Frequently Asked Questions

Soundscape is the musical metaverse project dedicated to the exploration of immersion in music and live audiovisual arts. Sprawling freeform worlds and imaginative concert venues populated by flying full-body avatars empower participants to connect and flow from anywhere, even outside of VR.rnrnu0026nbsp;rnrnThe Soundscape journey began in 2014 with the creation of hyper-immersive virtual destinations to enjoy the music that moves you. A decade later, our collective of artists is opening the doors to a cutting-edge hybrid reality warp world, powered by the latest technologies like Unreal Engine 5. This reality visualization system is designed to facilitate new kinds of emergent experiences, weaving connected spaces for improvisational play.rnrnu0026nbsp;rnrnInfinite music compatibility, Sonic AI v4 visual modulation system, Soundskin Avatar creativity tools, unique multi-dimensional art, and connectivity of friends, fans, and bands across different virtual mediums are just some of the new features available.

Soundscape is available for purchase exclusively through Steam by clicking u003ca href=u0022https://store.steampowered.com/app/2259730/Soundscape/u0022u003eHERE.u003c/au003e

No. While the full Soundscape experience is best played through a virtual reality headset, all the capabilities, including playing with those in headsets, are available through our PC cross-play feature.

u003culu003ern tu003cliu003eSoundscape VR: 2017 is a hyper-immersive musical metaverse prototype. First displayed on-playa at Burning Man 2017, the project now lives on as a decommodified gift to all humans who hold a passion for audiovisual arts. Since its inception, Soundscape has been continually expanded by an independent team of artists u0026amp; music lovers. No ads, no data theft, no corporate BS; just the world’s most advanced virtual productions, available free. Soundscape is a celebration of creating for love rather than for money, a time capsule to the world showcasing the power of pure digital spaces unpolluted by financial influence.rnrnrnExplore the birthplace of The Musical Metaverse, solo or with friendsrnrnEnjoy Magic Mirror curated performances from major artists, or visualize your own music with FreeplayrnrnEscape to fantasy worlds brought to life by music, Sonic AI powers a unique performance every timernrnSoar through Spectra Dash, a fast-paced shooting and slicing test of agility synced to your playlistu003c/liu003ernu003c/ulu003ernStep into Soundscape in all new ways – cross-play with VR, PC, and Steam DeckrnrnBe sure to check out the Soundscape Discord https://discord.gg/Soundscape to discover new music, new friends, upcoming shows, and details on the upcoming next-gen versions of Soundscape for PC, Apple, and Mobile VR.

Be respectful, kind, and polite to other users. We’re all here because we love music and art, so let’s celebrate that! We all have our favorite artist or musical genre or feature we wish to see in Soundscape, but let’s keep an open mind about the music that moves others. Honor these beautiful spaces by choosing to spread positivity in every interaction. Please avoid being disruptive to the experience and ruining it for other fans.

Promoting any product or service within Soundscape or our communication channels is strictly prohibited. We’ve built Soundscape to be ad-free for a reason, so please keep your NFTs, mixtapes, discord channels, crypto projects, music festivals, or any other promotion to yourself. If you’re created something for Soundscape you’d like to share with the community, please keep it contained to the u0022music-loversu0022 channel. Thank you!

For nearly a decade we’ve been building Soundscape to be a state-of-the-art piece of virtual art designed for the future of music. In order to replicate the magic of the live concert experience, Soundscape requires state-of-the-art GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) technology to render the incredible detail and scale of each world. Many gamers may already have something that meets our recommended specification installed in their machine. For those who don’t, you’re looking an investment of roughly $300-$500 to upgrade your GPU to be Soundscape-ready. You can find our minimum and recommend requirements on the store page, we generally recommend a minium of RTX 3060 for PC, and RTX 4070 for VR. For those with less powerful hardware, we recommend PC mode for the best experience. We’ve put a huge amount of work into optimization to make Soundscape run as great as possible on as many system configurations as possible, and we’re very happy with the current performance we see across our wide range of test systems. It’s an unending process for us to bring Soundscape to everyone, and every day we work in pursuit of this goal. However, Unreal Engine 5 does require newer, higher end components than games of the past. There will be machines out there with unusual or older parts that experience issues, especially with a new technology like VR where there are numerous interplays between a variety of different components, drivers, OS, and more. We always recommend Nvidia GPU’s as drivers tend to be more consistant with cutting-edge technologies like UE5. If you’re experiencing poor performance, we suggest a upgrading to a more modern system, including RAM, CPU, GPU, Hard Drive, or router, all of which can affect performance in significant ways! We are building to have Soundscape running well on midrange hardware by 2029, and on low-end hardware by 2034.

Soundscape VR: 2017 has always been free to enjoy for all music lovers, both in their homes and at special events around North America. The passionate team of developers, artists, musicians, and many more have put their heart and soul into this project with the motto u0022Do it for the love.u0022 The economics of VR development are extremely challenging, and if it wasn’t for the passion of the Soundscape team choosing art over money, the software would not exist. We make that choice every day as we’ve never shown a single ad or corporate logo inside the software, it’s been built to simply be the purest piece of audiovisual art imaginable. With dozens of free concerts from major artists, and zero tracking or data selling, our Musical Metaverse is one of a kind – all of this is nearly unheard of in the modern tech dystopia where predatory companies exploit users for maximum revenue. We’ve been working hard to make sure these technologies can create positive impact all around, and with our upcoming launch comes new opportunity for fans to help us continue our journey. We hope you enjoy Soundscape and appreciate your support that empowers future development to help keep this art going strong. You can always enjoy Soundscape VR: 2017 for free if you’re not in a place to offer the team your support financially.

Soundscape has been crafted since 2014 to be a hyper-immersive audiovisual experience beyond comparison. Over the past few years, corporations like Facebook/Meta have been spending tens of billions of dollars in promoting their standalone VR hardware platform (Quest). This hardware comes with many compromises, both artistically and ethically. The Quest 3 has a Snapdragon XR2 mobile chip which benchmarks at only 11% of the required processing power to render something of Soundscape’s quality and scale. The low power of this device is more akin to a mobile phone than a Playstation / Xbox / Gaming PC, which is why many Quest games look the way they do. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of virtual reality is not our own. In order to play Soundscape on Quest, you will need to connect it via Quest Link or USB C to a capable PC with a graphics card that meets our hardware requirements, the same as you would if you wanted to play any other modern software utilizing Unreal Engine 5. You can find instructions for both of these methods on Meta’s website. u003ca class=u0022anchor_c8ddc0 anchorUnderlineOnHover__78236u0022 tabindex=u00220u0022 title=u0022https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/headsets-and-accessories/oculus-link/set-up-link/u0022 role=u0022buttonu0022 href=u0022https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/headsets-and-accessories/oculus-link/set-up-link/u0022 target=u0022_blanku0022 rel=u0022noreferrer noopeneru0022u003ehttps://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/headsets-and-accessories/oculus-link/set-up-link/u003c/au003e We’re very excited about the potential of wireless VR technology, and we’ll have Soundscape available on standalone headsets once they have respectable rendering power. For now, the visual and audio quality of the standalone Quest does not meet what we – and the musicians we work with – consider as acceptable quality to display our art.

Soundscape is not a game, it’s a exploratory musical metaverse hybrid reality warp world guided by a collective of artists, music lovers, and old-school gamers. Together, we’ve built Soundscape out of passion for a decade, distributing our creations so our community can dance and be free together from home in every country around the world. If you’re looking for others to play with, bring your friends! Soundscape empowers you to create your own fun in your own space where you can be free. Active participation means you create the events and build the community you want to see. Our mission is to provide art, freedom, and creativity tools. Beyond that, it’s up to you! Whatever expectations you come to Soundscape with, whether from other video games, festivals, or entertainment; it’s best to leave them at the door. Soundscape is a place to celebrate music, art, and human connection.

Soundscape is a multi-decade journey to advanced audiovisual future. As excited as we are about what we’ve achieved thusfar, we still have lists hundreds of ideas long of future additions to explore and expand. As the artists on this team work towards the next decade of realizing their vision, we believe Soundscape is best enjoyed in the present moment of what is possible today, rather than perpetually looking to the future. The team is not experiencing a shortage of ideas or looking for help deciding what to build next. Please be respectful of our process of creating art, and let’s all enjoy the journey!

The Quest 3 has a Snapdragon XR2 mobile chip which only benchmarks at 11% of the processing power required to meet our minimum specification. The low power of this device is more akin to a mobile phone than a Playstation / Xbox / gaming PC, and is why many Quest games look like old cartoony games from the Nintendo 64 era. In order to play Soundscape on Quest 3, you will need to connect it with Steam Link / Airlink / USB to a capable PC with a graphics card that meets our minimum VR spec, the same as you would if you wanted to play any other modern video game utilizing Unreal Engine 5. You can find instructions for connecting your wireless HMD with your PC on Youtube as well as the Meta u0026amp; and Steam websites. We’re just as excited as the rest of you about wireless VR technology, and we plan to have Soundscape available on standalone headsets once they have respectable rendering power. For now, the visual and audio quality of the standalone Quest does not meet what we – and the musicians we work with – consider as acceptable quality to display our art.

Set scaling to 100 in Windows System Settings Set u0022Smooth motionu0022 off in Steam VR Set Audio Output to your preferred device (headphones, speakers, VR HMD)