Visit The Epicenter of Virtual Reality in LA: USC Institute for Creative Technologies Mixed Reality Lab to Host VRLA Meet Up #2

Published: June 12, 2014
Category: Press Releases | News

Experience the latest in immersive media and virtual reality

Meet the leaders of the SoCal-centered VR revolution

ICT Media Contact: Orli Belman, belman@ict.usc.edu, 310 301-5006

WHEN: 6:30 – 10:30 pm Mon., June 23

WHERE: ICT Mixed Reality Lab, 5318 McConnell Ave, LA, CA 90066

WHAT: VRLA, the bi-monthly event positioned at the confluence of the entertainment industry and the rapidly expanding world of virtual reality is bringing its next gathering of technologists and industry creatives to the USC Institute of Creative Technologies Mixed Reality Lab. The event will feature exciting VR demos from the ICT, as well as guest demos from some of the most inventive developers in the field, including VR demos from Epic Games and Sixense.

Mixed Reality Lab Demos Include:

E2C2: Project BlueShark: Take the helm on the bridge of a ship, fly along with a drone or remotely operate a real robotic arm in this virtual reality vision of the workspace of the future developed with the U.S. Navy.
Stretching Space/ReDirected Walking: Experience the holy grail of full body locomotion, precision tracking and a mind altering 150 degree field-of-view head-mounted display within a this fully immersive demo.
VR2GO Suite of Immersive Viewers: Transform Smartphones and tablets into portable virtual reality systems for training, education, health and fitness, entertainment and more with the lab’s open source toolkit.
Rapid Avatar Capture: Get into the game with this system that creates 3D versions of people in under four minutes.
Project Syria: Witness real events as they transpire in an immersive journalism experience that uses real time graphics, high resolution VR goggles and compelling audio to put participants inside the story.
Light Stage 6 – See part of ICT’s Academy Award winning-technology that allows for the creation of photorealistic digital doubles as they would appear in any lighting condition.

WHO: Introduction and welcome by VR pioneer, Mark Bolas, director of the Mixed Reality Lab (MxR) at ICT and a professor of interactive media at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Bolas supervised Palmer Luckey when he worked at ICT and advised Survios founders James Illiff and Nate Burba when they were his students. Bolas continues to serve as a teacher and mentor to the generation that is currently defining and refining this new medium.

About the USC Institute for Creative Technologies:

At the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) leaders in artificial intelligence, graphics, virtual reality and narrative advance low-cost immersive techniques and technologies to solve problems facing service members, students and society. Established in 1999, ICT is a DoD-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center working in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. ICT brings film and game industry artists together with computer and social scientists to study and develop immersive media for military training, health therapies, education and more.

ICT is the hub of much of the current activity around virtual reality in Los Angeles. Situated in the hotbed of ‘Silicon Beach’ and combining the best and brightest from the entertainment industry and computer science and engineering, the MxR Lab is changing the way we interact with each other and the world around us.

Special thanks to PhaseSpace, Inc.