When Covid hit in early 2020, many record companies, booking agents and artists who were thriving via live-concerts were quickly forced to adopt new ways to expose their artists due to the shutdown. The term “Virtual Concert” rapidly became a generic term to mean an artist performing with the audience in a different location, E.g. Live-streaming, or heavily-curated super-star-only music-experiences such as in Fortnite, Roblox, Sony, etc.

Amidst these unprecedented challenges, Moshpit embarked on its unique journey, teaming up with NKRiot to unveil its groundbreaking virtual concert experience.

The team at Moshpit has been marinating deeply and developing what they feel a virtual concert should look and feel like. “We wanted our virtual concerts to feel like a ‘concert’ rather than a music video. From Interactive crowd to lighting and pyro, it needed to have a grand-concert feel to it.

A hologram dancing to the electric beats

We wanted our virtual concerts to feel like a ‘concert’ rather than a music video.

Although real time rendering technology has existed for more than 2 decades, it has not been pushed far enough for the purpose we wanted to use it for, so we manipulated it to fulfill our objectives. The standard pipeline for real-time characters would not support the huge character-count we needed for Moshpit, so we developed a new character rendering pipeline from the ground-up to accommodate our vision” says Shabbir.

Audio also plays a significant part in Moshpit. Creating the complex reverberations and reflections of a loud concert are key to an immersive experience. “Historically speaking, audio has been treated as sort of an afterthought as the visual aspects of media have always been well-served. The irony though is that audio can exist without video, but video without audio, or with poor audio can be very offsetting”, says Swann.

Main stage of Arena lit by fireworks and DMX lights

In closing, this initial NKRIOT show marks the genesis of Moshpit’s rollout. Many novel technologies are understood to be revealed in upcoming concerts. Moshpit welcomes artists globally to connect for potential collaborations to further evolve what a virtual concert can be.