Avatar Driven VR Society Trends in Japan

This paper reports recent development, experiences and evaluations of social VR platforms in Japan that have been motivated by VTubers and VRChat since 2018, especially the “Virtual Market”. Virtual Market was emulated from the conventional ‘comic market’ model which drives “Doujinshi”, fanzine creators. The third edition of Virtual Market has been visited by 700,000 visitors. This paper also reports six cases of “VRSionUp”, which include hybrid workshops in both physical locations and VR. As another case, we introduce international live performance between Australia and Japan by “Virtual Cast” in SIGGRAPH ASIA 2019 Real-Time Live. As the latest challenge of pure virtual academic conference, we will also introduce “Virtual Gakkai”, an academic conference with poster and keynote sessions.