OnBoardXR Season 2: ‘Below Deck’
The second showcase of OnBoardXR, premiering July, 2021. Virtual attendees received a custom url allowing them freely explore several 3D environments while interacting with live performers and other attendees. Building on the pirate jokes from the first OnBoardXR, we embraced a loose theme of “Below Deck” asking audiences to “board” a pirate ship as part of their onboarding and tutorial for how to use controls.
Production & Sponsors
The Jigsaw Ensemble, Active Replica and Agile Lens continued their informal partnership to produce the event and absorb overhead costs for XRTHEATER.LIVE. Roman Miletitch stablized the previous
cue systemfor triggering theatrical cues inweb-based virtual reality. Participants submitted prototype proposals via an open-submission process which led to a mix of newcommers and return participants.Artistic Director: BRENDAN BRADLEY
Stage Management: ALEX COULOMBE & STEPHEN FLACH
Technical Lead: ROMAN MILETITCH
Emcees & OnBoarding
The duties of house management and hosting merged in the return of our Pirate Emcees, performed by Dasha Kittredged and Brendan Bradley, improvising banter and reactions to provide a loose framing for the disconnected Acts and Scenes.
Painting Pirates
Zach Capalbo and Braden Roy greeted attendees by creating pre-show portraits in real-time in the virtual Room.
Strings: Prisoner
Smart Home
Who Am I? Where Am I?
Maiden Voyage
Haroun Dessert
Aurora’s Awakening
Cue System
The team found it more reliable to organize all show cues under a single stage manager "role" rather than assign individual buttons for individual roles. As the graphic user interface for the buttons populated differently on different devices’ user interface, some performers struggeled to reach or find their cue buttons while others would accidentally trigger a cue when using unrelated controller functions.
Ticketing Tiers
For OnBoardXR 2.0, we subtly experimented with new ticketing language, inspired by Kevin Laibson’s suggestion to empower audiences to self-select into their desired level of interaction by choosing the color of their avatar’s life vest.
Our Virtual Balcony Seat offered attendees only access to the secondary livestream (on YouTube or Twich), simulating the traditional seating in a distanced, possibly obstructed view. This allowed passive viewers who were more interested in VOD consumption to not impact the experience.
A Virtual Orchestra Seat denoted a “casual participant” who wished to attend co-present but separate from the performers, similar to traditional to the orchestra section of commercial live productions. Users selected either a Blue life vest or a completely invisible avatar so they could freely wander and watch from anywhere in the virtual world without being acknowledged or “put on the spot” by the performers.
Finally, our Virtual On Stage Seat allowed our most “active participants” to enjoy all the affordances of virtual reality, essentially sitting on the actual stage or being engaged or acknowledged by the performers. Users selected a bright orange life vest so they could be easily spotted and incorporated into the event.
Reception & Analysis
OnBoardXR enjoyed a sold-out run of pay-what-you-want tickets. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that 100% of our attendees chose to pay something for their ticket, with 1/4th of attendees electing to pay over twenty dollars. Almost half of our audience also responded OnBoardXR2.0 was their first virtual reality Live Performance or Experience.
We expanded server capacity and engagement through the introduction of the three ticket tiers by prioritizing high-bandwidth features (like audio input and high-poly avatars) on the attendees who actually wished to be interactive and empbodied in the performance. This also elevated the experience for attendees who did not wish to participate as they could engage with the show at their own comfort, often moving closer to the performances with the knowledge the performer(s) would ignore them.
A third of attendees used a standalone HMD with another 21% in PCVR. 5% consistently arrived on a mobile device or tablet with the largest group still using a laptop or desktop computer. Almost immediately our creator community and audiences inquired about “the next one” revealing the desire to make OnBoardXR an ongoing, seasonal showcase.