RealTime Conference Returns April 26-28 with ‘Merging Physical and Digital Worlds – The Rise of the Metaverse’

Building on a series of successful virtual shows in 2020, the RealTime Conference (RTC) today announces the first look at its upcoming April 26-28 event, featuring the theme “Merging Physical and Digital Worlds – The Rise of the Metaverse.” The live, online-only show will offer three 14-hour days filled with sessions, keynotes and demos, all focused on highlighting how real-time technology can create new workplaces, new workflows and new ways of staying connected while remaining apart. 

More than 6,500 attendees from over 100 countries are expected to attend, and all sessions will be interactive (no pre-recorded sessions), giving attendees the opportunity to engage with speakers and other showgoers in real-time. To help support the growing real-time community during the pandemic, all sessions are open to real-time professionals and newcomers alike. Registration is open now and free. 

RTC brings together communities frequently siloed, and allows users to share their expertise. Neil Trevett, president of The Khronos Group, will deliver the opening keynote “Building the Metaverse One Standard at a Time.” Marc Petit, VP, general manager, Unreal Engine at Epic Games, will also give a keynote devoted to “Collaborative Work in Creative Industries,” followed by a panel of CEOs discussing the feedback from a year of pandemic, and where the industry will go from there. Additional topics will touch on virtual production, design, fashion, esports, 3D commerce, architecture, neural rendering, edge computing, cloud computing, haptics and more. 

Sessions will be hosted by experts from companies that are leading the way in real-time technology, including Facebook Reality Labs, Epic Games, Varjo, Lucid Motors, Volkswagen, Framestore, Intel, True View, Accenture and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with more to be announced soon. 

RTC’s April event will also feature several live demos highlighting some of the most advanced real-time tools available, including the Omniverse platform from NVIDIA (powered by HP ZCentral), Unreal Engine’s MetaHuman Creator and a demo of Digital Domain’s “Talking to Douglas,” followed by a keynote address titled “The Challenges in Creating an Autonomous Digital Human.”

More speakers and sessions are being added daily. Confirmed sessions include:

●      “Collaborative Design in the Metaverse” 

●      “How Do Architects Contribute to the Creation of the Ultimate Virtual/Physical Workplace?”

●      “Scalable Asset Pipelines for 3D Commerce” 

●      “Redefining the Luxury Automotive Purchase Experience”

●      “The Need for Collaboration and Crossing the Bridge Between Fashion and Games” 

●      “Cloud-Based Real-Time Applications: From Today’s Hurdles to Tomorrow’s Possibilities”

●      “Interactive Content Development & Streaming”

●      “Virtual Production: Building Real-Time Tools at the Core of Pipelines/Converting the Tests into Radical Changes”

●      “How Epic’s MetaHuman Creator Impacts Virtual Production, Storytelling & Prototyping”

●      “Enhanced Experiences: New Real-Time Reality for Sports”

●      “How the LED Video Wall has Become a Virtual Production Gamechanger”

●      “The Practical Metaverse – Hardware, Cloud, Edge & Infrastructure as it Pertains to the Metaverse”

●      “XR & Live Broadcast Shows”

“RTC is a community driven event, and just one year after launching our conference we have several great partners and speakers in our corner, as well as thousands of attendees from all around the world,” said RTC founder Jean-Michel Blottière. “With everything happening in the world right now, both technologically and culturally, it just goes to show that it’s definitely the right time for real-time.” 

RTC has also expanded its Advisory Board to include: 

●        Elizabeth Baron, Enterprise solutions executive at Unity Technology, and director at large at SIGGRAPH. The principal inventor of the Ford Immersive Vehicle Environment (FiVE), a virtual reality experience that enables designers and engineers to delve into the interior and exterior of a virtual vehicle before it is ever built, Baron recently joined Unity. She was recently named one of the top Engineers Who Mattered in 2020.

●        Sandra E. Lopez, VP for Intel Sports. Lopez is the co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on VR/AR/XR. Over the course of her career she has received numerous recognitions, including “Top 100 Women in Tech” (Technology Magazine), “Top 10 Sports Tech Influencers” (SportsPro Media), “Most Powerful Women in Tech” (National Diversity Council), “Top Women in Media” (Cynopsis), “Top 10 Latina Executives” (Latina Style), “Most Influential and Notable Hispanic Professionals in Information Technology” (HiTec) and “Game Changer” (Sports Business Journal).

●        Marco Tempest, Director’s fellow at the MIT Media Lab, creative consultant at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Tempest is executive director of the NYC MagicLab, a science consortium exploring illusion and digital technology, and serves as Accenture XR lead consultant.

Sponsors for RTC 2021 include Epic Games' Unreal Engine, Foundry, HP, The Khronos Group and NVIDIA, with additional partners announcements planned in the coming weeks. A second RTC event will be held November 15-16, and will be immediately followed by the Real-Time Innovation Awards on Thursday, November 18, which will see winners voted on by the RTC community.

Registration for RTC’s April event is open now. More information can be found at https://realtimeconference.com/. 

About RealTime Conference
The RealTime Conference (RTC) is the world’s premiere event for real-time communities. With real-time technologies growing at an unprecedented pace and shaping countless industries in its wake, RTC serves as a unifying space for cross-industry collaboration and growth. 

The conference was founded by Jean-Michel Blottière, Dave Gougé and Thomas Haegele. Blottière and Haegele previously collaborated in overseeing FMX before founding RTC, while Gougé has put together over 100 events as curator and host. They are joined by Manny Francisco, the former VP of advanced creative technology for NBCU/DreamWorks Animation. The full RTC team can be found here. RTC is also supported by the RTC Advisory Board, a group dedicated to bringing people together while offering recommendations to strengthen the program.

Building on a number of successful 2020 events, RTC has also introduced a new slate of programs: the RTC Innovation Awards, the RTC Institute, the RTC Research Lab, and the RTC Society. More information coming soon.

RTC is about shaping the future. To attend an event or get involved, please visit the RTC website.