I wanted to share with you a wonderful world I have visited a couple of times on my recent forays into VRChat with people from the RyanSchultz.com Discord server.
Treehouse in the Shade is a world created by 1001 and SCRN, which demonstrates the power of shaders in Unity (which is the game engine on which VRChat is built). Shaders are scripts containing mathematical calculations and algorithms, which are specifically made to run on the GPU (graphics processing unit) of your computer. These programs draw the triangles of your three-dimensional models in-world.
The world is very simple. It consists of a treehouse in the middle of what appears to be a waving sea of grass. Climb the stairs and you will find a roaring fireplace (?!) and a large control panel, which allows you to select from dozens of shaders, which are then displayed all around the treehouse. Here are just five examples:
Still photographs do not do this world justice; you really do need to visit this place and browse through all the shaders! There’s something to please and awe just about everyone. It works best if you come with friends, and have one friend control the shaders from the treehouse, while the others wander around on the ground level outside to get the most immersive view.
A fan has posted a 13-minute YouTube video of an earlier iteration of Treehouse in the Shade, which gives you a much better look at the project and how it works. There’s also a jetpack you can rez and sit on to zoom around this world, which can be great fun!
Here’s a link to Treehouse in the Shade (this jump page will only work if VRChat has been run at least once on your computer). You can also search for “Treehouse” by clicking on the Search button on the VRChat user interface.
Note: This blogpost has been cross-posted to the VRChat Events Discord server, which is the best place to find out what’s going on in VRChat. (You can join using the link posted above.)
