Oculus VR announced that it will hold its first developer conference this fall in Los Angeles.
The virtual reality firm has also acquired and open sourced networking middleware systems provider RakNet.
The conference, dubbed Oculus Connect, will take place on Sept. 19 and 20 at the Loews Hotel in Hollywood. "Attendees will be the first to learn about upcoming Oculus technology, with sessions and workshops led by Oculus engineers and industry pioneers," the company said. "Developers at the event will also have opportunities to receive design and engineering feedback directly from the Oculus team in hands-on labs."
Oculus will start accepting attendee applications on July 10. The company did not provide details on how tickets will be allocated or how many developers it can accommodate, saying only that space is limited. An Oculus spokesman said more details will be released in the coming days.
For those who can't attend, Oculus VR will live-stream keynotes from CEO Brendan Iribe, founder Palmer Luckey, CTO John Carmack, and chief scientist Michael Abrash. More session details will be released closer to the conference.
Oculus encouraged "anyone with an interest in developing great virtual reality content" to attend. That includes VR developers, gaming, entertainment and cinematic content makers, innovators, creative thinkers, enthusiasts, and more.
Meanwhile, the open source RakNet content is now available on GitHub.
"For those unfamiliar with RakNet, it is a comprehensive C++ game networking engine designed for ease of use and performance," Oculus VR said. "The tech is tuned for cross-platform, high-performance applications that operate across a wide variety of network types. Key features include object replication, remote procedure calls, patching, secure connections, voice chat, and real-time SQL logging. The technology has been licensed by thousands of indie developers, as well as companies like Unity, Havok, Mojang, Maxis, and Sony Online Entertainment."
Oculus has already being using RakNet internally at Oculus for various networked systems and tools, the company said.
The announcement comes as Oculus announced that it has halted sales of its $350 dev kit to users in China amidst re-selling concerns. "We need to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that resellers that are looking to flip our product for a profit are not taking stock away from legitimate developer purchases globally," Oculus said.
For everyone else, the DK2 is still available for pre-order, though buyers should note that it is intended for developers and is not a final, consumer product. For more, check out PCMag's hands on with the Oculus Rift dev kit 2 (DK2).