Started in 2015 by Keram Malicki-Sanchez as a virtual reality Meetup Group in Toronto, VRTO launched the VRTO Virtual & Augmented Reality World Conference & Expo in June 2016 – an international exhibition and professional conference exploring arts, culture and science through immersive technologies. Its inaugural year – held at the Mattamy Centre (better known as Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada) – featured keynotes from University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, Hollywood film director

Brett Leonard Brett Leonard (born May 14, 1959) is an American film director, producer and music video director specializing in the science fiction and horror genres. A few of his films such as ''The Lawnmower Man'' (1992) and ''Virtuosity'' (1995) feature ...

– director of

The Lawnmower Man "The Lawnmower Man" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the May 1975 issue of ''Cavalier'' and later included in King's 1978 collection '' Night Shift''. Plot summary Harold Parkette is in need of a new lawn mowing service. The ...

, Chief Digital Officer Ana Serrano of the Canadian Film Centre and Phil Lelyveld of

USC USC most often refers to: * University of South Carolina, a public research university ** University of South Carolina System, the main university and its satellite campuses **South Carolina Gamecocks, the school athletic program * University of ...

. The opening year featured a keynote,

town hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

and discussion panel around creating a Code of Ethics for Humanistic Augmentation VRTO Spearheads Code of Ethics on Human Augmentation also known as the HACode or The Toronto Code. In 2016 and 2017 the show was co-produced by Jessy Blaze and Chrissy Aitchison and in 2018 and 2019 by Stephanie Greenall, Aitchison and Melanie Smith. Longtime collaborator Joshua Miles Joudrie served as a key production consultant.

VRTO 2016

The conference, in its inaugural year welcomed 800 attendees and 64 speakers from Toronto, Montreal and Los Angeles, and featured over 20 companies working in the development of virtual reality,

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be de ...

and mixed reality in addition to training sessions dedicated to the creation of

360 video 360-degree videos, also known as surround video, or immersive videos or spherical videos, are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. During pl ...

, game development,

photogrammetry Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant ima ...

and

WebVR WebXR Device API is a Web application programming interface (API) that describes support for accessing augmented reality and virtual reality devices, such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, Google Cardboard, HoloLens, Magic Leap or ...

. The conference featured a preview of the

FIVARS Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories (FIVARS) is a media festival that showcases stories or narrative forms from around the world using immersive technology that includes virtual reality, augmented reality, live VR perfor ...

. The conference featured a workshop titled The Hacker's Guide to the Metaverse that taught programming

using the

JanusVR JanusVR is a corporation based in San Mateo, California, and Toronto, Ontario, that develops immersive web browsing software. It was founded by James McCrae and Karan Singh in December 2014. Named after Janus, the Roman God of passages, JanusV ...

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

platform.

VRTO 2017

The largest conference dedicated on virtual and augmented reality in Canada, the sophomore year featured 100 speakers and 60 installations. The second year of the VRTO Conference & Expo in 2017 was staged at the Rogers Communications Centre on the Ryerson University campus in downtown Toronto June 24–26 with the theme of "Giants" based on the quote by Sir Isaac Newton: "“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants.” Keynote speakers included Stanford neuroscientist Professor Walter Greenleaf, Ph.D., Graham Smith, David A. Smith, Dr. Sara Diamond - President of OCAD University, Moses Znaimer, Charlie Fink, Dr. Karan Singh and James McCrae - founders of

and additional live interviews with Steve Mann, and Tim Merel among others. Several panels, under the banner of "Super Sessions" featured leaders in the field of Virtual & Augmented Reality, health sciences (Dr. Lora Appel, Dr. Tom Overly, Dr. Stephane Bouchard), "Out-of-Home" entertainment (James Jensen of THE VOID, Eyal Kleiner of

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (approximately either 1.43:1 or 1.90:1) and steep stadium seating. Graeme F ...

, Ed Callway of AMD). The show was also the launchpad for various products and initiatives, including the Canadian Film Centre's Pulse on VR "living ecosystem" report on the Virtual Reality industry, the Webmoti camera that mitigates social anxiety for children with

autism The autism spectrum, often referred to as just autism or in the context of a professional diagnosis autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or autism spectrum condition (ASC), is a neurodevelopmental condition (or conditions) characterized by difficulti ...

who wish to participate in the classroom, and the Somato Cherry haptic wireless virtual reality controller. Themed pavilions were co-curated between Malicki-Sanchez and specialists in their respective fields, including Dr. Maria Karam (somatosensory pavilion), Ian Kelso (

conference track), Isaac Rayment (augmented reality "ARt Gallery") that featured early augmented reality artists Zenka, Daniel Leighton, Alex Mayhew, Dan Goldman, among others.

VRTO 2018

VRTO 2018 shifted its lens to psychedelia, esoterica, philosophy and phenomenology and how they relate to experiential design,

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

and Visual Effects featuring such speakers as

Steve "Spaz" Williams Steven "Spaz" Williams (born 1963) is a Canadian special effects artist, animator, and film and commercials director. Biography Williams studied animation at Sheridan College, graduating in 1984. During the summers he would work at the Ontario ...

(the VFX wizard behind the films '' The Mask'', '' The Abyss'' and ''

Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later also referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton and centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of cloned dinosaurs. It began in 1990 when ...

''),

Philip Rosedale Philip Rosedale (born September 29, 1968) is an American entrepreneur who founded Linden Lab, which develops and hosts the virtual world ''Second Life''. Biography Early life Rosedale was born in San Diego, California, in 1968. He took an inter ...

creator of Linden Labs and Second Life, and

, alongside 85 other leaders of the VR industry. In its third year, the event added an extra day of conferences, workshops and training. The exhibits featured numerous startup companies in the Ideaboost incubator in partnership with the Canadian Film Centre.

VRTO 2019

This year, the conference moved to a new location – the Toronto Media Arts Centre. The 2019 conference shifted focus onto a recalibration for the spatialized technologies industry as a whole and added various notable authors to the lineup, including bestselling author Blake Harris "The History of the Future," and

Douglas Rushkoff Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open sourc ...

"Team Human." Other notable speakers included Sarah Vicks from Intel Studios and Olivier Asselin from Ubisoft who spoke about volumetric video and VR locomotion, respectively, and Amelia Winger-Bearskin, YouTube phenom syrmor made an in-person appearance, and panels on e-Sports, inclusivity, and a live game show featuring Blair Renaud, and Andre Elijah about game development.

VRTO 2020

With the social and global effects of the COVID-19

pandemic A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...

many conferences were forced to adapt or close down. The VRTO conference moved online for its 5th anniversary, forming a multiplatform, multimodal experience founder Malicki-Sanchez termed "The Flotilla," that had a 30-day run spanning June 6 to July 6. It used a video-streaming conference app, the Mozilla Hubs web VR platform running custom code on the Amazon Web Services cloud, the Discord\platform, and hosted a micro summit on accessibility. The conference also featured contributions from

and Rochester Institute of Technology. Podcaster Kent Bye wrote a phenomenological journal of his experience and stated that "VRToronto is doing a lot of pioneering work in making their conference more accessible.". The show was co-produced by Stephanie Greenall.

VRTO 2021

For the second year in a row, and due to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic VRTO was hosted wholly in WebXR. "The Flotilla" continued to be a junction to link various virtual world platforms together. In the 2021 event this included links to various virtual world platforms along with the Dyscorpia Project spearheaded by international media artist

Marilene Oliver __NOTOC__ Marilene Julie Oliver (born 1977) is a British printmaker and sculptor. Marilene Oliver gained a BA in ''Fine Art Printmaking and Photomedia'' at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and an MA and MPhil in ''Fine Art Printmak ...

and her fellows at the University of Alberta. Besides these virtual spaces the conference hosted an extensive seven-day lineup of panels and presentations that included developer talks around game development, virtual production,

Esports Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although orga ...

, accessibility and inclusion, volumetric capture, the arts, medical applications, enterprise, and data analysis, and featured a daily live talkshow hosted from within the virtual world by host Max Noir. The event also featured a live performance workshop that was streamed to attendees and culminated in a live virtual performance operated by Dasha Kittredge and Ari Tarr that was also viewable via VR, on mobile and desktop devices. The show was reviewed positively in VRTrend magazine. The show was nominated for World of the Year at the 2021 Poly Awards.

VRTO 2022

VRTO returned to being a live and in-person event in 2022, taking place at OCAD University. The event was produced by

Keram Malicki-Sanchez Keram may refer to: Papua New Guinea *Keram Rural LLG, East Sepik Province *Keram languages *Keram River People with the name *Keramuddin Keram (born 1956), Afghan politician *Keram Malicki-Sánchez Keram Malicki-Sánchez is an actor, musician ...

and associate producer Aimee Reynolds. The marketing campaign featured muppets created using

GAN The word Gan or the initials GAN may refer to: Places *Gan, a component of Hebrew placenames literally meaning "garden" China * Gan River (Jiangxi) * Gan River (Inner Mongolia), * Gan County, in Jiangxi province * Gansu, abbreviated ''Gā ...

-created images with the Midjourney AI platform. Its new tagline was "Where Fresh Ideas Are Born." The 2-day conference featured speakers including Dr. Alexis Morris (OCAD), Lee Vermeulen, who presented how he was using GPT-3 to make NPCs talk inside of his world designs, Dario Laverde HTC Vive presented their Mars home Virtual Production technology, Justin Cathcart (Dark Slope) demonstrated their VR-based television sports series for adolescents, and the lead team of

virtual production On-set virtual production (OSVP) or also known as virtual production or virtual studio is a technology for television and film production in which LED panels are used as a backdrop for a set, on which video or computer generated imagery can be di ...

from VFX studio

Pixomondo Pixomondo (PXO) is an Academy and Emmy award-winning international visual effects and virtual production company with studios in Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and London. The company provides virtual production ...

, who shared secrets behind the creation of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Discovery. The show focused on the way spatial media was reaching critical mass in affecting media creation and featuring talks about live VR theater performance, Hyperreality TV, natural-language Holodecks, and next-gen haptic technology. The event drew over 200 attendees from across North America. Pixomondo at VRTO 2022

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:VRTO Virtual and Augmented Reality World Conference and Expo Virtual reality organizations Technology conferences Video game conferences Business conferences June 2019 events in Canada