Thread by @kentbye

1/ @king__deluxe's THE CORE club in #VRChat has some of the best explorations of spatial VR art mixed with chill indie music I've seen.

Here's a photo thread unpacking moments from their release party for @LLLLTOKYO's RAIN yesterday + why I found it so compelling.

2/ THE CORE was founded by PK, who has an indie label called @king__deluxe.
He started an event series called "Break" in VRChat on Dec 11, 2021.
THE CORE is a theatre-in-the-round space with a DJ & VJ in the middle, but transmutes as walls disappear to become a sphere for VR art

3/ Here's some photos from @deep_rifter that show the diversity of different scenes, colors, shaders, & vibes in last night's Break #4 performance

4/ Another good photo thread from @AndersFray with highlights from the show:

5/ Here's the album from @LLLLTOKYO that was translated into a spatial journey at THE CORE with a new world & shaders for each song:
kingdeluxe.bandcamp.com/album/rain

Here's the announcement Tweet with details for how to join the Discord for future shows.

6/ The opening set at Break #4 was by DJ @OM3_OPR & VJ @FRANKBOTVR.
It had a monochromatic color palate where the floors & ceiling of THE CORE venue would disappear to be fully immersed with a varied of shaders.

7/ Picking one color really focuses on the mood on a single vibe, and then creates lots of contrast when it shifts to a new color. But also focuses attention on the volumetric & audioreactive particle effects & shaders flooding the space.

8/ A lot of VR night clubs take a very skeuomorphic design approach where they try to replicate the affordances of existing physical performance spaces.
THE CORE abandons that IRL tethering to push the limits of what possible for art & musical spatialized in VR.

9/ There were a number of shaders that's completely distort or blur everything that you'd see.
Some of them could be disorienting, but were mostly quickly turned on and off to create some contrast.
Triple vision shaders could be slightly nauseating as they react with head turns.

10/ THE CORE explores lots of novel ways to modulate the VR environment at different scales -- the far-field skybox context, the middle-field dancefloor environment & the social volume of THE CORE, and then nearfield shaders that are like glasses changing everything you see

11/ Here's a video by @DyLhun from the end of the @OM3_OPR's set where the audience showers the DJ & VJ with spatialized emojis.

12/ The beginning of @LLLLTOKYO's set was wild as the floor disappeared & 50 people dropped hundreds of meters into a colorful nature landscape & open world that was modulated by shaders.
Each of LLLL's 5 songs from RAIN spawned into a different world.
(photo by @teroblepuns)

13/ The shaders were audioreactive thanks to the AudioLink prefab that connects the changing dynamics of the music directly to the modulation of the shaders. You can get a little taste of this from this video from @DyLhun:

14/ Then the in-the-round CORE dancefloor floated up into space where there planets quickly moved from the top down to the bottom, and then an epic fly-by of some ships.

15/ More trippy shaders that are like putting on glasses impacting your POV. I found the shape-shifting & audioreactive, volumetric particle effects particularly effective are doing things that aren't possible at physical clubs. This impact of near-field doesn't translate to 2D.

16/ There's a bug where if you fall off the side, then you respawn on a distant ledge where there's no way to walk back to the dancefloor. It required flying avatars to come rescue the stranded virtual ravers.

17/ One shader pattern that repeated through the different sets was to have objects that flowed from one end to the other creating the sense that you're in the middle of a wormhole as you're doing a FTL jump blasting through hyperspace.

18/ Sometimes the shaders would illuminate other avatars while other times the other avatars would be silhouetted directing focus & attention on the modulation of the far-field skybox.

19/ Another flyby of a huge ship shaped as a plus-sign. It's hard to convey how awe-inspiring these types of experiences of vast scale in VR can be.

20/ Flying avatar aspires to be Icarus during the show.

21/ Then onto a mushroom world for the final song of @LLLLTOKYO's set.

22/ Shot of VJ & world creator @king__deluxe's PK on the left & DJ & musician @LLLLTOKYO on the right.

23/ Some trippy 1st-person POV audioreactive shaders that were rapidly cycling synchronized to the beat.

24/ See this video from @DyLhun to get more of the vibe of SILENT DAWN, the first single released from @LLLLTOKYO's RAIN album.

25/ @LLLLTOKYO's set celebrating the release of RAIN album ended with a trippy yellow rain shader.

Full album is on Bandcamp:
kingdeluxe.bandcamp.com/album/rain

Here's the 2D music video for SILENT DAWN reflecting the sci-fi space vibe in his VR set in THE CORE:

26/ There were some bugs in PK's set that needed to be fixed & so I came back 90 minutes later to check out some of the other experimentations he did with launching into different spatial contexts & adventures during his set.

27/ Some more examples of deleting THE CORE dancefloor to focus on fully spherical skybox shader art.

28/ One of the more trippy moments was when THE CORE dancefloor disappeared & dropped everyone into a dungeon crawler experience where you'd walk & drop down hallways only to be randomly respawned back to the beginning. It felt like a virtual lemming simulator during that song.

29/ Some more shots from PK's set at THE CORE.

30/ The last world was a large space that had shaders that would modulate the look, feel, & vibe of the entire environment. The bridges weren't solid making it hard to fully explore around, but I used a flying avatar to capture some of these shots.

31/ Some final shots from a bonus set played at THE CORE.
Lots of tools for VJs to do live mixing of shaders while the DJ is playing.
Some really impressive innovations here by @king__deluxe, & I'm looking forward to seeing where he takes this this "Break" series in the future.

32/ I'm still experimenting with how to best attend & capture some of these types of events in VRChat.
It's hard to fully convey everything in 2D photos or videos, & so I hope to experiment a bit more with 360 or 180-degree photos or videos.
My Patreon: patreon.com/voicesofvr