Creating Kusama's infinity room: is 480 point lights too much?

[torson]

Hi,
Thank you for reading this,
I am an absolutely beginner in Unity, I started to learn unity5 two weeks ago and I really have fun in learning this excellent engine!

I am a uni student and currently doing a VR project:
Creating the Japanese artist Yayo Kusama’s ''infinity room" in Unity and gonna use Oculus DK2 to experience it in the virtual world.

If you would like to know what does it look like, here is the link to Kusama’s infinity room :

Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived In Heaven

I have been trying to create the lights effect ( attached screenshots ) but it seems doesn’t run well in my 2013 macbook pro retina. It is too laggy when I run this scene in Oculus ! And it runs butter-smooth when I turn all 480 point lights off .

Will the particle system helps? I guess it can’t stay in still and appears in different colours plz correct me if it is wrong.

Could anyone please give me some insights in creating this effect?
It will be much appreciated.

Tommy tau

[imaginaryhuman_1]

Do they really have to be actual lights? If there is nothing that they shine onto, they might as well just be particles that look like lights?

[hopeful]

As said above, look into applying unlit and particle shaders, see if that will work for you. They don’t shine light, but they can look bright in a dark room, and the processing cost is low.

[SeriousBusinessFace]

Did you turn on deferred lighting? You probably did, but it does have to be asked.

[KingMatthew]

I think particles is the way to go, but if you really want lights couldn’t you just bake them in? I notice in the video the lights kind-of blink. You could just change the lightmap to get the blinking effect.

[hippocoder]

if the lights have to be in 3D space and they don’t move, then simply having them as a static mesh will do fine, with emission shader.