Interactive virtual light-stick interaction that enhanced collective movement (Master's Thesis)
TU Delft
2026
✨ Summary
Problem
Unlike physical concerts, where audiences collectively cheer and move together,
VR concert audiences often remain passive, with limited awareness of others' reactions and a weaker sense of unity.This leads to an unsatisfactory concert experience.
Goal
Encourage collective audience reaction and strengthen a sense of togetherness in VR concerts.
Solution
Inspired by the K-pop light-stick movement ritual,
I designed stylized movement feedback around virtual light-sticks with visual and haptic elements, which is amplified as more people move together.
Impact
+1.04 Co-presence (3.88 → 4.91)
+0.59 Sense of Unity (4.30 → 4.89)
Participants showed increased collective movement activity.
Background
K-pop live concerts expanding to virtual reality experiences
With advances in digital technology, virtual reality (VR) concerts have emerged as a new concert format, allowing audiences to experience immersive performances without the physical presence of performers.
It's been emerging around music genres such as K-pop.
(eg., Meta Horizon, VRChat, Amaze VR)
However, bringing concerts into VR raises a question:
how can the audience social experience of live concerts be translated?
Problem
VR concerts often lack shared audience experiences.
In VR, it is difficult to reproduce the social cues that spark social interaction. While audiences may share the same virtual or physical space, they often remain passive concert viewers without active collective interactions compared to physical live concerts.
The project focuses on this missed opportunity:
How might we foster a sense of unity among virtual concert audiences?
Goal
To foster an collective audience reaction to enhance audience social interaction
and a sense of unity.
Among two types of concert interactions:
- vocal coordination (cheering, singing-along) and collective movement (light-stick movement or dancing),
the study focuses on fostering the collective movement.
User Research and Design Principles
Based on insights from user feedback gathered during the design research process, I established three principles.
01. Explore New Forms of Expression
Leverage VR's unique possibilities to enable expressive audience reactions beyond physical concerts.
02. Keep Interactions Effortless
Lower interaction barriers to encourage natural and spontaneous participation.
03. Make Feedback Noticeable, Not Distracting
Make others' reactions perceptible without disrupting the concert viewing experience.
Prototyping
Inspiration: K-pop's light-stick movement ritual.
Inspired by K-pop's light-stick movement ritual, where audiences move and cheer with light-sticks,
each participant is represented by a virtual light-stick in a shared VR concert environment.
The interaction combines visual and haptic feedback to make individual and collective reactions more expressive.
01. Individual Reactions
When a participant move light-sticks, glowing particles are emitted alongside haptic feedback.
These subtle effects make individual reactions noticeable without distracting from the concert performance.
ㅣ
02. Individual Reactions Turn into Collective Reactions
As more participants move their light-sticks simultaneously, the visual and haptic feedback amplifies.
The particles become larger, brighter, and more numerous, while the haptic feedback grows stronger.
This makes collective movement more noticeable and encourages audiences to react together.
ㅣ
03. Virtul Specific Reaction
Giving audiences more ways to express excitement
Participants can elongate their virtual light-sticks by pressing the controller trigger, as an additional form of expression beyond physical concerts.
This interaction allows audiences to experiment with how they express their excitement in VR.
Design Iterations
Tested variants with VR elements around light-sticks (shooting, ripple, lightning)
Insights
Effects should be visible around eye level yet not obstructing the view. Participants disliked particle with too much distraction.
Haptic feedback prompts movement.
Impact
More movement and a stronger sense of togetherness.
User testing with 16 participants showed that the movement feedback increased audience engagement and the sense of unity compared to the experience without feedback.
Key Results
15/16 participants showed increased movement activity.
36.5% → 88.5% median movement activity during sampled concert sections.
+0.59 Sense of Unity (4.30 → 4.89)
Key Takeaway
VR specific design motivated users to keep moving and enabled new forms of concert movement expressions other than physical concerts.
Stylized reaction feedback encouraged collective participation, while seating positions and individual participation styles also influenced the sense of togetherness.
