Music festival season is already well underway, bringing pleasure and pain to music fans who get to see lots of great music in a single weekend but must suffer for that privilege through nightmare parking scenarios, muddy tents, blistering heat and/or overpriced refreshments. Utherverse CEO Brian Shuster, CEO plans to throw an online music festival in conjunction with Vancouver's New Music West festival (May 14-18).
Virtual-Vancouver will simulcast over 100 bands performing at the festival, which you can attend for free by creating an avatar and showing up at the amphitheater inside Virtual-Vancouver. I'm still working on getting the final line-up and schedule, but New Music West's band list of Canadian indie bands gives a good indication of the bands that will be playing in the virtual version of the festival. Audio and video of the bands will be simulcast in near-real-time.
To find out how the company plans to put on this show, which it calls "the first massively multi-user online music festival," we caught up with Utherverse CEO Brian Shuster for a short e-mail interview.
Wired.com Listening Post: What technologies are in place to assure that it can handle a capacity of 50K? Has Virtual-Vancouver ever had 50K people in it before?
Brian Shuster, CEO, Utherverse: The patent-pending technology is specificallygeared toward having high-capacity in a single area of the virtualworld. Virtual-Vancouver itself is scalable to be able to hold anunlimited number of users, because it is hosted on our server softwarethat allows us simply to add hardware to increase overall worldcapacity.
The trick comes in allowing hundreds or thousandsof user avatars to appear in the same region of Virtual-Vancouver –
in this case, having thousands of users in a single amphitheater sothat they can all enjoy a concert together. It is this problem that wehave solved with a system that dynamically spawns new "dimensions" ofthe amphitheater as needed, to accommodate as many users as necessary.
In this way, the amphitheater will never be socrowded that anyone will have trouble enjoying the show, and users canmove easily around the physical space, as well as between dimensions,
so that they can meet, dance and interact with any of the otherconcert-goers from around the world.
LP: What format will the audio (and video) be transmitted in, and how are the shows being recorded?
BS: Theshows will be streamed in Windows Media, and they are broadcastdirectly onto the main stage in the Amphitheater of Virtual-Vancouver.
Anyone who wants to see the show will simply be able to walk into thevenue, and on the stage, they will see and hear the band playing.
The shows are being captured by multiple videocameras and audio equipment and multiple venues around Vancouver. Mostof the shows will be streamed live from the venue by permanentlyaffixed equipment that Utherverse has in these clubs. We will alsohave several mobile camera teams that will be moving among the othervenues hosting New Music West, to broadcast the most highly demandedacts.
LP: How can first-time users find the venue inside of Virtual-Vancouver?
BS: Therewill be schedules posted within Virtual-Vancouver of the venues thatare participating and the bands that are playing there. We will alsohave a full team of community guides that will be directing users onhow to use the software, and how to get to the venue to see the show. Transport pods will be set up within theVirtual-Vancouver Transport Center that will teleport users directly tovarious venues as well.
Overall, the system isremarkably simple to use, and users will be able to ask questions orreceive help from our live Guides throughout the event.
Virtual-Vancouver (480MB, Windows only)
