Virtual Reality
-
Registration for DevCon 2026 is now officially open. The event will be held from April 15th-16th 2026 in the historic Beurs van Berlage conference centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. There's an additional pre-conference day on the 14th, so make sure to plan on attending that, too. Register today to save your spot and take advantage of early-bird pricing until February 20th! I said some time ago that I wasn't planning on presenting at this year's DevCon, but, well, I changed my mind and submitted a talk just before the deadline. I'm happy to say it was accepted. I'll be presenting…
-
Yesterday I felt well enough to get myself out of bed before the sunrise to head across to Basel for this year's Swissbau, a biennial construction conference for the Swiss market. It was easier than in past years, as there's now a direct train from Neuchatel to Basel. (We used to have to change in Biel/Bienne). The journey was spectacular: as we skirted the Jura mountains, we went from dark and foggy to sunny and frosty (even snowy, in places). Arriving at the main station in Basel I had a few minutes to catch the tram out to the Messeplatz.…
-
I'm on the train back from Zurich airport after my whirlwind trip to Nashville and San Diego, so it's time for a wrap up post covering the rest of my time in the US. After a very interesting first day at ANFA 2025 in San Diego, we went back for more on the Friday and Saturday. During the opening it was great to see Autodesk Research being called out prominently as a sponsor. We're very happy to support a conference that's so well aligned with our research interests! The theme of Day 2 was "Designing for Human Flourishing" - with…
-
In my last post I was heading from Nashville to San Diego for a conference organized by the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture - ANFA 2025. As mentioned at the end of the post, there was some uncertainty about whether I would be able to get to San Diego, given an incident at the airport that led to the main runway being shut, and lots of inbound flights being either diverted or cancelled. Mine ended up in the latter bucket, but only after I'd ordered my "dinner". I was told Delta would automatically rebook my flight for the following day…
-
The countdown is officially on for AU 2025, which is being held in Nashville, Tennessee, from September 16-18. Things kicked off properly on Thursday with the CFP opening. It'll be possible to submit your class proposal from now until April 17. The big news for this year's event is that there will be a new class length available to folks: in addition to a 50+10 (talk+Q&A, in minutes) session there will be the option of 20+10, also. It will also only be possible to submit a maximum of 3 proposals per person. This might not sound like a big change,…
-
We're once again in the craziness before the storm (hmm - wasn't there meant to be some calm?!?) that is Autodesk University. Requests for meetings are gradually filling up calendars… from my side it's looking like another busy (but very fun) event. As a reminder, here are the classes that I'll be part of, in some capacity this year. The class on extending Forma - where I'm co-speaking - has the slides and handout posted, in case you want to check it out ahead of time. In anticipation of this year's event (and the chance to connect with academic partners,…
-
You don't have to look far, these days, to find dire prognostications about the death of the Metaverse. That's the nature of the hype cycle: those without the patience to help push technology through the Trough of Disillusionment move on to other things. Although the speed with which the Metaverse passed the Peak of Inflated Expectations in 2022 is impressive. Interestingly the Gartner Hype Cycle for 2016 reported Virtual Reality as having emerged onto the Slope of Enlightenment, but even at this time I felt this was premature. These models do have to be seen as what they are: approximations…
-
On Friday I hopped on a train to Zurich to attend the AI+X Summit 2022 event – organised by the ETH AI Center – which was co-located with the ETH Entrepreneur Club's Launch event. It was a lovely autumn day, and the colours were even on display in Zurich's Oerlikon district. The event was held at Stage One, an event space a short walk from the Oerlikon train station. I was mainly there for the AI+AEC workshop, but there were a number of mainstage presentations and exhibits by startups and larger companies involved in AI. The workshops were held upstairs,…
-
Earlier this year Autodesk acquired The Wild along with its own recent acquisition, IrisVR, and their Prospect platform for XR collaboration. This was really exciting news for those of us who believe VR/AR/MR to be hugely interesting technologies with significant potential to impact our customers' workflows. To review, here's a 10-minute video showing how The Wild works: Of course this isn't the first time Autodesk has focused serious resources on developing XR solutions: the first was in the late 80s/early 90s, with the Cyberspace Developer Kit, while another was around 5 years ago with our former (VR-capable) game engine, Stingray,…
-
Our Technology Centers team has posted an interesting RFP on LinkedIn: they've been working with Microsoft to make HoloLens 2 headsets available to Technology Center residents interested in exploring mixed reality workflows for the AEC and Manufacturing industries. It seems pretty straightforward: if you're interested in developing a mixed reality solution – whether using Unity, Unreal or WebXR – then you need to submit your proposal before August 24th, 2020. If accepted you'll be invited into our residency program and provided a HoloLens 2 device for 6 months (with the possibility of extending the term, if needed). This seems like…