Epic VR collaboration enables you to join a global music video dance party.
If you've ever wanted to be in a pop video, now's your chance. Sort of. To promote its new song, Tonite, LCD Soundsystem got together with Google's Data Arts team, as well as artists Jonathan Puckey and Moniker, to create a VR dance party that's a moving piece of 3D art that you can take part in.
Dance Tonite is a web-based experience that works with everything from mobile VR systems such as Google's Daydream View to room-scale gear like the HTC Vive, to a flat screen. In it, a camera flies through a series of virtual rooms, while minimalistic representations of dancers strut their stuff.
Dance Tonite lets you bust some moves in virtual reality
With handheld VR, you're on stage, watching the dancers around you, while on a flat screen you see the action from a bird's eye view and can click on performers to see their view. It's when you use a room-scale VR system like the Vive or Oculus Rift that things get really fun, though.
With the right VR gear you can record yourself and add to the fun
With one of these in play, Dance Tonite can work as a basic motion capture setup and record your moves so that they can be incorporated into the experience where everyone can see them. And by recording a whole set of terpsichorean antics in one go, you can even become your own virtual dance troupe.
It's all built using WebVR and some clever coding; you can read a detailed breakdown from co-creator Jonathan Puckey on how it was all put together. And if you're really keen on seeing how it all works, it's an open source project so you can get all the code on GitHub.
Enough of all that technical stuff, though: let's dance!
Dancing All Night In LCD Soundsystem’s VR Music Experience #IO17 https://t.co/XH3ZIdvgvE pic.twitter.com/0D75y3fcAM19 May 2017
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Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
