This video, via AliveIn Tech, explores using synthesizers in 3D virtual reality (VR) with Tranzient.
Tranzient is designed for use with Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, WMR, and other SteamVR headsets. Tranzient mirrors your VST’s UI into virtual reality, where you can make edits in 3D. Both Audio FX and VST instruments are supported.
Virtual Reality opens up the possibilty of virtual studios that give you access to an unlimited collection of gear – essentially Reason in 3D. The current state of the art, though, is more limited, and has some high barriers to entry.
Here’s an example of Tranzient in action – making music in the metaverse.
30 years ago, the French magazine Keyboards presented a virtual studio running with 3D glasses and special gloves. Actually, it was a joke for April Fool Day. Nowadays, it’s real.
Probably used Fake Space gloves, HMD, and an Ascension Flock. Had a set in the 90’s. Pain to program, heavy too.
I’m not sure that requiring coarse whole arm movement and an occlusive mask for VR, rather than finger tip control/ instant haptic response and seeing/ hearing your audience when using simple physical instruments/ controllers is a great leap forwards 🙂
Agreed. For me haptics are the single most important issue in tablet based instrumentations. More so here.
Really though, the hardware gets better, but the experience is still VRML/Lawnmower-man looking.
Honestly this seems unnecessarily complicated. I don’t see how this VR environment helps me be anymore creative than using my push and ableton live. If you are going to create a VR space, then visualize the music as a space. Then you can navigate it!
You’re missing the point. This is for people/situations that don’t have a physical studio.
If you’ve got a bunch of synths and stuff, you’re not going to want virtual ones!
Basing this on an expensive VR system is of course a big hurdle, though.
Destroying your eyes in order to feel cyber seems pointless… It is about as useful as trying to train a soldier in VR for combat. Fact is …reality is not lights 1cm in front of your face, Performing live takes Stevie wonder to a whole new level.
No you’re missing the point. I don’t have a physical studio, I use virtual instruments. This VR interface does not let me do anything I can not already do. In fact it does it in an even more awkward and clumsy way.
This is just another fascinating system that won’t be commonly implemented in this form or anytime soon. As with quad, it demands a certain amount of very non-budget hardware to generate the environment. The ergonomics of playing it also seem a bit too jerky at present. The tech is inevitable, but its several generations away from showtime.
Its not a bad effort at all, but its not unlike taking up an “alternate” music controller. You have to have a good reason to dig in and take up a whole new set of performance gestures to make it sing.
So just when you have spent ages setting up your dream studio, with ergonomics to die for and workflow just like you prefer, you’re supposed to throw all of that away and re-learn your whole music making process, using much worse tools than what we already have? Hard pass. This looks like a gimmick at best and just a major downer and timesuck at worst.
Don’t try to mimic existing music instrument interfaces and develop this into its own paradigm, taking full advantage of the “limitless” 3D space, maybe then we’ll get somewhere that has potential.
Yes! That is my point exactly. If you are going to create a virtual space, why not allow someone to explore the music as if it were a space. A harmonic space that you can move through like architecture. Maybe the room you start in is the tonic, then you move to another space that is the subdominant, then to a large space that is the dominant. All the while using the controllers to build melodic lines as you go. This VR experience wold be simulating the exact process that is happening in my mind when I compose music.