Manila Vive Jam

The Manila Vive Jam is a Virtual Reality hackathon that will bring together brilliant minds to learn and collaborate on creating immersive VR applications and experiences using room-scale tracking and natural input technology that is made possible with the HTC Vive and SteamVR platform.

Friday (December 11)
6:00PM  Registration
7:00PM  Opening Program and Talks
                Event Briefing
               Introduction to Room Scale and Motion Control Input
               SteamVR Integration in Unity
               SteamVR Integration in Unreal
9:00PM  Vive Demo Sessions
               Brainstorming of Ideas
10:00PM Start of Vive Jam

(Participants can stay overnight at the venue from Friday night and start developing on their ideas through Saturday morning)

Saturday (December 12)
8:00AM - 10:00PM Vive Jam Day 2

Sunday (December 13)
8:00AM - 12:00PM Vive Jam Day 3
1:00PM -   5:00PM Public Demos
                               Show and Tell Presentations

The Manila Vive Jam will be held at the 5th Floor Board Room of PLDT Innolab, 721 Boni Avenue, Mandaluyong City.

What is the HTC Vive/SteamVR?
The Vive is HTC and Valve's Virtual Reality solution that allows users to experience fully immersive games and experiences. It runs on Valve' SteamVR software platform.

What makes the Vive miles ahead of other VR devices is that it is capable of room-scale tracking through its lighthouse base stations, which means that users can walk freely around a 4.5mx4.5m space and fully and naturally interact with the virtual environment using the two tracked controllers.

You can watch this video to learn more about what is possible to develop with this platform: HTC Vive - Developing the Future

How many Vive setups will there be?
There will be 2 room-scale Vive setups on the event. Keep in mind that the Vive setups will have a dedicated PC, and it won't be your computers that will be driving it. Once your team has a build that is ready to be tested on the Vive, you can transfer it to the PCs (through sneakernet!) for testing on the actual units

What should I bring?
Every developer is expected to bring their own laptops. You could also bring a PC (beefy machines are recommended, particularly if you're bringing your own HMDs), but you should inform the organizers beforehand so that there wouldn't be an issue getting it into the building.

You could also bring your own VR devices (If you have an Oculus Rift DK2 + Hydra, that would be great) for quicker prototyping on your end. Also, bringing along other stuff such as ethernet cables, power strips, portable hard drives won't hurt.

Meals will be provided for partiicpants for the duration of the event, but you could also bring your own food if you like. Also, since it will be an overnight hackathon, you should also bring neck pillows or the like - nothing too bulky though. You could bring sleeping bags but there wouldn't be space for everyone to lay on the floor at the same time.

Who can join?
Anyone with basic experience in making games or applications in Unity or Unreal are welcome to join! But since there will only be a limited number of devices, we're limiting the jam to around 6-8 teams. If we received more registrations than that, we will be prioritizing those that has prior experience in developing for VR. 

We will be providing a basic workshop on how to design for room-scale VR and motion control input and the basics of integrating SteamVR with Unity and Unreal.

I don't have a team, can I still join?
You can also register individually and we'll tag you up with other like-minded individuals on the event itself. Just make sure to state your development experience so that we could group you with the right people. You can also look at the Facebook event page in case there are other teams that are looking for more members.

What are we expected to develop at this jam?
Since everyone will be developing for the SteamVR/HTC Vive platform, the content that are expected to be developed are games/applications/experiences that utilize the power of room-scale tracking and motion control input.

Is this a competition?
This event is not a competition but rather a virtual reality jam where developers will have a chance to learn and develop on the hottest VR platform around. The jam is in the spirit of learning and collaborating on making cool stuff and sharing ideas and best practices and having fun with this cool new tech. :)

At the end of the jam, there would be no losers as everyone is expected to have learned more about this exciting revolutionary platform. VR Philippines will be showcasing the applications developed by the participants for future events but the content remains wholly owned by the developers. You could and is encouraged to continue development on your applications even after the jam. You could coordinate with VR Philippines on how still test your applicationns with the Vive post-event. In fact, we will be pitching all the games and applications developed during the event to Valve, and will help all the teams to get their hands on their own dev kits. It's no guarantee but it's easier to ask for dev kits if you can show that you already have a game developed for their platform. :)

Can we bring existing content?
You can take existing projects/assets/art/models/designs that you already have and add VR support to them. Take note though that designing models and scenes from the ground up with VR in mind is recommended as applications for VR needs way more optimization than your regular 3d applications to be able to reach a recommended 90fps framerate that is rendered twice for stereo.

Are there other payment options?
Aside from paypal payment, you can also pay through bank deposit through the following BPI bank account details:

Account Number: 2289227612
Account Name: Cristopher David

Please send the proof of payment to: toph@vrph.co

On-site payments are also possible, just send an e-mail to toph@vrph.co for details on how to pre-register.

I just want to try the applications developed during the jam, can I still come?
There is a demo day on the last day, December 13, where other people can attend the Show and Tell presentations and try out the games and applications developed during the jam. Only a limited number of people can be accomodated thought, so make sure to grab that ticket early.