This year's RTX 2016 event, a massive gaming conference hosted by Rooster Teeth on July 1-3, is about to get a lot more virtual. Palmer Luckey, inventor of Oculus Rift and founder of Oculus VR, will be a keynote panelist at noon, July 1, at RTX and will also participate at a Center Stage event at 1:30 p.m. that day.
RTX is expected to draw about 60,000 to the Austin Convention Center and will feature Rooster Teeth's blend of live-action video, animation, gameplay-focused entertainment in a collection of live shows, panels and an expo area.
Rooster Teeth co-founder and executive producer Gus Sorola spoke to us about having Luckey as part of the event:
Gus Sorola: We’re absolutely ecstatic to have Palmer Luckey at RTX this year. I think that the pioneering work he has done with virtual reality is a fantastic fit for our show and he was definitely at the top of our wish list of speakers for the show. RTX is all about internet culture and gaming, and I think that Oculus is pushing the boundaries of technology and we’re happy to be hosting him.
I’ve seen Palmer speak before and we’ve been on a few calls together but now that I think about it, I don’t think we’ve ever actually shaken hands and spoken face to face. I guess we will have an opportunity to change that very shortly.
I’ll be chatting with him during RTX. I’m heading up virtual reality initiatives at Rooster Teeth so we should have a very good discussion that will be super accessible even to people who are not VR aficionados.
We’re actively pursuing VR projects and really trying to figure out the best way to engage with our audience and execute the best possible way. The technology is still so new that everyone is feeling it out and trying to figure out best practices and we hope to be on the cutting edge.
Here's a video featuring Sorola explaining the key principle of not looking stupid in a VR headset:
Edited at 12:15 a.m. June 7 to fix: Luckey is founder of Oculus VR, but not CEO of the company, which is owned by Facebook.
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