So I suggest you read my review of the original.

Seriously, there isn't much else to say here. The story is a jumble of ethereal nonsense. The enemies are defeated by rather dull button-mashing. And collecting all the collectables doesn't really do anything. It is gorgeous, and beautifully animated. If you're happy with an expansion pack for the first game, you'll be happy with this.

The puzzles are a little repetitive - but they make good use of the VR system; you'll often use your hands or have to peer behind something.

It's fairly gentle and - although the enemies can be a little frustrating - there are plenty of tutorials. You'll need to remove your helmet to watch them though!

In short, I constantly felt like I was working rather than working out.

If you like that sort of game mechanic; I'm happy for you. But it just turned me off the game so much that I never completed it.

A few years later, I got the Meta Quest 2 VR Headset. Most of the games on it are pretty crappy. Nintendo Wii level graphics, screaming kids on the online experiences, and pathetic battery life. There are a few charming experiences, but it mostly sucks.

Except for Beat Saber.

I think Beat Saber might be my personal zenith of gaming. There are no complex instructions - you slice the blocks in the indicated direction. That's it. Here's me playing a level (with my microphone muted so you can't hear my huffing and puffing).

There are no power-ups to help you cheat your way through the levels. No boss fights. No collecting or spending coins. The only decisions you're ever asked to make are "what song would you like?" and "how difficult do you want this to be?" Much like the fabled L-Game, it is the distillation of ludic perfection.

Best of all, your only opponent is yourself.

As I've previously noted, most games aren't about you getting better at the game; they're about you getting better equipment. Beat Saber is the opposite. You have to physically practice in order to complete a level.

Note - you don't have to "beat" levels in order to progress. This isn't one of those games which holds content back if you can't complete the earlier levels. If you want to skip a song, or try something harder or easier, you can pick whatever you like.

In does have in-app purchases. Far from being the sort of loot-box bullshit most games are infested with, these are brutally honest. You can buy an album of songs for between £10 - £16. If you try to buy a single song, it will warn you that it is probably cheaper to buy the multipack. If you are happy with the base songs, it won't push the premium ones on you.

And, yes, there is online competitive play if you really want to test your mettle against people younger and fitter than you. But why bother? What good does it do you to know there's some kid in Seoul who can dedicate 20 hours a day to practicing? It doesn't.

I don't know if it is making me fitter. I'm certainly sweating more. And I don't know if I'll continue playing it. But, as long as it doesn't change its basic premise, I'm finding it delightful.

You can get 25% off Beat Saber using my referral code.

It is like playing with a dolls house. And yet, the scale of it is epic.

Vast castles, haunted forests, arid deserts - it is a wonderland for a platformer/puzzler.

The puzzles are mostly very good. Move the thing, jump on the whatsit, move another thing, back to the start etc. Most of them take advantage of the 3D environment which leads to some lovely designs. And, if you get stuck, the little mouse will mime a clue to you. Get it right, and she'll demand a high-five. It is lovely.

Except for the combat.

Bugs come out to fight you. You hit them with your sword. Repeat. When the enemy can be manipulated to be part of the puzzle, they become interesting. Otherwise, it is just a slog. A couple of the bosses kept me in a death-loop until I'd hit them enough. It wasn't even an interesting "wait until they rear then hit the underbelly" fight. Just button mashing.

I fully agree with Jennifer Hepler and Dara Ó Briain that games need a "Skip Combat" button. I'm here for the story, the puzzles, and the graphics. Hitting monsters is boring.

The story is fun - and set up nicely for a sequel. There's a bit of replayability with a couple of collectables you can find.

Like all VR games, it is expensive for the length of gameplay. £15 for a few hours. You can get 25% off using my referral link

Labyrinth deLux is brilliant. The puzzle is simple enough - point lasers at mirrors, then align mirrors until they point at the target. You've almost certainly played a 2D version of this.

But it has a mind-bending 3D layout which requires you to continually walk on the ceiling to adjust your perspective. The UI is, thankfully, not chunder-inducing. You point and click at a surface and then smoothly float and reorient to it.

The plot is a bit silly - your spaceship crashes and you have a mysterious destiny or some nonsense. But the voice acting is good and you can ignore the story without consequence.

Graphics are lo-fi charming, which helps prevent the usual VR weirdness. Excessive graphics quality just shines a light on how bad the Meta Quest 2 is. But the Minecraft style helps keep the FPS up.

There are 16 levels of increasing difficulty - which took me about 3½ hours to complete:

At £6, it's probably one of the cheapest games on Oculus - and excellent value for money.

I've just completed "Get The Heck Out". It's a fun and free shooter. The twist is, you are expected to die. A lot. You start with a puny pea-shooter:

After every level you can upgrade your weapons - which last until you die. But every few levels, you get the chance for a permanent upgrade. So you restart with more powerful guns, shields, and armour.

Here's how it looks at the start:

And by the time you're fully kitted out, you'll have an experience like this:

It only takes a few hours to complete - and you get a bit of a workout from ducking and diving away from all the enemies.

The graphics, music, and sound effects get a little repetitive - but isn't a blockbuster experience at a premium price. On some levels, the game stutters as it tries to keep up with drawing hundreds of fast-moving projectiles. You do have to exit the VR view in order to see what permanent upgrades you have.

But it is the sort of game which is immediately accessible. There's no learning curve - just point and shoot. You can play stood up or sat down - there's no ability to wander around the level, so you don't need much space to play.

It is brilliant to see just how good WebVR and WebGL are.

There is very little "game" here. It's barely an interactive movie. Walk forward until you step on a trigger, watch a very slow cut scene, wave your arms until something happens, repeat a few times, roll credits. That's it. There's nothing to explore, there are no choices to make, and no puzzles to solve.

Parts of the game are gorgeous. Up close, the characters have amazing textures and animations. The caves are beautifully rendered. Even the Rancor monster is a treat.

On the Quest 2, it's about PS4 levels of graphics - occasionally jerky animation and dropped frames not withstanding - it is quite spectacular.

And then it all falls apart. It might be hard to tell from this shot, but the background is frequently just a static 2D image. It looks like a cheap green-screen effect from a 90's movie.

The plot is pretty good - Vader wants to use a magic crystal to bring Padmé back to life - but your inclusion in it makes no sense. You have magic blood? And Vader trains you? But then fails to kill you? Fine, whatever. I get to use The Force® and a Light Sabre™ right?

Well, ish. The Force is pretty hard to control - vaguely point at something and squeeze the trigger, then shake your hand. There's no real control, you can't easily move things or throw rocks at enemies. It all feels a bit hollow. The Light Sabre is slightly more fun - but it's pretty much Beat Sabre. Move it where you're told to, wiggle it near an enemy and slice them. That's it. There's zero skill involved. Which is fine, because it's impossible to die in the game.

Which, as a tech demo wouldn't be so bad. But Disney have the audacity to split this into three games at £8 each. You'll be able to complete them in under a couple of hours. Which, coincidentally, is about as long as your battery will last.

I is stunning having Vader loom over you in VR. And it is fun to wave a Light Sabre in his general direction. But this is just a lazy game. The cut scenes drag on as if to convince you that you haven't overpaid for a short and vapid experience. Endless rounds of Storm Troopers© attack and you just fend them off by waving your hands.

Considering the price, I was expecting something more. Games like Red Matter show how you can do interesting puzzles and stories, even within a linear framework. But Vader Immortal is an on-rails experience which fails to satisfy.

So a whole industry has sprung up to fix Meta's mistakes!

The good folks at ZyberVR have sent me this smart docking station to review. Let's take a quick whirl:

It's... pretty good! For £35-ish you get a sturdy docking station, a 15W USB-C charger, 2 AA batteries and controller covers, 4 magnetic USB-C plugs, and a USB-A pass-through cable.

The magnets are plenty strong enough, they controllers jump into place and stick there. The headset is slightly harder to place - but you get a reassuring charging light when it makes contact.

And, if you don't like lights, a simple button turns them off.

It's a reasonably compact unit and fits unobtrusively onto a shelf. Yes, there are some silly LED effects, but you can switch them off.

Downsides

There are a few oddities. You get four magnetic USB-C connectors - but they only get used in the headset. It might have been nice to make the controllers use them as well. Still, having 3 spares isn't so bad.

I'd have preferred a detachable USB cable rather than having one hard-wired into the plug. But I guess it means people don't use crappy cables which can't handle the 3A.

The rechargeable batteries will only ever show a maximum of 85% within the Quest's OS. That's normal for these sorts of batteries - but a little weird when you first see it.

But, overall, it's a nifty device. Once you've finished slicing-and-dicing virtual aliens, the Quest 2 slips neatly into it and recharges pretty quickly. The only thing the ZyberVR doesn't do is wipe the sweat off the headset.

Discount!

You can get 15% off this and other equipment with discount code EDENT15

If your friend buys a 4K laser projector, you can immediately understand the appeal of the massive screen. Even if you only see the photos of it on Facebook, you get what the experience is like.

Games are different. While having a parasocial relationship with a Twitch gamer may be fun, it isn't a particularly good demonstration of what playing a game is actually like.

Back in the days before Internet connected games consoles, we had to rely on demo games set up in shops. Your local video game emporium would have a console and two hardwired gamepads set up - along with a demo cartridge of whatever the Next Big Game was.

Something like this:

Back in the day, those controllers were smeared with the grease - and worse - of a thousand teenage hands. We played until we were thrown off and then ate Sbarro pizza without washing our hands. Grim. But these were the days before hand sanitiser was de rigueur.

How can you reproduce that visceral excitement with VR?

A few years ago, I got to demo the a prototype VR headset at a conference. I queued up behind a dozen people and patiently waited my turn. I eagerly grabbed the proffered headset with both hands and jammed my face into it.

You know that feeling when you go to a public toilet and the seat is still warm from the last customer...?

As well as having to tighten the headset, adjust the eye separation, and make sure the lenses are clean - you have to make sure the unit is wiped down. No, really wiped down. Like with proper cleaning fluid.

I refer you to this delightful paper - "Bacterial Load of Virtual Reality Headsets" - where researchers swabbed headsets to see what dark germs they contained:

The results of these tests indicated that the Staphylococcus aureus strains isolated from the headsets possessed high levels of antibiotic resistance.

https://doi.org/10.1145/3385956.3418958

The whole paper is worth a read - unless you're particularly squeamish.

VR is a lonely, plague-ridden experience.

What's it like? Exactly the same as the first. Lots of creepy corridors, a range of puzzles, and a sedate-ish journey. You're exploring an abandoned space-station, looking for clues and trying to figure out what happened.

It's a completely linear journey, and consists of a series of locked-room puzzles. The developers have made sure not to repeat the same puzzles over and over. The story, such as it is, makes very little sense. But it has a great feel to it - you are always learning a little more about the characters off-stage.

There are a couple of things which I found annoying. The developers have introduced a fighting element to the game. It is totally unnecessary in my opinion. You're happily trying to solve a puzzle and then, without warning, there's a jump-scare and you have to point your gun at killer robots.

I get it. The Oculus store is populated with tons of these sorts of games because it feels very natural to point your hand at something and "shoot". I'm not a big fan of those games as they prioritise dexterity over imagination. It feels out of place to have a puzzler descend into "shoot-the-robots-before-they-shoot-you" territory. There's a setting to make combat easier, but it is still a chore.

There are one or two bugs. Try as I might, I couldn't adjust the walking speed - which meant it took a while to move around. A few graphical gliches caused objects to appear in the middle of the surfaces they were resting on. But over all it was a great experience.

Well, it was a short experience. Maybe I've been spoilt by all the multi-hour games you can get for a similar price. Puzzlers like the Broken Sword series are 5 - 8 hours long if you follow a walkthrough. I think Red Matter 2 took me under 5 hours for me to complete. Of course, the Meta Quest 2 needed to be charged 3 times while playing, so perhaps I ought to count that?

Anyway, Red Matter 2 is an excellent sequel.

You can get 25% off Red Matter 2 with my referral code

I have an Oculus Quest 2 and wanted to pay money for an in-app purchase. This seems like a normal thing to do.

There's no way to add a credit card while your head is strapped to an overheating Android device. So I emerged into meatspace opened the Oculus app on my phone and typed in my credit card details.

I went through the usual dance of getting a 2FA code from my card provider and was successfully authorised. Nice!

I jacked back in to the Metaverse and clicked the "BUY NOW" button.

This was the message that greeted me:

What - and I say this with all due respect to Facebook's Meta's employees - the actual fuck is this half-baked bullshit?

Why would you let a user add a credit card if you know that you can't accept card payments? Why not warn the user? Why not do five minutes of user testing? Why?!

Anyway, I took off the helmet, found my phone, and added PayPal. The transaction then went through... On to the same card that was just refused!

Look, I don't claim to know the intricacies of all the payment systems in the world. But this just shows an aggressively hostile attitude to usability.

Why would you make it so hard for your potential customers to give you money? Don't you like money?

We all know the Metaverse is a joke. It's just a way for companies to hype up whatever they're already doing. But do they have to make their contempt for users so obvious?

OK, that's a lie. It's a pretty good tech demo of what one vision of the future could look like. But it is making a little bit of my brain itch.

What Government services⁰ could / should be run in the Metaverse?

Obviously, the answer is "none". Sure, you could create a virtual job centre, housing office, or DMV - but would you want to sit in a virtual waiting room for a couple of hours waiting for your name to be called? No. Even if the room was designed to look like a spaceship and the staffs' avatars were funky robots, it would be a pointless experience.

Or would it? One of the worst things about waiting on hold on the phone is the inability to see how fast a queue is moving. Would you like to see a visual representation of how long you had to wait? Would it calm and reassure you if your case-worker looked like a friendly muppet rather than a disembodied voice?

(There's a side issue of whether VR headsets are likely to be owned by people going to a job centre. At the moment, a Quest 2 is about the same sort of price as a mid-tier smartphone - so the equipment isn't out of reach for all but the richest. Many people at the job centre were previously in employment and would have had enough disposable income to buy one.)

The other things which tickles my fancy is the idea of using humans' natural spatial awareness and memory. One of the great things about browsing the Web in the Metaverse is the ability to physically place screens around you. No more alt-tabbing. Twitter is a small screen by your feet, the news is a big screen up and to the left, and so on. It quickly becomes really convenient to remember where tabs are in 3D space, rather than a one-dimensional browser tab bar.

If you're applying for a Government service, and need to provide evidence, would it be helpful for you to have all your files laid out in front of you?

Remember, the youth of today don't understand how file systems work. So having a large visualisation of their documents may be just what they need in order to present their evidence.

People who have played the amazing game "Papers Please" will recognise just how difficult it is to organise lots of documents on a small screen.

Is this sensible?

We shouldn't be recreating offline experiences - turning unlimited potential into a janky skeuomorph. Otherwise you end up with this abomination:

Homo Digitalis

@DigitalisHomo

This is how Walmart envisions Shopping in the #Metaverse.

Thoughts? 💭 pic.x.com/5l7khobse7

---

(OK, that's a 2017 tech demo rather than a real product)

Queuing up to speak to an advisor or handing over documentation are probably the stupidest examples I could come up with.

But there's something there.

It's very easy to go from filling in a paper form to filling in a web form.

And it's easy to go from an in-person chat to a typed-chat or video-chat.

So what are the governmenty things which can go from "X" to "X-but-in-the-Metaverse"?

A few ideas

Here are a few random ideas which might lend themselves to a VR experience. Remember - I am not a VR expert, nor do I have the ability to put any of these ideas into practice.

• Does an inspector need to visit an abattoir, farm, or factory? Would it be easier to ship a robot to the location and have it controlled by inspectors in a remote location?

• How do you test whether people know how to perform an emergency drill? Running an exercise in a Nuclear power station is expensive - so strap everyone in to a headset and have them play in a Digital Twin.

• UK driving tests already have a video-based hazard perception test. Could the entire driving test take place in VR?

• If you are offered council housing, would you like to be able to view the property in VR before deciding if you wanted to move?

• Would hustings and other public discussions benefit from being in the Metaverse? A remote video call is good - but being able to collaboratively look over a 3D model of proposed designs for a new shopping centre might be helpful.

• Should a jury in a trial use the Metaverse to visualise where a suspect was found? Or to see a visualisation of a reconstruction of a crime scene?

Some (most?) of these ideas are ridiculous. Some could be commonplace in the future. The Metaverse might explode like the Web or collapse like MySpace. But I think it's a good idea for any organisation to play with new technology and explore ideas. You never know what the future will bring.

The current range of VR headsets have to be strapped tight to your face. In order to prevent your eyes going out of alignment with the lenses or the focus suddenly changing, the mask clings tight to your face. Sure, it has a foam/rubber seal to soften the pain, but it can still be pretty uncomfortable.

Take a look at most promo photos of models wearing a VR headset - their mouths are open in delight and surprise, but they're rarely smiling.

Here's 100% human Mark Zuckberg showing off the next generation of headset. He's smiling, but look at how his dimples are squashed

It doesn't look comfortable, does it?

Perhaps I just have an oddly-shaped face and I ought to get cheek reduction surgery? Or plenty of Botox? I'm sure Mark's perfectly smooth and motionless face is the target demographic for these face-clamps. The technology will mature until it's no more uncomfortable than wearing a pairs of specs. But, for now, it is physically limiting in all sorts of weird ways.

It is a tantalising glimpse of a future which isn't quite here yet. I dislike Facebook's Meta's vision of the Metaverse - but the tech is undoubtedly fun when it works.

I remember using VR way back in the 1990s. When on holiday, games arcades often had a VR helmet. I wasted all my pocket money on virtual tanks, creeping through virtual dungeons, and generally feeling virtually claustrophobic.

A few years ago I tinkered around with Google Cardboard. Finally! VR was cheap and available to the masses! Just flip your phone on the side and off you go.

Sadly, the world didn't bite. VR still suffers from the same two problem that it always has. First, no one has enough space. This was a problem which the Xbox Kinect faced in the UK / EU. Our living spaces are generally a lot smaller than those in the USA - and the Kinect just couldn't cope. If you took a step forward from your couch, it lost sight of you.

VR has the same problem. You need a large amount of dedicated floorspace, and no cats, kids, or clutter to bash into. Otherwise you're just sat on your arse on a spinning chair.

The second problem is that VR is fundamentally alienating for everyone else in the room with you. If you're playing a console game, your friends or family can watch what you're doing. If you're strapped into VR, you're like a junkie in the corner giggling away at sprites only you can see.

This is why Facebook Meta are heavily pushing the idea that the Metaverse is a place to socialise. Because otherwise you're just a lonely git ignoring everyone around you.

Anyway, I bought a 2nd hand Meta Quest 2 from a kid who was bored of using it. It's partly for my MSc, and partly so I can see what the fuss is all about.

I'm a sceptic and a grumpy old fart - so adjust your expectations accordingly.

First Impressions

The Quest uses USB-C to recharge! Hurrah! I feared I'd need a proprietary Zuckercable - but it came with USB and plug. Except... the Quest controllers are not rechargeable!

This seems bonkers to me - especially as you can buy AA batteries which recharge via USB-C

It also demands a mobile phone be paired with it. There's no indication of why. If you don't have a phone, you're out of luck. There's no way to even demo the unit without a companion app. Again, a needlessly user-hostile action. Luckily, there's a workaround to log in with a developer account.

Once in, and after the requisite multi-gigabyte updates, it's a pretty good experience.

Play Time

The tutorial app is pretty fun. Dancing with a robot, throwing paper planes, shooting laser beams. It's nifty - but hardly revolutionary. Holding a gun in VR looks cool, but fundamentally isn't any different from Nintendo's Duck Hunt from 1984. The grab-and-manipulate mechanic is similar to the Nintendo Wii.

The brightly coloured graphics make everything pop - but hide the fact that things are generally low-resolution in order to keep things running smoothly.

The interface is adequately intuitive. It does a reasonable job of guiding you through the set-up. Everything is cartoony and playful. If you slip in to pass-through mode (where you can see the real world) the cameras show you a fuzzy & greyed-out picture - almost as if to emphasise how dull the ordinary world is compared to the Metaverse.

I was impressed at how well it let me define the safe space around my body, and it did an excellent job of preventing me from walking into walls. No mean feat given how clumsy I am.

The app store looked neat - but there didn't seem to be an easy way to filter for free games. And while Beat Sabre and Darth Vader™ look like fun, I'm unwilling to plonk down £30 without a free demo. Given the expense of the hardware, the need to keep people hooked, and the novelty of the medium it feels like a weird misstep. I'm sure there are some cool free experiences, but the Quest doesn't make them easy to find.

After an hour or so of playing, it whined about needing more power. So I returned to the mundane world.

Through A Glass Darkly

The original problems with VR are all still there. Getting interpupillary distance correct is a bit of trial and error. I was expecting to be able to adjust the distance between lenses while wearing the headset. Instead you have to remove the headset and manually adjust. That makes it difficult to share the headset with friends.

Adjusting the tightness of the headset is a bit tricky. It's a loop of fabric which is impossible to adjust while you're wearing the headset. Unless the headset is really tight, the picture quickly becomes blurry. But when the picture is clear, it's pretty pixelated. It's a lose-lose situation. Reading text is just about OK, but gets tiresome quickly as your eyes struggle to focus.

And, if the strap is too tight, it's painful and sweaty.

Peripheral vision is limited. Without a radical change in screen shape, there's not much can be done about that.

The sound is compellingly good. Even without headphones. There's great directionality. Although, it does stutter now and again.

Hand tracking is weirdly accurate. The hand controllers do a reasonable job of mapping your finger movements. Picking up objects and interacting with them is intense. So much so that I tried to put down an object on a virtual table and nearly dropped the controller on the floor! Thank heaven for wrist straps!

And then the tracking gets confused and your hand isn't where you expect it to be. Your proprioception goes out of whack and the illusion breaks.

That's where the problem lies. The key thing about VR is that when you're in, you're in! But it only takes a dropped frame, skipped audio, or glitchy bit of tracking to drag you out of the illusion.

Verdict

I got a 2nd hand Quest on the cheap. I'd have been pretty narked if I'd paid full price for this sub-par experience. I've only played it for an hour, so I doubt I've experienced the full range of wonder. But it's a slow and choppy start. I can see the potential, but have yet to experience anything compelling. It's a bit like playing Night Trap on the Sega MegaCD - yes, this is what the future of interactive movies could look like. But, no, it's not likely to grab mainstream attention.

In a world of 4K consoles delivering cinematic quality visuals, the Quest's graphics looks like an N64 in comparison.

The tech is tantalisingly close. The experience is reasonable fun - if you're happy with a heavy, battery hungry, face-hugger strapped to you.

VR is like cold-fusion. It's going to be amazing next year. Next year the glasses will be smaller. Next year the graphics will be better. Next year the battery will last longer. Next year the hand tracking will be more accurate. Next year... Next year... Next year...

Sadly, I don't have a Virtual Reality system - feel free to buy me one! - but I have the next best thing. A web browser!

Demo!

Using the awesome power of A-Frame, here's a demo of how to view a conversation object as AR.

Play!

You can play with it yourself at TweeView.ml/ar. You will need to download this AR target image.

It works best printed onto matt white paper, then mounted on card. I had to print it twice on the same piece of paper to get the required blackness.

Build!

This is built on several bits of open source tech.

The first part is A-Frame and AR.js

<script src="https://aframe.io/releases/1.0.0/aframe.min.js" integrity="sha384-mAWNMpx7UQMegsgs1X2mE9wVl/svgdzdy4qpXNFgAxUmc8a1ToRWVWl3tzfDinBb" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/ar.js/aframe/build/aframe-ar.min.js" integrity="sha384-vLi7A1RlJjrEmCqF2DrdIT9cLqHdV/7GbmsqfniwwtfLRQlP1lXi/Tk199ZCLU5p" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

Next is ForceGraph AR

<script src="https://unpkg.com/3d-force-graph-ar" integrity="sha384-ERqZX7SBS3fH2SL04csG8OB9QyOF2LtDsZtRrJZR46WipKv7LqplBgM/GoFPjyfQ" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

I recommend copying them to your local server rather than relying on a CDN.

The <body> of your HTML page needs a target the AR window can attach to:

<div id="3d-graph"></div>

Construct the graph which will be displayed in the browser:

<script>
   const Graph = ForceGraphAR({ markerAttrs: { type:'pattern', url:'/path/to/pattern.patt' }})
      (document.getElementById('3d-graph'))
         .jsonUrl('/path/to/graph.json')
         .glScale(160)
         .yOffset(1)
         .nodeRelSize(10)
         .nodeOpacity(0.9)
         .linkOpacity(0.9)
         .nodeColor(0x0000ff)
         .linkOpacity(1)
         .linkCurvature(0)
         .linkWidth(2)
         .linkDirectionalArrowLength(6)
         .linkDirectionalArrowColor(0x00ff00)
         .linkColor(() => 'red');
</script>

In order to generate a "target" (that's the physical object that is being tracked) use the AR.js Marker Generator. That will deliver you two things.

1. A .patt file. This is a digital representation of the pattern.
2. A .png or .pdf file. This is the thing you print off and show in front of your camera.

Finally, you'll need a graph object in JSON format to pass to ForceGraphAR.

You'll then end up with something like this:

Ruben Casas 🦊

@Infoxicador

Attending my first in person event since the pandemic.

#TapIntoTwitter hosted by @gerardsans and @coderinheels

Nothing better than a cool live demo.

🤯 pic.x.com/qw1ifom7fh

---

Grab the code

All of this is available as open source on my GitHub repo.

Enjoy!

There are some areas which it does impress though.

Scale.

Half-a-dozen years ago - during one of VR's periodic hype-phases - an employer asked me and my team to "do something interesting" with all the expensive VR kit they'd bought on a whim.

We looked at virtual store walkthroughs, simulating the view from a theatre seat, or a view of the country from above overlaid with shiny graphics. None really sparked the imagination.

Then, we had the genius idea of graphs.

Yup! Bar charts!

The tyranny of the A4 print out can't be overstated. Every graph is reduced to the same size. Differences are erased. The massive disparity between columns are squished down. Even a 65 inch, 4K TV doesn't really show scale.

But VR does!

We tried a few different things - riding roller coasters over the data, sky diving through the numbers, even rendering the data as monsters and shooting them with lasers.

But, in the end, the thing that impressed was scale.

Here's a quick demo I knocked up in A-Frame. (I don't have the original data or hoards of graphic designers to make things look halfway decent. Nor a copy of Unity. Just fill in with your imagination.)

It's a pretty OK way to visualise the data. Imagine some labels and axis on there - you can see how wandering around it would give you a sense of the data.

"Now," you tell your CEO, "gaze upwards..."

Whoa! From playing around with small numbers to suddenly being confronted by the overwhelming power of a giant number.

Look, is this the best way to visualise data? No! Probably not. Is it a good way to visualise data? Also no!

But it is good at preventing a certain class of problem when viewing data:

Most of the time, statistical graphs are static. Occasionally, they're animated. But when you need to impress on someone the magnitude of a number - sometimes VR is the answer.

It looks a little like a Microsoft Kinect - a single bar with two embedded cameras. The camera resolution is 720p on each lens.

It clips on easily to a phone via a padded screw clamp. You need to install a dedicate 3D camera app in order to make it work. In the box you get the camera, two USB-OTG cables, a tripod and clamp, and a carrying pouch.

Let's take it for a spin!

Sample shots

Video

As you can see, the 3D effect is prominent.

Video quality is 2560x720. Framerate is variable depending on how fast your phone is. My Nexus 6 managed just 16fps, my S6 got to the slightly better 25fps.

Because the cameras are independent, their exposure and white balance aren't linked. This also means that occasionally one camera may drop a frame or exhibit tearing - while the other side remains unaffected.

The cameras work best in bright light. Too much motion and the JPEG encoding can't keep up. You can stream raw YUYV video off the device - but you need to either lower the framerate or resolution if you want the USB bandwidth to be sufficient.

Audio is aac, 44100 Hz, mono, fltp, 67 kb/s You don't get stereo sound, which is a little bit of a disappointment. There are no microphones in the unit - audio comes from your phone's mic. I've removed the audio from the above videos

3D metadata isn't embedded - this is needed for sites like YouTube to recognise them as 3D videos.

TV Playback

I uploaded a sample video to YouTube - which has native 3D support. I was able to stream the video to my smart TV and watch it using 3D glasses.

Photo

The Svpro app doesn't let you take photos! A bizarre omission. I cheated and used the phone's screenshot tool to capture these. Click for full size.

App

Android doesn't natively support external cameras - so you need to download the Svpro app. It's basic - you can record video and play video. That's it!

No photo capabilities, no resolution or quality settings, no framerate control, no video editing or upload to YouTube.

Worse, the app in the Google Play Store doesn't support Android 7.0 - you need to download it directly from http://www.svpro.cc/app/.

I found that the app would not keep the screen on while I was recording. You may need to adjust your phone's display settings if you want to keep the screen active.

On the positive side, it doesn't ask for crazy permissions - although you will need to grant it USB access.

There are other apps on the play store which you can use, which show how good the Svpro app could be. For example, this is USB Dual Camera:

That's not a perfect app, but it gives you an idea of the potential.

The Svpro app also seems quite slow - which sometimes leads to disappointing video results.

Raspberry Pi Linux support

Although this camera isn't advertised as working on Linux, it is a USB camera - and it works brilliantly!

Running lsusb gives us:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0ac8:9902 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp.
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0ac8:9901 Z-Star Microelectronics Corp.

So this is a USB hub with two cameras attached to it! It shows up as /dev/video0 and /dev/video1 - and both cameras work perfectly!

It supports YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV) and MJPG for video capture and, pleasingly, each camera is 1280*720 native. No interpolation!

The Raspberry Pi website has a quick tutorial on capturing images.

You can capture the MJPG directly from the camera. This is the quickest and most efficient way to get 25fps video out of the device - although the filesize is rather large (5MB per second).

avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video0 -t 00:00:05 -c:v copy output.mkv

That will only capture from one of the twin cameras. How do we get both? Here's a lazy way to capture dual USB cameras simultaneously.

avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video0 -t 00:00:05 -c:v copy outputL.mkv & avconv -f video4linux2 -input_format mjpeg -i /dev/video1 -t 00:00:05 -c:v copy outputR.mkv

That worked on my Pi 2 Model B - I'll write a blog post soon explaining other ways to do this.

Technology

At the start of the decade, my mate Ket was building his own 3D cameras. Literally two cameras wired together and mounted next to each other.

It's incredible to think how quickly technology has progressed. For £65 you get a lightweight (50g) and tiny (92mm * 20mm * 20mm) camera pairing. The distance between the cameras is almost identical to the distance between my pupils. The view angle on each lens is 100°. Perfect for stereoscopic viewing.

But pushing all that video over a USB cable is tough. A more practical design may be to place the video processing within the unit - rather than relying on the USB bandwidth and phone speed being sufficient.

Downsides

There are a few little niggles with the Svpro.

• For phones, it is Android only. At the moment the USB OTG functionality only works with Android. So you iPhone users are out of luck.
• Dedicated Android app needed. An app like this needs to be polished, professional, and a joy to use. It isn't.
• 720p is fine for a cheap camera - and matches the resolution of most 3D displays - but a bigger resolution would be welcome.
• Framerate should be higher - although this is partially a limitation of the speed of the USB transfer and of your phone.
• No binaural sound. Audio is recorded from your phone's microphone, so there's no stereo effect.

Those are minor problems. The only other issue I found was that on some devices, it would capture BGR video - the red and blue channels swapped around. Which gave this weird effect: No idea why - I reported it to Svpro and they're looking into it.

To correct it using Linux requires ffmpeg's filter colorchannelmixer

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf colorchannelmixer=rr=0:rb=1:br=1:bb=0 -acodec copy out.mp4

Recording from the Pi didn't exhibit these problems.

Buy it

If you want to get started with a 3D VR Camera - for playback on a Google Cardboard or other VR headset - this is a pretty good device. The app is basic, but the video quality is satisfactory if your phone is fast enough. The 3D effect is perfect. It's also a handy way to add stereo-vision to a Raspberry Pi robotics project.

• The 3D camera is available on Amazon UK for £65.
• You can also get it direct from the manufacturer for around $80.

Using the headset, I was able to take a virtual tour of a Unicef aid drop. As with all 360 experiences, it takes a little getting used to - but then it is fully immersive. A minute-long video clip is more persuasive than a bit of patter from a charity worker.

The kit being used is a BoboVR - which claims to be the "most cost effective VR glasses in China".

You can buy one for around £30 - no doubt cheaper in bulk. The phone inside looked like a Samsung Galaxy S6 or similar. I only got a brief look - it may have been a cheaper generic handset.

Unicef have been trialling this technology under their "Virtuous Reality" programme. You can get a sense of what they're trying to do from their promo videos

You can view several of the videos at Unicef360.com - there's an app for Android and iPhone, or you can watch in your browser.

Criticisms

As my friend Tony points out, asking people to experience VR on a crowded London street isn't necessarily a sensible idea.

I disliked it, they wanted me to stick on something in a crowded street that would stop me from seeing around me. No thanks. Tony Osbourn - 23 Feb 2017

Could someone have stolen my wallet, or assaulted me while I was "blind"? Probably. That's a risk I was comfortable with - others may not be.

Do people know enough about 360 video to want to experiment with it in public? I didn't see anyone other than myself using it.

Is it calibrated right? VR video usually needs to be focussed for an individual's eyesight preferences. A blurry video is worse than no video at all.

Data speeds even in central London can be slow. It took a few minutes for the VR experience to load fully. Time that the chugger used to great advantage to tell me about the important work Unicef are doing.

Battery life is still an issue. Even modern phones with large batteries will only last for a few hours of VR video.

But, all that said, it is a fascinating way to encourage charitable giving. In the UK, charities hungrily devoured mobile campaigning - both in terms of marketing and donations via Premium SMS. VR seems like the next logical step.

Donate

If you can, please donate to Unicef https://www.unicef.org.uk/donate/