The Reality Lab Lectures changed this year, but it did not stop. As covid-19 developed into a pandemic, we quickly re-imagined everything as entirely virtual, and went to work making that a reality! That included, classes, events, group projects, AND our distinguished speaker series on the past and future of AR/VR!
With the help of UW CSE’s Production team, we moved the lecture series online. We confirmed that our speakers could still lecture that way, determined a format that would work for speakers and allow for some attendees to participate live, and we recorded multiple views of each talk so we could make them into public videos afterward.
This situation also brought opportunities: We were able to invite some far-flung speakers to address our students; People we had wanted to invite before, like Rosie Summers, in England and Henry Fuchs in North Carolina! Shifting to online because of the pandemic, meant they could join this lecture series.
Our 2020 Spring line-up (with links to the videos) was:
- Henry Fuchs: “Nextgen AR Glasses: Autofocus, Telepresence, Personal Assistants“
- Mar Gonzalez Franco: “Impossible outside Virtual Reality“
- Uma Jayaram & Jay Jayaram: “Bringing VR/AR experiences to Live Sports – Opportunities and Challenges“
- Rosie Summers: “Building Virtual Realities“
- Brian Schowengerdt: “Extended Reality: Use Cases and Design Considerations for AR, MR, and VR“
- Ken Perlin: “How to Build a Holodeck“
Producing the series virtually helped us develop the series in ways we hope will help in the future, even after we can return to in-person events. We look forward to that return and to continuing this recent focus on remote learning and audiences.
The Reality Lab Lectures bring important researchers and practitioners from a variety of disciplines to the UW campus to discuss Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality, and to suggest what their work might mean for other disciplines working on related questions as well as for the future of the AR/VR field. Lectures happen during the academic year at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering on the UW campus.