Philippine Mobile VR Jam

The Philippine Mobile VR Jam is a Virtual Reality hackathon that will bring together brilliant minds to learn and collaborate on creating applications with immersive mobile virtual reality technologies. Over the period of 42 hours, teams are tasked to create their own Virtual Reality game or app for the Samsung Gear VR. It is open for all participants whether students or professionals, artists or programmers. Its goal is to cultivate the development of local Virtual Reality content in the Philippines and help define the future of the technology. This event is co-presented by VR Philippines with Samsung and will be held on June 10-12, 2016 at the 5th Floor Executive Boardroom of PLDT Innolab in Boni Avenue, Mandaluyong City.

Friday (June 10)
6:00PM   Registration
7:00PM   Opening Program and Talks
7:30PM   Dinner and Networking
8:00PM   Event Briefing and Additional Talks
9:00PM   Idea Pitching and Team Forming
10:00PM Start of VR Jam

Saturday (June 11)
7:30AM   Breakfast
12:00PM Lunch
7:00PM   Dinner

Sunday (June 12)
7:30AM   Breakfast
12:00PM Lunch
4:00PM   End of VR Jam - Submission of Final Builds
5:00PM   Closing Program

The Philippine Mobile VR Jam will be held at the 5th Floor Board Room of PLDT Innolab, Boni Avenue, Mandaluyong City.

Please make sure to bring a valid ID to enter the venue premises.

Also please take not that you can not enter the building wearing the following:

• Rubber sandals, slip-ons or slippers
• Shorts
• Revealing top/shirts

You are allowed to change into more comfortable clothing though once you are already inside.

Participants are allowed to stay overnight in the venue. Anyone is allowed to go in and out of the venue premises from 6:00AM to 10:00PM only. For security purposes, if you have to go home for the night, please do so before 10:00PM.

What is the Samsung GearVR?
The Samsung Gear VR is a mobile virtual reality headset developed by Samsung, in collaboration with Oculus. When in use, a compatible Samsung Galaxy device (Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6/S6 Edge/S6 Edge+, or Galaxy S7/S7 Edge) acts as the headset's display and processor, while the Gear VR unit itself acts as the controller, which contains the high field of view, as well as a custom inertial measurement unit, or IMU, for rotational tracking, which connects to the smartphone via micro-USB. This IMU is more accurate and well calibrated with lower latency than internal smartphone IMUs, such as those used for Google Cardboard.The Gear VR headset also includes a touchpad and back button on the side, as well as a proximity sensor to detect when the headset is on. The touchpad and button allow for a standard minimum input capability for users to interact with the virtual environments, whereas Google Cardboard devices only feature a button.

For more info, check out: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/gear-vr/

What should I bring?
All participants are expected to bring their own laptops. You could also bring a PC if you prefer, but you should inform the organizers beforehand so that there wouldn't be an issue getting it into the building.

Each team will be provided with 1 Samsung GearVR and 1 Samsung Galaxy S7 to be used for development during the hackathon.

You could also choose to bring your own additional VR devices (another GearVR, Google Cardboard, etc.) for prototyping.

Bringing along other essentials such as ethernet cables, power strips, portable hard drives are also recommended.

Complete meals will be provided to participants for the duration of the event but you could also bring your own food if you like. We also recommend you to bring resuable mugs/tumblers to lessen wasted paper/plastic cups. 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. Bringing a jacket is also adviced as the venue can get really cold.

A valid ID is also required to enter the venue.

Who can join?
This event is open to all participants, whether you are a student or professional, artist or programmer. 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 VR Jam to 10 teams of 5 members each. If we received more registrations than that, we will be prioritizing those that has prior experience in developing for VR. 

What do I need to learn?

Although we already held 2 workshops on how to create a Samsung GearVR application for beginners, we would also have a quick breakout session on how to deploy your apps for the Samsung GearVR using Unity and Unreal.

We will also be playing some interesting videos of talks about Mobile VR development during the hackathon to help guide you in developing your VR applications.

I don't have a team, can I still join?
Yes! You can choose to register as a team of 5 or register individually. We will have an idea pitching session to help you find other interested team mates. You can also find other potential members by posting at the Facebook event page in case there are other people that are looking for team mates.

What are we expected to develop at this jam?
For the Philippine Mobile VR Jam, teams are tasked to come up with a Mobile Virtual Reality Game or Application for the Samsung GearVR. 

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 60fps framerate.

Is this a competition?
First and foremost, this event is not a competition but rather a venue for developers to get a chance to learn and explore mobile VR technology. The VR Jam is intended to be in the spirit of mutual learning and collaboration. It is about making cool stuff and sharing ideas and best practices. And most important of all, it is about having fun exploring this exciting frontier. :)

Still, to entice developers to push their limits and show the best they can do within the 42-hour period, Samsung will be giving away P50,000 worth of gift certificates to the over-all winner, and 5 new Samsung GearVR units to winners of special awards.

The winners will be selected by an array of amazing judges that we will also be announcing soon.

Philippine Virtual Reality Developers Conference
All teams will be presenting their output at the 1st Philippine Virtual Reality Developers Conference on June 25, where the winners will also be announced after.

What happens after?
Everyone could and are encouraged to continue development on their output even after the jam ends. Your content remains wholly owned by your team, but joining the Philippine Mobile VR Jam, gives VR Philippines and Samsung to showcase the applcations developed during the event with due credit.

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 select the "Pay Offline" option.

Be sure to RSVP too at the Facebook event page.