From 2D to 3D: Designing Spatial Interfaces in Just Dance VR

The development team behind Just Dance VR shares how they transitioned the franchise from 2D to fully spatial 3D interfaces for VR headsets. Key challenges included designing intuitive UI with strong affordance and reactivity, which required prototyping directly in Unity rather than flat-screen tools. Unity's UI system, particle system, Timeline, and Universal Render Pipeline (URP) were central to building immersive 360-degree environments and choreographed gameplay. Performance optimization was a constant focus, with the team using Unity's Profiler and Frame Debugger to hit 72fps targets by managing draw calls, batching, occlusion, and balancing CPU/GPU workloads.