HackMD
The Grid Part 2
The term Cyberspace implies a spatial aspect to the internet, imagining the web as a place you can visit. Part 2 features early prototypes of a digital city.
Originally published July 2019
tags: devlog grid janus cv desert
Link to part 1: https://xrdevlog.com/grid.html
How to design an Internet City inspired by Snow Crash and Burning Man?
Origin City VRC
This layer is the foundation for the internet city. The picture below is a high resolution render.
Importing the entire city to Blender in hopes to optimize and re-export did not work out.
Instead focused on a chunk of the city with a single district (Makers). Screenshot is from Unity.
The Cryptovoxels avatar was optimized, rigged, and uploaded to VRChat as Quest compatible.
Here is a player standing in the VRChat version of Makers district staring into a mirror.
Squad rolling through the neighborhood. Avatars in VRC can be really big and really small.
Riding Chocobos through the district, not recommended for VR users.
Basic MVP of the CV district is uploaded with links below, feel free to jump in and take a look.
- Visit world: https://vrchat.com/home/launch?worldId=wrld_16fe8551-b09e-41c8-b3ea-9f71eea53bd7
- Makers District Unity Project: https://github.com/madjin/makers-district
JanusWeb Version
Desert
Demo: https://vesta.janusvr.com/bepis/desert-voxels
Snow
- See animated GIF: https://i.imgur.com/VWXUZmU.gif
- Demo: https://vesta.janusvr.com/bepis/snow-voxels
Rain
Desert City
Desert City is a sandbox for web based mixed reality. The images are from a 1 day experiment.
The arcade tent experiment is given presence in a world with thought to having an exterior.
Going through the door will take you to inside the arcade tent, hosted on another site.
- Video video: https://streamable.com/l5na2
- View demo (Warning, experimental!): https://chill.hashbase.io
Trailer Park
This area of the map is reserved for portable housing units, or trailers as most people see it.
If the Internet were a video game, the trailer would be like a portable startpage + save point.
Night
Night mode is still a work-in-progress with the aim to turn the desert city into a neon lit metropolis.
The animated spline paths are the result of Spyduck wanting to have tilt-brush like animations in Janus. This process can be used to light up buildings, roads, avatars, and vehicles at night.
- Tilt brush updates (Sept 2016) https://blog.google/products/tilt-brush/paint-friends-tilt-brushs-latest-prototype-creations/
- The image file may be corrupted
- The server hosting the image is unavailable
- The image path is incorrect
- The image format is not supported
- Tilt brush + Three.js https://blog.google/products/chrome/experience-virtual-reality-art-in-your/
- Mozilla A-painter https://blog.mozvr.com/a-painter/
Projection Mapping
Scan of an entire city skyline was done using open source photogrammetry.
- The image file may be corrupted
- The server hosting the image is unavailable
- The image path is incorrect
- The image format is not supported
This became the base for UVmapping video textures onto (live or prerecorded).
Hologram vocaloid music video was then quickly added into the scene. The video texture for the buildings needs to be tweaked since its not very dynamic.
Inspiration:
- Kizuna AI + Wave concert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtU_sb4jYE8
- Awesome browser based DJ platform https://you.dj/
