychology, and accurate head tracking.

Dr. LaValle began working with Oculus VR a few days after its successful Kickstarter campaign and has led its R&D efforts up to its $2 billion acquisition by Facebook in March 2014. He developed perceptually tuned head tracking methods based on IMUs and computer vision and has also led a team of perceptual psychologists to provide principled approaches to virtual reality system calibration and the design of comfortable user experiences. He has worked in robotics for over twenty years and is known for his introduction of the Rapidly exploring Random Tree (RRTs) algorithm of motion planning, and is the author of Planning Algorithms.

Registration for the OpenSimulator Community Conference 2014 is free and opens on September 15, 2014.  Sign up to receive an email reminder to register today!