On November 1st, Unite Los Angeles, the developers' conference for Unity, was held at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. In the keynote address, Unity announced its plans to expand its reach worldwide, with a particular focus on the Chinese market, through strengthing partnerships with global software, platform, and hardware companies.

At the venue, Inven met with Unity CEO John Riccitiello to hear the company’s vision on VR, AR, and AI. Stressing how the VR market has still a ways to go despite its recent growth, he pointed out much hardware and software will have to be developed for users to fully appreciate VR's potential.

Unity aims to provide an environment where more developers can create VR content. Examples of their work include the new Unity Editor VR, which allows the developer to work with the VR headset on, and Timeline, which allows the developer to adjust camera angles with simple drag-and-drops.

When asked about AR and the success of Pokemon Go, Riccitiello responded that Pokemon Go is technically more of an additional graphic layer, not "true" AR. He predicted it would take a significant time for AR to deliver a verisimilar experience, and that such advanced AR technology would most likely be developed later than VR.

Riccitiello also pointed to AI as another one of the key fields the company is actively working on. He expects that in the future, machine learning AI will replace many of the direct algorithms currently in use, such as how NPCs are programmed to interact with users. The Unity CEO revealed that their tentative plans were to unveil an AI capable of "organically" mimicing player actions by 2018.

Source article by Inven KaEnn