Engineering Virtual Reality for Everyone
Apr 20, 2020
Stefan Landvogt of Microsoft (Virtual)
Engineering Virtual Reality for Everyone

Along with Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging technology that became broadly available to the public in the recent years. Even Rotary harnesses the immersive power of virtual reality; it connects people on a visceral, personal level in a way that words simply can’t. Rotary used VR events to raise awareness about fighting diseases and promoting peace. Stefan Landvogt explains in his presentation what engineering steps were necessary to build a Virtual Reality system, why the experiences are so immersive, and what the near future might hold.

Stefan received his masters degree in Artificial Intelligence and Applied Computer Sciences from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany in 1995. In the late nineties, he worked at Nichimen Graphics in Los Angeles on a tool to create 2D and 3D animation for games and feature films like Lord of the Rings. After some time in other industries in Germany, In 2008, Stefan went back to the entertainment industry and joined games creator and distributor Valve, and moved to Kirkland in 2010. He was integral part of shipping one of the first successful commercial Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, the HTC Vive, and is one of the creators of SteamVR, an industry standard for applications to interface with VR hardware. In 2017, Stefan joined Microsoft and currently helps produce Windows Mixed Reality headsets and a VR prototyping tool named Maquette.