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.
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 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
Related articles: