Thanks to #VRChat's new Horizon Adjust feature, you can do cool stuff! Here's an homage to the movie 'Labyrinth' I made to demonstrate! pic.twitter.com/OZvVoiovCK
— Dr Ocelot (@doktorocelot) August 1, 2022
VRChat's new Horizon Adjust feature may have been mainly added to address usability concerns -- it allows someone who's confined to a bed to comfortable use VRChat -- but very much on brand, the VRChat creator community has already created a seriously cool bonus use case: Gravity-defying special effects!
For instance, here's creator "Dr Ocelot" using Horizon Adjust to re-create a classic David Bowie moment; the classic Escher maze from Labyrinth. (Above; original below for comparison purposes.)
Almost all of this clip, Ocelet tells me, was shot "in camera" in VRChat -- here's how:
"VRChat's new 'Horizon Adjust' feature allows the game to rotate your view in the virtual world to reorient what is 'up' in a sense. So, if you're lying in bed and looking straight up, you can use it to be as if you're looking straight ahead.
"However, if you look straight down, select it, and look back upright, you'll actually become sideways. If I turn my head upside down and initiate it there, then when I look up again I'll be upside down in the game. This allowed me to appear as if I were walking on the walls and ceilings."
Only the "walking through avatar" shot was done in post-production with a green screen, Ocelot adds, sharing this whole behind-the-scenes YouTube video:
As for Horizon Adjust use cases, Dr. Ocelet also points out the core accessibility advantage: "It'll allow people to lay down and still play as if they're standing, and this is especially useful for people who have trouble being upright for long periods of time."
But then that's just the start of the fun (if you have full body trackers):
"In the way that I used it, it'll be a good party trick for public lobbies. It's gotten me to be the center of attention quite a few times. You could definitely use it to fake as if you're swimming in the air."
Or why not even create a whole Escher world in VRChat, like in the movie, except with David Bowie, singing anime girls?
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