GS01 KEYNOTE: How VR Is Changing the Future of Content
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM Wednesday, July 26
Regency Ballroom
In order to harness the potential of virtual reality, you must first understand how VR fundamentally changes some of the rules and expectations of what “content” and “experiences” mean. Maxwell Planck, the technical founder of Oculus Story Studio, spent a decade at Pixar contributing to some of the most memorable films of the early 21st century. However, even that cutting-edge environment did not fully prepare him for shifting his narratives from films to virtual reality. In this opening keynote, Mr. Planck will describe the work he is doing at Oculus Story Studio and share the lessons he has learned as he continues to discover the unique opportunities of VR. You will leave this keynote with new ideas and questions to ask yourself as you rethink what “content” means in the world of VR, and how that meaning shapes the types of experiences you can create for training.
Maxwell Planck
Technical Founder
Oculus Story Studio
Maxwell Planck is the technical founder of Oculus Story Studio. After graduating from MIT, Maxwell joined Pixar as a computer graphics technical director, solving creative and technical problems on six animated feature films: Cars, WALL•E, Up, Brave, Monsters University, and The Good Dinosaur. After 10 years, Maxwell left to find his next adventure and help build something that is novel, entertaining, awe-inspiring, and unsolved. He found what he was looking for in virtual reality. Maxwell joined the Oculus team to build Oculus Story Studio, a small team of technical artists from film and games founded on the vision that VR is the next great medium for telling stories. Story Studio creates and releases stories in service of developing VR’s language, to show that this medium has the versatility to be an art form, and to inspire and educate the next generation of storytellers and audience members.
