I spoke with HoneyWeeWee, Sandi_, Humi, Quinnster, & Kiashi_GL about Silhouette of Memories as a part of my Raindance Immersive 2025 coverage. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of special computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my coverage of Raindance Immersive 2025, today's episode is with a piece called Silhouette of Memories. And so this is a really innovative live concert experience. It is fan art that is of Odessa's music. So it's using Odessa's music, but creating like a whole cinematic, immersive concert experience. And so you'll have like this kind of sky dome that has these handcrafted animations that also have like a more spatial and depth aspects of them. So there'll be these kind of cut scenes that are very cinematic. And then it'll also be going from that into these live stage performances. So like eight to 10 or so performers that are coming up on stage and they're kind of like choreographing as if they were playing the music or performing or dancing sort of like lip syncing there's like a whole section with vinixia doing a lot of immersive dance and lip syncing and then other performers that are like with drums and doing different choreography essentially and so at the end of the day this is like a fan art type of project and that you have this group of people that are coming together and doing it just to bond with each other and to create this experience of being able to have this feeling of performing and these different events, just because, you know, you could have all this automated, but because it does have live human performers doing all this, it's not completely synced up just because of the latency. And so there's a little bit of VR glitchiness to it, but it's still really quite impressive what they're able to do in terms of creating this synchrony and movements and choreography in the They're up on this stage and you're just seeing their kind of black silhouettes. And so they're kind of silhouetted the entire performance. And that's why it's called the Silhouette of Memories, kind of this nostalgia kick of Odessa's music. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Honey Wee Wee, Sandy, Hume, Quinster, and Kashi happened on Saturday, June 12th, 2025, as part of my Braindance Immersive 2025 coverage. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:26.321] HoneyWeeWee: Hello, my name is Honey Wee. I joined around COVID lockdown time, so around summer of 2020. My friend invited me to play VRChat around 2020 since we weren't allowed to go hang out. So the only option we have was VR. So we were just locked in our room for a while. And that's how I got introduced. And then a couple of years later, I met a couple of world creators. They kind of made me go into this world creating type thing in Unity. And that's how it all started from 2023 till now. So towards the end of 2023.
[00:03:01.004] Sandi_: I'm Sandy, hello. I started VRChat back in winter 2019, so like beginning of December. I didn't really do much mainly just because at the point that was kind of the dying down of the meme area of VRChat and how it got so popular. But I actually met Quinn basically my first week of VRChat, my first and second week of VRChat. So we go way back, and he introduced me to this project a few months ago. Right now, I've been doing VRChat photography. So I go into World's People Create and basically just share it among other people. It's like, hey, this is really cool. You should come check this out, see for yourself. That's basically what I've been doing.
[00:03:43.407] Humi: Hello, my name is Humi. I'm 25 years old. I've known VRChat for around now seven years, but I've only been playing actively since November of 2020. And I've met Honey somewhat recently. It was like the past year or so when I've joined a group of friends that we have in common. And they also introduced me to the... Odessa group and his projects and got to work alongside them.
[00:04:14.947] Quinnster: Awesome. Hi, my name is Quinn. I started playing VRChat in 2019 and I've been around for the last six or so years. I kind of tried VRChat on a very large whim. I didn't have too much interest in it at the time. And I was kind of confused on where to go because it was more of like a social platform than a game to me. I was like, oh, this is something kind of new. So I figured out, you know, how the kind of game works and met some people and then ultimately got very interested in the photography side of the game because I had a very big passion for taking photos. And that led me into doing a lot more video style work within VRChat in about 2021, where I started working on short films and movies and episodic series with some good friends. And a couple of years down the line, I came across Honey by Pure Chance. And he and I started talking about worlds and animations and just video work. And he told me about his project called Silhouettes and Memories. And I was like, oh, this seems really cool. And he asked me, hey, would you like to be a part of it? And I was like, sure. So I've been with him for... say about over a year and a half now and been helping with the project since it started.
[00:05:23.636] Kiashi_GL: I guess that leaves me. Hi, I'm Kiyoshi. I've only been playing this game since 2024. So only just over a year now, past February. I met Quinn pretty much like right as I hopped on, but we hadn't talked for a while. But when I saw Honey Wee Woo World and he, I remember seeing that Quinn narrated in one of the parts. So I joined off Quinn to, you know, talk about that. And then he introduced me to Honey and I got to know Honey. And then, you know, he introduced me to the whole project and I've only been on the project for roughly, I think it's two to three months now. But yeah, I've been very new to all this and it's been great seeing all the stuff they've done.
[00:06:11.146] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, we're going to be unpacking the performance of Silhouette of Memories that was showing at Rain Dance Immersive 2025. And it's a pretty vast project in terms of like a 90-minute performance. Lots of things on the back end in terms of the kind of visuals that we're seeing. There's like dancers and performers and kind of the choreography of the whole thing. But before we start to dive into the project, I always like to ask the people I'm interviewing to give a bit more context as to the background and journey into VR and specifically VRChat and whatever you feel comfortable sharing in terms of like the types of real life experiences or backgrounds or design disciplines that you're bringing in specifically to this project.
[00:06:52.788] HoneyWeeWee: Okay. So I kind of had this idea from watching other performance or other pre-recorded performance, a couple of DJ events. There's also a couple of rock concerts, some Sanrio events as well. I got some inspirations from a couple of other projects. So I kind of wanted something, I kind of thought to myself, I wanted to make something like that for a while. So I actually decided to commit to it and sit down and think about like what to do. And with the performers, I kind of just picked them out. So there was only four of us originally. So four performers at first. Humi is one of the first four, the first half, and then Sandy and Kiyoshi, well, Sandy's second half, and then Kiyoshi is originally backup. He was very close to Reignet, so he had to hustle a little bit. So some of them have some experience on band, and a few of them have marching band experience, which helped them a lot. So it was kind of easy for them to get used to the rhythm, but choreography to them was something new, since that's something that they've never done before. In the particle stuff, it's all hand keyfringed. So it's about, let's see if once a, when I started the project, I only had a little over a year of experience, I believe. So I was still learning, still learning the progress. And compared to now, I would probably, if I were to redo it now, probably be a little bit more polished. But since I now have more experience from like over like an hour and a half long project, That animation took me roughly, I wouldn't say the first time I tried to finish it. It took me five months and then it took me another six months to polish everything. And there's so much hand keyframing towards where my Unity project would lack every time I open it. So it was really difficult for me to keyframe towards the end. So I had to try to be really patient with the animation. Umi, do you want to start the next one since you were one of the first performers?
[00:08:53.507] Kent Bye: Before we go on to Umi, just to follow up, is there any other additional information around your journey into VR or VRChat or anything else you're bringing in?
[00:09:03.716] HoneyWeeWee: I kind of want to make something that stands out. There's a lot of... DJ events, I feel like a lot of events are repetitive. There's a few that are very unique, but I want to bring something that's unique to our performance. It's something that people can remember. I like the reaction of people just being in awe. It's just really satisfying. I just like watching people's reaction the most in the crowd. And then after the show is over, it's like, oh, it's amazing. It just really inspires me to keep moving forward.
[00:09:34.214] Kent Bye: Nice. Yumi?
[00:09:36.066] Humi: I suppose from the very beginning, my journey started with desktop, of course. At the time, I didn't have money for my own VR, so I spent probably, at this point, 3,600 hours of desktop and VR chat alone. I got the exposure to a lot of the early 2018, 2019 animation avatars, where they would build animations inside the avatars alone and not the worlds. After that, I got into the VR scene, got my first VR. I got to experience things in a different perspective. And that really kicked off because I got really hooked into the game and got to meet really amazing people throughout the time. As for something more specific about silhouettes, I suppose I got a little bit of experience with instruments and a little bit of music. I used to play a little bit of piano a couple of years ago. So that really helped a lot with the timings and understanding the highs and the lows of the music and how to move accordingly when we did all the choreography throughout the event.
[00:10:51.670] Kent Bye: Nice. And we'll go maybe chronological order the next person that was coming into the project.
[00:10:56.485] Sandi_: Sure. So, like I said, I met Quinn back in 2019. So it was a long, long time ago. So we were friends for a long, long time. Basically throughout those years that I've been playing, I've done nothing of this type of thing. Never even knew something like this could be even done. But when I heard that Quinn was able to do like all these like videos, like videography stuff, and I was like, I want to be a part of that. I want to do something that... One, he's my friend. I would love to help my friend. But two, it's like something I can just do. Because aside from my job and like some schooling, but I never really did anything much outside of marching band that I did in real life. But when he told me about this, like he's like, oh, yeah, you get to do like hit drums and stuff. I'm like, I'm perfect. I've done marching band for four years. Three of those years, I was actually in the drum line. So I was like, heck yeah, I think I could. This is something I can definitely do. So I was on the back half as well with Kiyoshi. I think I've only been there for maybe five months out of the year that this was going on. But I caught up really quick. People even said so because of my experience. But I wouldn't be able to do this without knowing Quinn for so long. Okay. Yashi?
[00:12:13.677] Kiashi_GL: For me, when I started this, I was not expecting to fully even dive into the game. I kind of just did it because a friend requested me to do it. But then I started meeting people and it just started growing on me. And after a while of just playing the game, I started trying to do like... videography and like try to make like little short films here and there. And I started doing that stuff and thought, you know, this stuff is cool. And then I started exploring a lot more worlds to like find them. And then I started finding animation worlds. That's when I kind of came across, you know, Honey's Worlds. And that's what kind of like really got me interested in a lot of this stuff. So when I talked to Quinn and he introduced me to Ani himself, I was very surprised. And then he introduced me to the project. By that time, the only instrumental stuff I knew was pretty much just playing the violin. So when it came to drumming, I was very... Not, you know, haven't done it before. So it was definitely a new experience. But, you know, I spent about five hours a day practicing because I was set to be the backup. So I had to know each person's part. So I would practice a lot, overworked myself a bit, but yeah. In the end, I would say it was worth it, but it was a very nice experience coming into the whole project because I just found VR and finding this pretty much only a year in was definitely a blessing for me.
[00:13:39.875] Quinnster: So I guess, like I said earlier, I tried VRChat on a whim and I started on desktop like Hume did and probably a lot of other folks. I didn't have the money for VR when I was in high school, so I would basically just play on desktop and work summer jobs to afford a headset later on. And once I got a headset, I got more involved in VRChat. I started trying to do photography because it was one of my passions. I loved taking pictures. And I wanted to also try doing video, but that wasn't really a big thing at the time. And I got very fortunate and ran into some individuals who were creating a movie and films. And they taught me a lot of skills that I am blessed to know today. And over the years, it kind of just kept on expanding. I started being a part of multiple different film projects, film festivals, communities, and it led to a lot more, I guess, opportunities to open my direction and, you know, At long last, I got the chance to meet Honey by pure chance earlier. And he introduced me to his project or his animation projects. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'd be happy to help with this. So he put me on the task of basically managing all the performers and the dates and times we'll be performing and just any general information. And how this kind of coincides to what I do is currently I'm a student for audio engineering, and I plan to go into the live industry, which will be more like concerts and performances and stuff like that. So I think it was kind of neat to have this be side by side in a way because managing people but also making sure that audio is good, visuals is good is kind of what you would do in the type of position I'm going for. So it was kind of a unique opportunity.
[00:15:21.420] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, this is really a quite epic project that felt like I was going to a concert and had lots of effects with everyone's silhouette. And so it's called Silhouette of Memories. And so the avatars are on stage and they're kind of backlit with all these animations that are going out throughout the 90-minute performance. And so, Honey, maybe you could talk a little bit more around the very origins of this project, because you said that you wanted to create something that... was different than what else was out there. And so just curious to hear both some of the inspirations that you had in terms of things that you were drawing from, but also a little bit more context as to the music that we're hearing from Odessa.
[00:16:00.430] HoneyWeeWee: So in terms of inspiration, there's a couple of events in VR that I was inspired by because I was really impressed with how it was performed. But it also had inspiration from going to the actual music festival. So any large music festival, any large artist, and then it's like a very different experience than what you see online. It feels very different. So I kind of want to kind of match that experience. It's really hard to match that if you're just going to watch it through video, but the only way you can kind of really feel The experience is just by being there. And in terms of the idea of silhouettes, I kind of wanted mainly, like, well, the first reason is it's more seamless. It's like the avatar is all black and they can kind of seamlessly teleport in. And it's a lot more subtle. Like the avatars are just popping. So if it's all black, they can just teleport in. You can't really tell. It's really smooth. And then the particles in the background appears and then you see the silhouettes. So you see you're watching both silhouettes. the animation in the background while also watching the performers at the same time instead of one or the other. So you have both in harmony. So to me, I feel like it makes it more immersive with the changes in the environment as well as the performers moving back and forth, doing choreography. It kind of enhances the experience of VR. And for the people who've never seen an actual concert or a festival, I feel like this is probably the closest I am able to get the experience to in terms of the best of my abilities. And I think that's all I could say for now. Homi, if you want to have your input on this.
[00:17:37.620] Humi: Yeah, I suppose the contrast of the avatars really makes it stand out and give a good emphasis, especially because of the focus of the title of the event. And I suppose one input I can give is that one of the feedbacks that I've had from one of my friends that was able to attend is that, I suppose I can't share this, but they have CFS, which is a... Chronic fatigue syndrome, which the physical strain on their bodies, they cannot exert a lot of energy. Otherwise, they have to take a rest for a long period of time. They cannot do anything that is demanding of their body. And this opportunity that I had to come to the concert really stood out to them. And they even commented to me that they wouldn't want to go to a real life one because of how unique and amazing experience they had with us, which is very flattering.
[00:18:48.188] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had a chance to see a couple of shows at Cosm, which is kind of like a mini sphere, the sphere in Las Vegas that has like 18,000 people. And Cosm has what would essentially be around like 1,500 or so. It's like a mini sphere. But what I noticed was that it's like a sky dome. It's very flat. And so when I see this experience, there's a lot more depth of things that don't really necessarily translate into a big, large screen, but also kind of recreating the feeling of being at a concert with people. the full stage and all the performers. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more on the process of this collaboration, the direction, honey, because you were creating this animation. It sounds like it took you around five months, but you were also choreographing and like practicing and doing, it sounds like you've been working on it for at least a year or more in terms of, you know, all the other performative aspects, because, you know, you are doing a lot of handcrafted animation with frames, but it's performed live by avatars so you're not doing recordings of the performers which you know you could potentially do but there's something else where the liveness of the live they have the live performers that have practiced to do all this choreographed movement and so just love to hear a little bit about taking this from an idea into actually developing it out into a community that is helping to do all the other performances and put everything together
[00:20:10.558] HoneyWeeWee: So we totally could have did mocap. A lot of people suggested that, but I feel like having it live and people actually doing it up there performing as well makes it a little bit more unique. It's not like you can always see this. I wanted to make it a little bit special where you can't always see this whenever you want to. You can only see it at a certain time, a certain place. And in recruiting, so I recruited Humi who's longer than the first four. We were just in a friend group, just hanging out. So originally these four aren't too close. They might have not known each other or barely know each other. They kind of grew a little bit closer together once they started performing together. That's one thing I've noticed. I kind of just like plucked them. I kind of plucked them like, hey, do you want to help me with this project? And they're like, sure. And they kind of have to kind of figure it out on their own. It's kind of hard at first. I think the most difficult thing is trying to figure out the workflow. That took us about two to three months to get used to. And then once you got used to a certain workflow, it starts getting easier to do choreography. It started easier to do practicing. And then even the performers themselves are more in sync. And just also keep in mind, we don't have any syncing programs, so we don't have any plugins. We also don't have the Yamaha sync like the Japanese and Korean performers can do, which would have really helped us. So what we've actually had to do is we had to play our own audio, which is the best way you guys sync. And in terms of the second half, which is Sandy and the other three, They joined in around January. Remember we started recruiting the second half around November, December. So it was around January and Sandy was there around, I believe Around early February, he was there. And then also around then, around early spring or early 2025, I also asked Quinn if he could help me out with a project as well. See if he can help me with the management of the performers and what they need to do. And organizing everything for me since I have too much that I like too much to manage already. I have to make the world, I have to polish the world, I have to manage all the performers. I have to make sure everyone's happy if we don't have like people are enjoying performing and I don't think it'll be a good result. So everyone had to get along really well. And then the last person here we have here is Kia, which is the backup. It's just like in case if something happens. We have Kya to lean on instantly in case someone disconnects, their internet crashes, the computer just randomly turned off, they have a power outage, Kya can just hop in and take their place real quick. And then the dancer, we had only one dancer doing multiple roles. We had Venexia doing it, and she had, I believe, six different avatars she had to switch into, and she had to switch into quick. i kind of just told her do whatever you want be creative and then she wish she did that perfectly i was pretty satisfied with how the next year performed i think she's definitely one of the best dancers in vr chat for sure and the last thing i want to say oh one thing i forgot to mention about kia kia only had i think a month and a half before rain and so he had only a month i have to have a year of practice of what whom you have done since last year so he had to I believe he had five hours of practice per day compared to everyone else's one to two hour practice per week. And then Keo's five hours per day. So he had a lot more work for him, but everything worked out then, which I'm very appreciative of everyone's participation and everyone's effort in helping out.
[00:23:44.147] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'd love to go through the other performers and participants just to get a clearer sense of your role on the project and you're a performer or other things that you're doing, but also, you know, kind of how you got introduced to the project, what drew you to want to do this type of live performance in VRChat?
[00:24:01.638] Sandi_: For me, I was literally just wanting something to do, like just out of my free time. So I just asked Quinn, hey, can I do something? And he's like, oh yeah, here's this music thing. And I'm like, I love music. So like, and then like, once I started performing, I was like, it's just like life just breathed into my lungs again.
[00:24:18.880] Kent Bye: Can you elaborate a little bit about that feeling of what it felt like to perform?
[00:24:22.482] Sandi_: Oh, like, because I love performing, especially in front of people, especially if it is for music. Like when I was in marching band for four years, every time we did a competition, it was like a rush. It's like, this has to be the best or like, I have to do my best after like all this practice we've done. And it was something totally different when you're up on stage instead of just watching it. Cause it kind of just feels like you're performing for yourself in a way that you can't just do. Like it was like in your room, just not like you have all this like stuff you want to do, but you want to show people. And once you're finally doing it, you want to do it the best way you can. So having that just nervousness and anxiety, like mid performance, just come out and you're just there. It's like a second wind in a sense.
[00:25:13.849] HoneyWeeWee: Hmm. Who me?
[00:25:16.283] Humi: As for me, we were just hanging out in a friend's group, and I just overheard that Honey was working on a project, and they were looking for some help. So I kind of walked into the opportunity, and I was like, if you really need help, I guess I... could chime in and give a little hand and see where this goes. At the beginning, I didn't have any insights or on how it was gonna be exactly, because it was like a very crude collection of like ideas. And I was very superficial first, but As we were gathering people and getting to understand what we were going into, it was very interesting and kept my attention for a very long time and really grew into me as time went by. As for the practices at the beginning, All of the like choreography that went in between the performance with the drum line, like every other day or like at the end of like our practice, we would watch videos of the original performance. Odessa group and then we would brainstorm and collectively agree on certain things that are feasible to be done in VR and what is not. And whatever was not feasible, we would need to find something that would be more likely to be more showy, more sparkly for the VR environment. I guess at that point, we had taken maybe three, four weeks at the beginning to find the pace that we were practicing. And we really got into the acting part and went from there.
[00:27:13.628] Kent Bye: And Kiyoshi, I'd love to hear a little bit more around what drew you to want to participate. And it sounds like you were doing backup dancing and then being an actual performer. If there's any other things that you're working on on the project as well.
[00:27:26.809] Kiashi_GL: For me, when I first met Honey, we started talking about his world in general. And then he had informed me that, you know, coming May, he was going to do a performance. And I was very drawn to that. And he invited me to go watch the performance. But, you know, we kept hanging out every now and then. He kept telling me about the performance until I think it was late. let's say late March, he asked me if I would like to be on the team and I was all for it just because I've heard so many good things. I've seen his worlds and I was like, these are really incredible things if I could be a part of that. But I was also skeptical because, you know, these are pretty high standards that I would probably have to do. So I went and watched the performance, watched them perform at one of their practice runs. And when I saw it, I remember I couldn't even speak afterwards because of how amazing it was to see. And I was all for it. And when they first brought me onto the team, I kind of didn't really know exactly what my part was going to be right away. So I kind of just sat, watched, and eventually he put me into one of the songs. I think the song is... I forgot the name, but he put me into... yeah line of sight there you go uh he put me into line of sight and i started learning that song and then eventually around like i think it was a couple weeks before that's when i fully like learned that i was going to be a backup especially during the may performance that we were going to do since one of our performers had to not make it so i had to learn all their roles and fill that in for the May performance. And then after the May performance, I just went and learned every other person's roles. So that way, you know, come performance time, if someone crashed, I would have to step in, which it was good that I did because during our first performance, we did have someone crash and I did have to step in. So it was very good that I did put all that time in. to learning everything. But when it came to just getting into it, I remember just the feeling of just, wow, I can't even believe I'm participating in something like this crazy. It was very, it was very, um, just beautiful to see the whole world going around even without the performers. Nice.
[00:29:38.013] Kent Bye: And Quinn, maybe you could elaborate if you were ever performing or if you were doing things on the backend or what was, what is your role on the project?
[00:29:44.847] Quinnster: So with Silhouette's memories, I was more just kind of managing not only hunting, but all the performers and basically all the general information that was being shared with the performers and just general things to look forward to in terms of future performances and things we need to change and update. And just keeping people in line for when we had our practice sessions and just things to look forward to after that. Specifically, this was... a pretty interesting time when I got more involved with Silhouettes because on top of this, I was also balancing the short film that was also a rain that's called Our Precious Autumn and many, many other things under that as well. So it was really difficult to balance the time to be a part of this performance, but also many other things alongside VRChat and, of course, the real world where I was also working. And still, nevertheless, I was really happy to see the progression of how far this performance came from this very start to performing at Raindance and seeing all the people super excited to be at the performance and just, you know, like Honey said, seeing the reactions was kind of the cherry on top. But yeah, my role was just kind of managing to make sure everything was going smoothly. And if we did have any issues to try and handle as best as we could.
[00:31:01.104] Kent Bye: Yeah, just watching back the video that Carlos Austin had shot of the live performance, and it reminded me of the feeling of the drums where it was this kind of like paradoxical thing where I had to, in some ways, suspend disbelief because there was like, you know, I could see that they weren't exactly synchronized. But then at the same time, there was more of a gestalt of, you know, kind of the motions and the movements with the lights at the end of the sticks and kind of twirling around that. that did have a level of spectacle that felt like a coordinated performance, even if the sound wasn't always perfectly synchronized to what I was seeing visually. And so honey, I'd love to have you maybe elaborate on that as a conceit to have drumming as a live performance within the VRChat and just some of the constraints and limitations you had to try to overcome to do that when you don't have like perfect synchronization.
[00:31:54.591] HoneyWeeWee: So we kind of have to do the best we could. It's also, you know, we have to blame the latency for VRChat. It's a lot smoother if there's literally no audience. The sync is literally perfect, but once there we have more audience, we started having issues, latency issues. Like the more people we have in the instance, the more issues we have. There'll be more latency. So like I said earlier, we don't have Yamaha sync like the Japanese or Korean performers could have. So what we have to do is, Quinn, would you typically do the countdown for us when the animation starts? And then every all eight performers, all eight of the drum lines, not including even Exia. So all eight of the drum lines, well, technically nine of the key is back up. Quinn would count down to one, like three, two, one. And whenever he said go, everyone has to play their own audio source file at the same time. And that's probably the best way we could do it. We're also limited to us being spread out. So we have people over the Pacific. We have people spread across the U.S. and then we have Humi all the way in Europe. So it's also hard to have it perfectly as seeing having everyone so spread apart from three different continents. We did the best we could do. I'm happy as long as the choreography is perfect. I feel like it's a lot more mystery if the choreography is perfect. It kind of makes up for it being out of sync. And the particle effects that comes out of the drumsticks kind of makes it a little bit better. It kind of covers the latency a little bit. But honestly, we tried doing our best with the latency. It's a huge problem. Of course, like I said, I wish there wasn't a huge latency problem with larger instances. It works really fine in our practice world.
[00:33:34.332] Kent Bye: Yeah, in terms of the performance of those drums, just curious to hear some feedback from the performers in terms of if it feels good to just even see your own sticks with the lights at the end and or if you can tell that you're doing it as a coordinated group or if it's something that you only really see if you watch a video afterwards. And just curious to hear around the experience of doing that type of live performance with drums. I guess it's sort of like lip syncing or like the synchronization of emulating the drums, but doing it as a coordinated group and as a choreography. I'd love to hear a little bit about what that feels like.
[00:34:08.718] Sandi_: So for me, being on stage, sometimes, even when we're all synced up and we say we're all synced up, sometimes I see a few people just like, it looks off. But that's just because of how, like, the internet works and ping and everything. But there are some spaces, such as La Ciudad, where we do the clapping. Like, when it looks, like, on point, it looks awesome. Like, even being on there, like, being in that circle, just really good. Or another one, I forgot the name of it. It's like super white and we're like doing a movement where we're putting our sticks out and like raising it up and then again on the other side and then forward. When I see that, even on my end without looking at a video, I can feel the energy coming off of that. So when I do look at the video, it looks so much better mainly because I see the entire perspective. So like I can kind of feel that I would know like how the audience feels when they see the big moments and feel the goosebumps from the stage.
[00:35:13.537] Kent Bye: Any other thoughts?
[00:35:15.278] Humi: I guess for me especially, because of the high latency, part of the choreography and for having the feedback of how the performance looked, we had plenty of opportunity to understand which points we should be playing at and how visually it looks to the others. As for me, I had to play a little bit ahead of time. Not too much, not too little. You get a feel for it after so many attempts and getting the feedback from the people watching. But it can be pretty tricky to get it right. And it's not going to be perfect, of course. But... Playing a little bit ahead of time, you get the feel of it, and eventually you get to nail it. And on the bigger picture, I guess, some things are missable and, like, excusable. But regardless of, like, sinking, I think we did fine.
[00:36:16.334] Kiashi_GL: For me, while being on stage, the times I were on stage, just seeing all the crowd out there was a bit nerve wracking, but overall a fantastic experience. Seeing the particles emanating around us while off our sticks would actually help a lot as well, making sure my movement was down because I have a lot of tracking with my uh a lot of issues with tracking so it would be it would help me actually you know make sure that I was doing everything correctly so it's a big help as long as well as being a nice visual to see for other people but yeah being on stage was definitely just a lot of nerve-wracking and then you always want to make sure your choreography is like on point especially for When I had to fill in, I was having to fill in for one of the one songs I strongly didn't want to do because it was a song that was like the most intense when it come to choreography. But when I did get up there, put all the nerves aside and just did my best I could do.
[00:37:17.325] Kent Bye: Yeah, I thought the performance overall had a nice mix between the more visual elements that were the highlight where there would not be any performers on stage and then moving into the more coordinated group performance sections with the drums and then Nixia would come out and do some dancing that was a little bit. slower, sensual, or kind of focused on a little bit of lip syncing, I guess, but also dancing. But there's these interstitial parts, which is more driven by the animation. And I'd say it's kind of a mix of more minimalist shapes and then filling the screen with different like white streaks and shader effects that are taking up the whole screen. But Also like kind of zooming through a world. It reminded me a lot of like the different types of experiences that PK has done for the break where you end up kind of zooming through a world, even though you're all stationary, you're kind of like feeling like you're moving through a space. And then there's other parts where there's just like a vast sculptures of people and objects that are kind of moving around. And so honey, I'd love to hear you elaborate a little bit of how, how you think about the different sections or themes in this piece in terms of the different effects, how you start to phrase that, or, you know, if it's just more putting together a playlist and responding to the music and operating in a more intuitive sense, but just curious to hear how you like try to balance this, this arc and this journey of keeping it interesting visually, in the sense that you're mixing it up and doing it's not like the same or you're kind of mixing between the visuals, the performance and then the dance. But yeah, just love to hear you elaborate on your process of putting it all together.
[00:38:56.874] HoneyWeeWee: So I kind of want a more cinematic experience. There's not a lot of performance in the VR side. I give you a cinematic experience while at the same time you're getting live performance. So it's kind of a journey as well. So you're moving different places, going through space, you're going through water, different environments. And I kind of wanted the animation to be like different. Each music has different animations, different performance, different choreography. It makes it a little bit less repetitive because if you use it again and again over and over too much, the show gets a little bit more dull. Towards the end, you kind of get tired of the animation. It's like, oh, what's going to happen next? I kind of want to get the audience to have that feeling of what's going to happen next. What's the new environment? What's the new effect? What's the performance going to do? What's going to happen next? I kind of want them to anticipate what's going to happen next. That's mainly what I wanted. And also had some experience in cinematography before I started VRChat as well. It's kind of helped me with the environment, moving the environment. It kind of makes you more immersed of your being there. It kind of gives you like a 360 view as well. That's one thing that VRChat helps. It's more of a 360 view. You can look wherever you want. And as you're moving with the environment, you have that feeling as well.
[00:40:14.537] Kent Bye: Yeah, you have the stage there. And so you have either you're on the floor and you see it elevated or you have this kind of invisible floor to be more in line to see all the performers. And so, yeah, just the field of view and kind of taking it all in it, it made me feel like I was at a concert. And so I guess, you know, in the Q&A, there's some discussions around that. some of the other VRChat tricks in terms of like adding the drums to avatars and just curious to hear a little bit about some of the different things you have to do as performers in terms of like open up an expression menu or like change your avatar or what are some of the other things that you have to do in order to synchronize everybody having the same drums or other ways that you're able to each have your own individual identity? So you have your identity and then I imagine that you maybe had to add some prefabs or something in order to participate and even do some of the performance here because you're holding objects and you're doing things together as a group.
[00:41:12.850] HoneyWeeWee: So with the drum syncing, We had a prefab made from one of our performers, Hugh Taskey. I believe he made it a couple of weeks before our first Reignite performance. So what we had to do, well, basically I have to do it since I have to manage everything, I have to manage the syncing for everyone. So there we have three channels for it. It'll be separate. So one channel is for Trump and Trombone. So if they need to go invisible or need to reveal themselves. And then we have two channels. So we can have two separate colors. So let's say I want pink, I want orange. I can have channel one being pink and then channel two being orange. And it also helps that if they're all in the same channel, I can change the color from one pink. I can change it to blue with the expression menu. I can change to orange, whatever I need. I can hide them. I can reveal them. It kind of makes it a little bit easier. They can kind of go up on stage and stay there if they need to. And then once there's time, I can just turn on the avatar and they kind of reveal themselves. In terms of personality, I just let, at first, have their own avatar. I kind of let them do whatever they want to do, they feel like doing. They kind of want them to express themselves. There's not really a requirement of what style avatar. They can kind of express themselves what they need to. All they want them to do is have the drums, have the syncing on, and then have the... Jump in trouble if they have that rule.
[00:42:34.816] Kent Bye: Just to clarify, because you were talking about a channel and you going into the expression menu, do you have a master control where you're turning on everything for everyone?
[00:42:45.465] HoneyWeeWee: Yes, I do have a master controller. And I believe I am the only one that could do it, I believe. I pretty much override any channel and change whatever I need to do. It needs to be changed.
[00:42:57.355] Kent Bye: Okay, so during the performance, are you doing that? Or is there anything... Oh, I'm doing it. Okay, and there's nothing that the performers have to do in order to be in the right costume or anything because you're controlling it all?
[00:43:08.044] HoneyWeeWee: All they need to do is just be in the right channel. That's all they need to do. And I do everything on my own. And they don't need to worry about it.
[00:43:15.509] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, there is a lot of entry and exit into the stage. And just curious to hear from the performers in terms of developing and practicing the choreography of being at the right place at the right time and doing the right motions. And it seems to be a core part of this whole experience is... the synchronization of everybody's movements. And so it sounds like you were doing like practicing for at least an hour a week and sometimes, you know, five hours a day for some folks. And so just curious to hear a bit about what that was like in terms of doing that type of repetitive choreography of, you know, how do you record the choreography? How do you communicate it? You know, is it just more of like, there's one person who's telling you what to do and you just have to keep repeating it until you remember it, or if there's any shorthand or If you're looking at notes while you're performing, just curious to hear like what the process was of learning everything. And if there's any VR specific hacks you needed to do in order to bring up overlay windows to remember what you needed to do at a certain time.
[00:44:14.645] HoneyWeeWee: So we just, we're usually in a Discord call, calling each other out. We'll tell like what they need to do, where they need to move. And it's typically like two hours, I believe two hours a week. So one hour a week was for previews. We would like one hour a week for studio practice room. So we can kind of just go right through the studio. But once it's a real thing, it's about two hours. So we have to sit through the whole animation. And that's going to be where we act like there's people watching us. So we're going to act like it's the real thing. So we kind of continue doing that over and over and over again until it's kind of engraved into their head. So I also want to let Sandy, Fumi, and Kiyoshi have their input in this as well.
[00:44:55.427] Sandi_: Yeah, so it's very similar to marching band in the sense of like, we see the thing happen. So a lot of times, like, we would see what Odessa would do on their stage and try to mimic that in a way. So a lot of the times we're just watching it over and over again, getting into our mind. And then when it came practice time, we would just do it over and over and over and over again. So it basically got into your heart, not even your head, of what you're supposed to do, where you're supposed to be. And then with help of some guidelines and stuff, it was a lot easier to kind of line up and stuff like that. It was a lot harder to do in VR because of the lack of peripheral vision that you have. So there were some guidelines as well that helped us out a lot. But the rest of it was just... movement and stuff there was some time like some people were able to move in the room because i had a big enough space to where it looked a lot more natural when they were walking but for me i could probably move about two feet and then i lose tracking so a lot of times i have to basically move in game and kind of like pick up my feet to act like i'm moving so i had to get used to that but a lot of it was just cranked into my heart, just what to do. And once I got into it and like, I could probably do it again without probably doing it for the next three weeks. Nice.
[00:46:16.383] Humi: Yeah. And in the beginning, we would have notes, but that was just during the brainstorming phase where we would try and just understand like where we're getting on, where we're getting off, when we're doing certain movements that require us to like move around the room. We would do call-outs during the performance. We would be like, oh, we knew now, or we jumped now, we point this way, or we face this way. If we happen to be misaligned, Heine would be there to say, oh, go a little bit this way or that way. It was a very collective effort in this particular instance. But as time progressed, we just got it ingrained in our minds. When we would be in stage, out stage, it was pretty straightforward progress there.
[00:47:09.104] Kent Bye: Just a quick clarification. You were talking about having a Discord call in the background. Were you on a Discord call during the performance or just during the practices?
[00:47:18.390] Humi: During the practice and performances, yeah.
[00:47:20.970] Kent Bye: Okay. So you kind of have like an audio back channel that you're communicating like offline.
[00:47:25.652] HoneyWeeWee: Yeah. It kind of helps us do a little bit better choreography in case we kind of mess up. And then someone will say, swing your left arm, swing your right arm. It helps if we kind of forget. And then it kind of is like, if someone's like not paying attention, it also like helps out with that. And we don't have to like yell at them and be like, we can just tell them in Discord and it kind of doesn't disrupt anyone in the instance.
[00:47:48.661] Kent Bye: Gotcha. Kiyoshi, do you have any other additional thoughts on the experience?
[00:47:53.584] Kiashi_GL: For me, I did have like a whole cheat sheet. So I had marked down every person because something that the performers do have to do with toggling is they do have to toggle on their drums or if they're doing the bass drum, they have to toggle on the bass drum sticks or the trumpet or the trombone. So I had a cheat sheet that was always constantly on my screen that would change when the song changed. And it would basically say this performer has these instruments. So if I went onto stage, I knew which ones I had to have toggled on to make sure that I can perform with that. And then also something you wouldn't see on the recording nor on like while you're there are there's dots on the floor that actually tell us like exactly where to stand. So that always like will help us. And then during the call, Usually we'll have Peter, which is like one of the performers. He will usually be calling out like, especially during La Suedad, like exactly like which one's coming next or just calling in for sometimes when the trumpets are swinging together, he'll call like a little tempo for us to kind of follow. But yeah, I had a cheat sheet that would tell me what to toggle, also what is going to happen during that song. So I'd read through it like, okay, so this, I'm going to have to hit four beats and then swing my arm this way or swing my arm that way. So I constantly had a cheat sheet on my screen that would basically tell me everything I needed to know and tell me each performer and what they would do.
[00:49:16.724] Kent Bye: Wow. Well, that's certainly impressive as I hear even more what it took to even put together this performance. And I enjoyed watching it and, you know, it was really quite awe-inspiring. It felt like going on a journey and I wasn't really necessarily familiar with the band. And so there wasn't much in nostalgia or familiarity with any of the music. But I imagine for folks who were familiar with the band, it was probably operating on a whole other level on top of all that. And so I guess in terms of going through all the effort to put on a performance like this, it kind of brings up the question around what next in terms of do you plan on continuing to perform it? Or was this kind of like a one-off or rain dance? Because I know that there's the economy within VRChat, but it's still very nascent in terms of like, There really isn't necessarily like a culture of buying tickets and supporting performances and events like this. But certainly there's a demand for people to go and watch it when it's in the context of a festival like Rain Dance. But just curious to hear around like what's happening with stuff like this in terms of like if you want to try to make it into festivals. a paid gig to, you know, help to pay all the effort and labor that's put in? Or if you just think that this is more of a free passion project that is better to remain as a hobby and to do with volunteer hours without any expectation of ever getting paid for it. So just curious how you start to navigate some of those questions around performances like this.
[00:50:38.484] HoneyWeeWee: I would say for this one, it's more for like a passion and developing friendship because once again, these people barely know each other and we started getting, we kind of bonded with each other from just practicing over and over again, correcting each other. It's more of a passion. For personally, for me, I kind of don't really care if it's paid. I feel like we would have less people interested if we hadn't paid. So I'm fine with it having free performance. I don't know what will happen in the future. We'll have to see. Currently, for now, we're taking a break. We don't want to work on this performance for at least a month. So I'm pretty sure everyone needs a break. We've been practicing so much for a whole year, which I'm very happy for. And I'm so happy that everyone in this team able to put a little bit of effort in Unity or physically. And what was another question? Did you ask another question?
[00:51:34.600] Kent Bye: What I'm hearing is that it's really a project where it was a community building, friendship building, an opportunity for people to really get close to each other. And so, yeah, but there's, I think there's larger questions, you know, as I dip into VRChat, we're about a year away from vrchat having to lay off like 30 of their staff just because they hadn't developed their own in-game economy and so it feels like that there's a little bit of a fracturing in terms of like the core power users that are in day-to-day or not necessarily always necessarily engaged within the monetization aspects of vrchat as a platform unless you're a vrc plus supporter and But other than that, then a lot of the other features seem to be targeted towards like new users rather than people that are uploading their own avatars for the avatar economy or supporting the worlds. But yeah, it's just more of a also reflection on, you know, if there's aspirations to potentially take something like what you've been working on and try to fit it into if there is the capability of having paid events. Or if it's more of a gift economy where you want to give it away as a gift and keep it as a hobby, because whenever you introduce money, sometimes it can then feel like more of a job than something that you're doing as a creative passion project. Any other thoughts on that?
[00:52:52.189] HoneyWeeWee: I honestly do feel like if you have money, it might be a little bit more like a job. But maybe in the future, we'll have a Patreon. If you want to donate and spread around the performance, if they would like the money. They worked really hard on that. And we never really anticipated if we are going to get paid for that. It's more rewarding for us just to see people supporting us rather than the economy. That's how we see it. If anyone else wants to chime in, Sandy, Umi, Kiyoshi, Quinn, if you want to chime in on this as well.
[00:53:25.467] Quinnster: yeah i think at the moment vr chat is in a very weird state where it's in between having the ability to maybe commercialize certain things for example like a concert or performance but i don't think it's there just yet i think the tools are still being developed for that to become a possibility but a lot of what makes vr chat super special is the passion that people put into projects such as so as the memories that makes it so memorable And that's not just for performances, but for community events, hangouts, films. Anything and everything within VRChat is mostly passion-based. And I know there are people who want to commercialize, and that's really cool. But I don't think it's there just yet. I could definitely see it becoming a possibility in the later time. I just don't know when that will be. But for this project, I think it was solely passion. Silhouettes and Memories is... just a bunch of friends coming together getting to know each other and having a blast making something really special for people to enjoy and i guess how i see it at least is this was a good opportunity to make an experience to show and hopefully make people smile but yeah
[00:54:43.732] Humi: Yeah, I guess as an extra, I suppose not only give the people the A&E UK experience, but also get them to be inspired and create their own thing, add their own little coin into the VR chat community and perhaps even surpass us and come with great things forward.
[00:55:07.943] Sandi_: I do agree with that. Quinn that I don't think VR VR is in a place yet to a degree that it's like, it's not making too much money, especially for VR chat as like a mainstream way of meeting people and stuff like that. And we're experiencing things like concerts. And I feel like if it were to be paid for a performance like this, I feel like we would very much reach a very, a very small percentage of people than we, when we did before. Like when they were like sold out, like the tickets sold out, the queue list was full. I feel like even if we put a dollar on something like this, I feel like we would have lost 95% of those people to show them something way bigger than like what we could have done. Given the experience that they absolutely deserve of just trying to get through life and stuff like that and seeing something beautiful. Honestly, if we were to be paid, I'd quit my job immediately because I mean, I'm, I'm unemployed right now, but even if I did have a job and I got paid even less, like, let's say like a thousand dollars less a week, I would absolutely do it in a heartbeat because I just love doing stuff like this all the time. And even if we were to get a Patreon, it would be a lot better because that's an optional thing to do aside from getting paid to see something when it could just be your choice to support it. Yeah.
[00:56:31.224] Kiashi_GL: me i'm glad you know this entire thing is like free and even if we were getting paid in some type of way i don't think i would like take the money just because it as itself is a wonderful learning experience because in my future i plan to do stuff you know similar to this but i would never if i never even seen these types of worlds so if it was behind a paywall a lot of people you know they don't really get out of like the main group of worlds, but when they're like have the opportunity and it's a free opportunity, they'll see these types of worlds and they'll see what capabilities are for VRChat. It's not just, you know, someplace where you can just play games or, you know, go to certain worlds. There's a lot more unconquered ground to VRChat with animation and world building that people have yet to explore. So making that free and having people this opportunity is a very good experience. And, you know, having the people able to see it will you know bring more people wanting to do stuff like this into the category and you know just improving the future of like you know animations and stuff and hopefully live performances because i know i would like to see a bunch more than rather than perform more
[00:57:43.174] Kent Bye: Yeah, it feels like that VRChat's been in this very unique space where they've kind of organically grown over the years. They've enabled people to upload their own avatars, have their own control over their identity, have control over the world, do these highly specific type of experiences based on the Unity game engine, and that it's been part of the organic magic secret sauce that has made it such a vibrant platform, all that freedom that they've given. But we're in this paradoxical place where... VRChat as a platform is still trying to figure out the new paradigm of how to completely sustain this type of culture that they've been developing, because eventually they'll run out of VC money if they're not profitable. And so I think it's just more of the like this amazing thing that VRChat has been able to cultivate, but it's been based upon VC funding that will eventually run out if they're not profitable. getting a positive revenue stream to even sustain the platform to enable these different types of projects. So I think that's the paradoxical thing was like, whenever I see all these events at rain dance, it is in the spirit of the gift, but at the same time, it's more of also thinking around, well, what's the solution here? Is it just to only focus on this new user demographic and the power users and the whales are not necessarily contributing back directly to the success of the platform. So. After the layoffs last year, I've just been thinking around those questions a lot more. So it feels like I don't have a clear sense of the path forward for what is going to be the thing that is going to take root in the context of VRChat in order for them to get to that place where they need to be in order to really be sustainable and vibrant as they're trying to figure out all these new paradigms. So I don't know if there's any other thoughts on that topic.
[00:59:29.218] Sandi_: If you were to have my opinion, I feel like VRChat's been free for so long. I feel like even if they made a price on even being able to pay to play the game, I feel like even a lot of people that are even playing now would drop it just for that fact entirely because you're losing what games need, which is new players for a social, basically a social platform. I always like to compare it to Roblox as a sense of people make levels and people are able to go on those levels for free, but also having the choice of with, especially with the new VRC credit system, the authors are able to now add a way to pay for the things that they make that is very much optional. As for the VRChat marketplace, in my opinion, a lot of those, some of those avatars, you're able to just buy for yourself and able to edit yourself aside from you buying them. And then that's just it. You can't do anything with it. What you see is what you get. So I also think that you being able to also upload your own stuff, there is a very much less... incentive to buy stuff that's through VRChat itself and just buy it from the creator.
[01:00:53.822] Kent Bye: Any other thoughts so we can move on and start to wrap up?
[01:00:58.087] Humi: On the comparison between VRChain and Roblox that Sunny made, I suppose Roblox is a little bit ahead because I would describe it as a wardrobe system where they have a default state and then people can just add on to it and then it will fit all of the little characters that can build. VHS is a little bit more complicated because there's so many different models and they all they have different proportions they have different how to say this there's humanoids and there's like non-humanoids and it's very complicated to be able to customize them and the recent change that they've done with the avatar like avatar shops, they only come with the original customization that the avatar author had made. So it defeats the purpose of having your own avatar, which you would personalize to have your own things and people be able to recognize you for your own avatar. They've done similar for the, um, like items you can use or like stuff you can do in roads. Like they've done it with the marketplace, uh, having like little different tiers that the creators can give you certain, uh, perks or like items and roads, but they are locked in, uh, in those areas and that you would visit.
[01:02:31.128] Kent Bye: Hmm.
[01:02:32.193] Sandi_: kind of add on to that um a lot of them even with the credit system most of them do it on patreon let's say like there's a room especially for vip people that pay the author monthly of course you can probably could do that now with the credit system but most creators just go through patreon just so they can get a um a direct pay the money is more direct than from buying vr track credits at like a certain bundle and then using the credits to go through another transaction. So it's a lot harder to do through VRChat than just doing it through Patreon.
[01:03:08.521] Kent Bye: Yeah. I had a discussion with some folks in VRChat and it's always just good to hear some of the latest of that and definitely appreciate the gifting culture that has been developed within VRChat because I do think that it's the source of a lot of really amazing culture. Like this project is a vast and impressive performance and journey that you're able to take people on. So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what each of you think the ultimate potential of VRChat virtual reality might be and what it might be able to enable.
[01:03:40.117] HoneyWeeWee: Yeah, let's start this off. For me, I feel like you're a lot more expressive of your creativity. You're not limited to like one program. Unity is free, so you can literally just start creating things right away. All you have to pay, I would say, is like just a learning experience. You have to be really patient and you can express how you feel or express what you want to make. I feel like that's one thing that I really love about VR is you can make whatever you want, whatever you can imagine. And Bumi, Kia, Quinn, Sandy, anything else you want to say?
[01:04:09.798] Sandi_: I feel like with the medium of VR, it's a lot easier to experience stuff like this. One, especially being free, but also two, you can just do it from the comfort of your own home without having to go drive three or four hours just to go to a Tyler the Creator concert that you barely got to because they sold out on the day. So especially with the gifting culture, I feel like I don't think it's going to be the new medium of experiencing VR. as a whole for the entire world, but especially for such a small community, a much smaller community in the VR space and the gaming space, it's a lot more special.
[01:04:44.831] Quinnster: I think with what we've been doing, I think there's a lot more to come when it comes to not just performances and entertainment in VR, but VR as a whole. We're at the forefront of what's technically possible with what we have at the moment. And I think... There is a much longer timeline awaiting us in terms of future ideas, future tech that allows us to enhance our, I guess, immersion and what's capable to be done in VR. Because the fact that we can make performances, we can do films, we can have all these really detailed and crazy experiences already in this day and age is super impressive. But I seriously do think that this is just the beginning. There's a lot more to be seen.
[01:05:32.222] Kiashi_GL: Yeah, adding on to what Quinn said, VR is basically just a full-on unconquered ground currently. There's so much potential. Just in VRChat alone, with the limits that we see, we still see some amazing projects. There's an MMO kind of world in VRChat, which is still amazing to see. And if you took that kind of project outside of VRChat without the limitations, it would just be a very well game to just fully do. So VR, as a whole, is just an unconquered ground. It's all around you. Rather than just a screen, it's all around you. You can spin in any direction. You'll see something. And yeah, as Sandy said, it's from the comfort of your home. So it's a lot more easy to get into. And then the limitations are vast. You can make films. You can make animations. You can do concerts. There's so much unconquered ground in VR currently that in the future, once people start getting very into it and notice how much there is capabilities with VR, that we'll start seeing a lot more stuff popping up.
[01:06:44.192] HoneyWeeWee: Do we have anything to say?
[01:06:46.173] Kent Bye: Hume, do you have anything that you want to experience in VR?
[01:06:48.634] Humi: Anything I would like to experience? Um... I guess it's difficult to say because the medium of VR, it's very unpredictable. You can create a lot of things. Even for things that are theoretical, like non-Euclidean spaces, it can be... somewhat perceived in VR. Like something that we normally wouldn't be able to reproduce in real life. So I think it's a very tricky question to answer too. I think there's a lot of potential, but there's also... not a lot of research done on this aspect and uh only within the next few years we can really uh say for sure i think it's a lot of as he has said a lot of unconquer ground it's something people are still stepping into and figuring things out nice and is is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community
[01:07:55.825] HoneyWeeWee: If you have an idea, do it. Just do it. Honestly, yes. I mean, take the risk. It's VR chat. You can do whatever you want. On top of that, it's never too late to start.
[01:08:06.472] Quinnster: If you have an idea, like they said, go for it. You have all the time in the world.
[01:08:11.215] Humi: I think even smaller things are appreciated because people don't quite realize because the community itself, it branches out into a very small like friends groups. And sometimes you can collectively bring them together. Like for example, in Rain Dance, Rain Dance is still, I would say it's a small fraction of the community, but When they all come together for spaces like VCAT or project community or say like the language communities, they all have one niche thing that brings everyone together.
[01:08:51.131] Kiashi_GL: just be willing to learn always take in experiences that you find and you know use them to your own advantage you know I'm going to use the experiences that I've learned with this entire project for my future projects yeah so when you meet people you know talk to them learn what they do and you know maybe they'll help you out in the future whenever you start doing things so just be willing to learn
[01:09:16.795] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you all so much for joining me today. It was a real pleasure to get to hear a little bit more of the journey and the process of putting together this really quite epic performance. It's like 90 minutes long. And so just to see the level of dedication of the practice and the commitment and like Honey said, it's like a group of friends coming together to have a fun time on this passion project and to do something at the end, you contribute into creating this real awe-inspiring performance where you're able to walk us through these many different songs and really felt like I was both going on this immersive journey that could only happen in VR, but also kind of recreating these elements of a live performance and a concert experience. Yeah, I just really enjoyed the experience of the piece, but also getting to hear a little bit more about how it all came about. So thank you both Ani, Quinn, Sandy, Kiyoshi, and Hume for joining me here today on the podcast.
[01:10:09.616] HoneyWeeWee: Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you.
[01:10:14.434] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
