"From Nothing is a masterful piece of graphic design that truly feels dreamlike in its endless scope."

 MICHAEL HICKS

This is the first stereoscopic fractal made for headsets such as oculus rift and gear vr.

Background

My last two Virtual Reality Fractals ('Foreign Nature' and 'the Cryogenian') were both monoscopic- this is because rendering stereo for VR isn't as simple as rendering left and right eye. A lot of the comments were asking for stereo, so I decided to give it a go. Using the Z-buffer I displaced the left and right eye slightly, and this had exactly the required result and turned out to be simpler then I anticipated. It only works when looking towards the horizon (in front, behind, left, right) but not when looking completely up or down, since you can never know the orientation of your head. The projection I use, lat-long or panoramic (there are plenty of names for it) solves this problem automatically by ramping down the stereo effect towards the top and bottom. I couldn't notice anything annoying about this.
Other artifacts are present though, like there's no occlusion. At the edges of front objects there's a weird 'shadow' which is just unavoidable using this method. Still, I think it adds a tremendous lot without even increasing render times.
The trip is exactly the same as the normal, flat piece 'Nothingness' except the colors, the music and the fact you can look everywhere you want.
This was my first collaboration with Christopher Libertino, a film composer from New York who wanted to work on a fractal piece. His style is truly refreshing and I am extremely pleased with what he has created. An organic and moving piece, orchestral at times, and electronic at others. It added to the spirituality (without religion) I wanted to evoke.