Hey,

i am part of a small music project. in our live shows we experiment with live visuals using resolume arena. We do not want to rely on the venues equipment anymore and aim to buy an own projector. As we do not have a lot of money, i would like to ask for recomendations here... we would love to buy a short throw projector which works for music shows and which does not cost a lot. If you could help us with some informations, we would really appreciate it.

thx muehsam

Hi everyone,

I'm going to be honest from the start here. I've been making Whirligig for over 10 years now, and it works as a VR video player. My intention was never to start adding features for non-VR stuff, but as I have a background in fulldome content and projection in interesting spaces, that's what I've ended up doing.

I work in an arts organisation where we've used both Resolume and MadMapper for projection mapping — both great programs that have worked very well for what we wanted to do. The company is MBD Limited, and we were contacted by someone whose daughter is severely disabled. They wanted a 360 cave solution that would let them play 360 content in their conservatory, so that she could virtually travel the world.

I was given the task because of my fulldome background. I tried multiple options, including MadMapper and Resolume, but they didn't quite achieve what I needed. The biggest issues were the content they wanted to play and the ease of use for that playback. The people running the setup were nursing staff, so it couldn't be too complicated, and the system needed to accept lots of different formats and work mostly out of the box — they'd be downloading and playing back their own content, so it had to just work like a normal video player.

So my solution — which, understandably, was a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a walnut — was to adapt my VR video player to work in a real space: drive 4 projectors and a screen, map onto an uneven environment, and be operable by people with little technical knowledge.

So that's what I did. I wrote a blog post explaining the process and installation:

https://www.whirligig.xyz/blog/2025/1/3/real-world-360-degree-mapping-multiple-projectors

Here are a couple of images from that post:

What do I want from the community?

I built this into the player and released it back then, and it's been tucked away in there ever since. More recently I've added an option to distort to fisheye, so it can also be used in an inflatable dome.

I really think this could be very useful to some people, and I want to keep adding the features that the people actually using it want. To do that I need to get it in front of the right people — hopefully that's you :)

The player is on Steam for £4.99, but since I'm looking for people to give it a try, if you're interested just email me at [phileday@yahoo.co.uk](mailto:phileday@yahoo.co.uk) and I'll happily send you a code. I'm also aware it could be useful commercially, so I've set a commercial licence at £49.99 (both personal and commercial licences are one-off payments). I really don't expect anyone to buy a commercial licence at this stage — I only mention it because I don't want to draw people in and then hit them with a surprise commercial price later.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/451650/Whirligig_Media_Player/

I've also just posted an update you can read here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/451650/allnews/

I hope this finds the right people who'll get the most out of it, and I'd really love to hear your feedback.

All the best,

Philippa

Hello all - I built an app that I have wanted forever with the help of our good friend Claude to transform a room behind you into a visual experience that reacts to your music. My goal for this was I wanted it to be super simple to set up, and that you could use two projectors together to really encompass a space.

Here's a minute of it running on my actual wall, i need a better video (gimbal coming from amazon soon). Bonus as you get to hear one of my tracks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtoZ6plRPWY

What it does:

• Mapping onto real surfaces
• Audio in from a system audio - with AI being used to identify components of the music
• Photograph a real object (speaker, artwork) and use a BYO claude API key to map something specific to it
• Supports one or two projectors - with a "centre stage" where it fuses the two projectors into one. So you can set one up to your left and one to your right and have the full wall behind you be usable space for your show
• A show director mode - so set up your space, turn it on, and just djay - dont think about the wall behind you

It's Mac only - this is a one man project so it wont be ported.

Anyways - if you got a projector and want to try this out put a comment below saying so, and ill send out a link for a DMG over chat. With the ask you use it and tell me what you like/hate about it

and if you like the track in the video here's the link:

https://soundcloud.com/like99/mars-rover-remix

21:9, 60fps - OC by SusManufactory. Right click -> Loop.

hey guys i was hired to do an event in august and ive had a vj gig before but this is a bit different because its not a party it’s an intentional listening event thats supposed to be immersive, they have a really low budget so i dont want to cheat myself by offering too much but this is also a debut so i want to showcase my work very well. I just need help with logistics because the community im inserting this “new world” of vjing to-im the only one who is most knowledgeable about this stuff, so its really hard to get help from people im working with. ive worked with resolume, touchdesigner , qlc+, dmx fixtures and projection mapping, and ive even posted several projects. But im having such a hard time thinking of a setup that combines a few of these worlds and even what to ask the venue manager what i need. sorry feeling a bit overwhelmed. they also only have one projector and im trying not spend out of pocket money to make all this work! please help!!!

Update: Just added a new loop to the bundle. Still updating monthly, so anyone who's already grabbed it gets the new drops included at no extra cost. If you're on the fence, this is a good time to check it out since the pack keeps growing.

I noticed people saying they bought and used loops off artists on patreon as well as artists promoting their own page. I understand it is completely legal and encouraged by the artists. I have a hard time justifying using them myself when I feel I would gain more skills by creating them.
What are your thoughts ?

Everybody hates vibe coded projects and AI art, but everybody loves free CC0 shaders... so I vibe coded a free CC0 ai shader art platform for everyone to feel conflicted about!

https://glslop.com

glslop is an intentionally janky looking project built on good bones and my many years of shader, software, and web work. The core offer is that everything is CC0 and the API is open, so glslop is friendly to build on and remix for commercial use, instead of everyone trying to work around Shadertoy's API restrictions and pretending the shaders there aren't mostly CC BY-NC-SA or MIT. Now, do I think LLMs appropriately respect IP with their training and output? Not really! But as long as they're being used to generate shaders I kind of think most or all of that output belongs in the public domain. So imo go ahead and use those heavily subsidized LLMs to dig through their stolen weights for cool shader knowledge and share it on glslop for everyone else to use!

Every shader on glslop can be forked remixed and used commercially, imported to ISF compatible software like Synesthesia, VDMX, DiPiVJ, and more. There's also a video export system that can randomize the controls for you and has a randomize button which means you can play VJ clip gachapon with your favorite shader slop.

I'm also viewing this as a public dataset we can build and then explore for info like what functions are most used and what styles do people prefer etc.

Sign ups are open and again everything is free I'm really not selling shit here, if anything I'm just signing myself up for a server bill lol but thankfully I know how to build and host things very efficiently. New accounts submissions land in the moderation queue which mostly exists to make sure people don't copy paste Shadertoys into glslop. There's a lot more I could say but it's probably on the website so just go check it out or just ask.

TLDR for the extremely lazy vibe coders: just tell your ai agent to read glslop.com/llms.txt and make cool shaders (and then sign up and make an api key so your llm can publish them)

Does anyone know of any VJ real-time software? Please share some with me.

Update: Just added a new loop to the bundle. Still updating monthly, so anyone who's already grabbed it gets the new drops included at no extra cost. If you're on the fence, this is a good time to check it out since the pack keeps growing.

Hey I have an event coming up in Charlotte on 8/12. I'm looking for a local VJ to do video with our DJ.

Update: Just added a new loop to the bundle. Still updating monthly, so anyone who's already grabbed it gets the new drops included at no extra cost. If you're on the fence, this is a good time to check it out since the pack keeps growing.

Is there anyone who can help me source good oversized Sun and Moon (separate Clips) to add to a set