I had to stop myself from applauding.
Kacey Musgraves had just finished a cover of George Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live in Texas,” and for a split second my brain apparently forgot that I was sitting alone wearing a Quest 3. I was immersed enough in the performance that clapping felt like the natural thing to do.
I had no idea who Kacey Musgraves was before putting on the headset.
Kacey Musgraves Middle of Nowhere: An Immersive Experience is a made-for-VR concert filmed at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth. Meta says the production was built from the ground up for stereoscopic 3D VR180, with the staging, choreography, lighting and camera placement all designed around someone watching in a headset.
The 49-minute experience moves through several areas of Billy Bob’s rather than just filming a conventional concert from a few different seats. It was produced and creatively directed by Untold Studios, with MediaMonks and 7 Cinematics co-producing. Meta says it was shot using Blackmagic URSA cameras.
Inside Billy Bob’s
The experience opens with Musgraves arriving at Billy Bob’s on horseback before moving inside the famous Texas honky-tonk. Billy Bob’s itself is enormous, but the way this concert is set up feels much more intimate than the theater used for the Goo Goo Dolls immersive concert I previously watched on Quest.
From the first song, “Dry Spell,” the cameras put you very close to Musgraves and her band. At times you’re standing on the floor looking slightly up toward the stage with members of the audience around you. Another camera sits farther back behind the crowd. There’s also a camera placed onstage between the keyboard player and drummer, looking back out toward the audience.
There aren’t a huge number of camera positions, but with a venue like this, there really don’t need to be.
Musgraves also spends a good amount of time performing toward the camera. During parts of “Dry Spell,” she’s only a few feet away and appears to be singing almost directly to you.
Then the view cuts back into the crowd. One moment you feel like another person inside Billy Bob’s watching the show. The next, it almost feels like Musgraves is giving you a private concert.
The stereoscopic presentation on Quest 3 is excellent. Depth feels natural, people look like they’re the right size, and I didn’t experience any noticeable eye strain. I watched using the “4K” quality setting over hotel Wi-Fi, and the image still looked impressively clear.
The audio mix sounded terrific too. I can’t say the spatial presentation itself stood out to me, but the music came through loud, clear and very well mixed.
VR180 feels like a great fit for a concert like this. The immersion is terrific, and with almost all of the action happening in front of you, there really isn’t much reason to turn completely around.
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Inside The Performance
Later, the camera sits farther back while people fill the dance floor in front of the stage. Musgraves and an accordion player then walk out among them while the camera moves backward.
Suddenly you’re right in the middle of it. People are dancing all around you while Musgraves and the accordion player move through the crowd only a few feet away. That was one of the first moments where I stopped thinking about the camera placement and just enjoyed being there.
Her cover of Brooks & Dunn’s “Neon Moon” was another highlight for me. During the guitar solo, the close camera placement lets you watch the band interacting in a way you probably wouldn’t get from almost any normal concert seat. Musgraves is once again close enough that it can feel like she’s singing directly to you.
The concert also breaks things up with a few short Texas-themed scenes. Musgraves rides a mechanical bull. A cowboy performs lasso tricks. At one point enormous Texas Longhorn cattle walk directly toward the camera.
Seeing a Longhorn walking toward you in stereoscopic 3D really gives you a sense of just how big those animals are. If you’re fully immersed, having one coming straight at you can be a little startling.
About halfway through, the experience moves into the dirt-floored rodeo inside Billy Bob’s. The building dates back to 1910, when it was used as an open-air barn for prize cattle at the Fort Worth Stock Show. A former livestock auction ring inside the building is now used for bull riding.
Musgraves sits on the bleachers between two guitarists with no crowd around them. You’re positioned directly in front of the trio.
During the next song, Musgraves picks up her own guitar, talks with the other musicians a little and explains some of what the song means to her before the three start playing together.
This was one of my favorite parts of the whole experience. The 3D and close camera position make it feel like you’re sitting right there with them while they talk and play. There is no crowd, no spectacle and nothing interactive going on. You’re just sitting a few feet away from three musicians playing together, and the simplicity of it works incredibly well.
The rest of the band eventually joins Musgraves on the dirt floor of the rodeo, with the audience surrounding them.
“Cardinal” is a particularly fun change of pace. After all the country atmosphere, the song takes on a more mystical feel, with a driving beat, darker chords and a strong guitar solo. The dirt-floored rodeo is a great setting for it. The band is playing in the middle of the space with people gathered around them, and the whole scene feels loose and alive.
From there, the set moves through “Justified” before Musgraves heads back toward classic country with “All My Ex’s Live in Texas.”
That’s the performance that got me.
I knew the George Strait song, and I was enjoying it enough that when it ended, my first impulse was to applaud.
For a moment, I wasn’t thinking about watching immersive video. I was just reacting to the performance.
The show closes by bringing things back around to the way it started. Musgraves leaves Billy Bob’s in the back of a pickup truck, except this time you’re riding away with her from a camera positioned in the truck bed.
It’s a simple ending, but it works really well.
A Fan Is Born
Again, I had no idea who Kacey Musgraves was when I started watching. By the end, I’d already added a few of her songs to my Apple Music library.
Spending nearly an hour this close to an artist, hearing her talk about her music and watching the musicians interact is a very different way to discover someone than watching a music video or streaming a few songs on your phone.
It immediately made me wonder what this would be like with artists I already love. Middle of Nowhere turned me into a fan of someone I knew nothing about going in, and I’d really like to see more artists get this kind of immersive treatment.
Experiences like this also feel like one of the clearest use cases for VR. Quest 3 is already very good at delivering this kind of immersive video, and the lighter headsets with higher-resolution displays now starting to emerge should make experiences like this even more comfortable to watch and easier for more people to embrace. If that audience grows, hopefully more artists will meet them there.
Kacey Musgraves Middle of Nowhere: An Immersive Experience is available now on Meta Quest through the Meta Quest TV app.
