Lightfields are a key part of reaching VR’s true potential, as we’ve examined. They will also be the topic of the VR/AR Association‘s next San Francisco chapter event (9/13). ARtillry will run the program and moderate.

The speaker lineup contains some true heavy hitters, including Lytro, Avegant and lightfield pioneer Ryan Damm. We’ll examine the future outlook, as well as work being done today for volumetric and immersive VR. It will be a solid night of demos, discussion and drinks (not necessarily in that order).

You can see the rest of the event details and register here. Use our discount code MBHALF to save 50 percent. Past footage and editorial coverage of VRARA SF events can also be seen here.

More from the event organizers:

What’s a lightfield, you ask?

Several technologies are required for VR’s holy grail: the fabled holodeck. We already have graphical VR experiences that let us move throughout volumentric spaces, such as video games. And we have photorealistic media that lets us look around a 360 plane from a fixed position (a.k.a. head tracking).

But what about the best of both worlds?

We’re talking volumetric spaces in which you can move around, but are also photorealistic. In addition to things like positional tracking and lots of processing horsepower, the heart of this vision is lightfields. They define how photons hit our eyes and render what we see.

Because it’s a challenge to capture photorealistic imagery from every possible angle in a given space — as our eyes do in real reality — the art of lightfields in VR involves extrapolating many vantage points, once a fixed point is captured. And that requires clever algorithms, processing, and whole lot of data.

Join us September 13 to learn more about this key lynchpin in VR’s future