Up to five people in a 36ft x 34ft physical space can run around freely, untethered, seeing each other as avatars. Each person wears a headset, wrist straps and ankle straps (it takes about 30 seconds to put these on). All info needed by the software to build a full human avatar comes from these five strapped on markers. In addition, participants will hold wands, which they can use to paint and sculpt in the 3D space.

Unlike much shared VR, this is a highly physical experience. Participants see each other in their true physical locations, re-created as avatars in an alternate “magical” world. They are free to talk to each other and physically interact with each other, while they walk and run around in the shared space. With their magic wand they can draw sculptural shapes in the air. In this way, each participant contributes to an on-going three dimensional sculptural art work, which is collective created by all participants over the course of the day.

The participating artists are able to choose different kinds of brushes and colors to paint with. In some versions of Holojam, these may be chosen with palettes placed around the room, or by touching exotic colorful textured creatures that swim/float/fly by in the air. A participant who runs up to one of these creatures before it leaves the space can touch the creature with his/her wand, and will then be able to draw in the air with that color and texture.

Over the course of a day, participants collectively create a cadavre exquis, in the form of an evolving space-time sculpture. At any given moment, participants see only a time-slice of this sculpture. After a few minutes, earlier portions of the sculpture appear to fade away, as those portions recede into the past.

Our shared VR experience is different from all previous shared VR experiences in that participants can run around freely, unconstrained by cables or bulky backpacks, interacting with other participants in a magical, people-centered way, doing impossible things together like drawing in the air. It is designed to be a highly social experience for participants, and also lots of fun for other people watching.

Participants can talk to, observe, and physically interact with one and other in the space. More participants provides more activity to observe.

People who experienced Holojam at SIGGRAPH 2015 created a large and spectacular shared drawing, using their own physical movement. This is a unique example of community-created art in a shared VR world – the first instance in history, we believe, of a work of community-created space-time art in shared virtual reality.

Holojam was built collaboratively with a large team of brilliant developers, designers, and animators. The final product is a result of freeform research and ideation. Here are some of the design ideas I came up for our initial implementation.

Connor Defanti, Zach Cimafonte, Laura Juo-Hsin Chen, Sebastian Herscher, Will Field-Thompson, Daren Liu, David Lobser, Ken Perlin.

Motherboard, MIT Technology Review, UploadVR, WSN, VRR