July Meetup - Finn Staber on Game Development for Smartglasses & MobileVR

For our July event, we're excited to feature Finn Staber, programmer / designer at Portalarium. He'll discuss developing AR games for smartglasses and VR games for mobile devices.

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Finn is a multi-talented game developer with a diverse background. He's served in the U.S. Army and worked at several Austin game studios and startups. In addition to being a programmer and game designer, Finn has skills in Voice Acting, Visual FX, Animation, 3D Art and World Building. He also teaches Unity workshops at local colleges, and is a mentor for several high school game development programs.

Finn is currently a Game Programmer/Designer at Portalarium (https://www.portalarium.com/) working on Shroud of the Avatar (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/). Over the last couple of years, he's developed a passion for creating augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences. He enjoys helping other teams reach success, and is dedicated to making the Austin dev community the tip of the spear in AR/VR development!

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For his talk, Finn will focus on a couple of areas. First, he'll cover building AR games for smartglasses. He'll show you how to develop AR apps using Unity + Qualcomm's Vuforia SDK. And he'll discuss how to build & test your apps on the Epson Moverio Smartglasses, along with some design considerations inherent in augmented reality games.

Of course, it's true that no smartglasses are a huge commercial success at this point. But there's a ton of interesting stuff on the horizon in this space, including Microsoft's HoloLens, a rumored revamp of Google Glass, and the forthcoming Magic Leap SDK. Now is a great time to learn more about building games for these devices and stay ahead of the curve!

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Finn will also cover developing VR games for mobile devices. In particular, he'll discuss how to add Google Cardboard functionality to a mobile game and how to prepare your game for the various mobile VR marketplaces.

"Mobile VR" is basically any virtual reality experience created for mobile phones. There are several prominent VR HMDs (head-mounted displays) designed to hold a standard smartphone. These include GearVR, MergeVR, and Google Cardboard. Of course, these don't provide the high-end experience of Oculus Rift, but they may prove more popular for mainstream users, thanks to being so affordable / accessible. Again, don't miss this intro to an exciting new frontier in game development!

Schedule for this event:
• 6:30pm - Arrival and socializing
• 7:00pm - Intro and announcements
• 7:10pm - Finn Staber talk
• 8:15pm - Q&A
• 8:30pm - More socializing

Supported by Captivate Conference:

If you're interested in learning more about game development and mobile apps, check out the Captivate Conference! It's scheduled for Sept 18-20, and will feature a range of speakers on topics like professional development, leadership competencies, business skills, and tools required to thrive in today’s market.

And if you purchase tickets using the link below, this meetup group will receive a referral fee to help us cover the cost of food and refreshments at our future events.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE CAPTIVATE TICKETS (http://www.eventbrite.com/e/captivate-conference-2015-registration-15408982682?aff=Captivate2015ATXMobileIndieGameDev&afu=1374932625)