Developers interested in experimenting with mixed reality on Oculus Quest 2 can now use RoomMapper with Unity to explore designs mapped to your physical surroundings.
Developer Bob Berkebile just released RoomMapper for free and Unity developers can use it with Oculus Quest 2 as a $299 standalone AR and VR development kit with software that’s given “an extremely optimized model of the room.” Berkebile recognizes Facebook will likely make the “solution obsolete with their advancements to public access of Passthrough,” but the RoomMapper solution may help people explore mixed reality concepts and get started now with AR applications on Quest 2 that incorporate more about a physical environment. Videos Berkebile posted on Twitter have been shared widely showing virtual zombies moving down a physical hallway, or seeing things in the mirror which aren’t actually there.
Berkebile shared the following walkthrough video giving an overview of how the mapping system works, and the second half of the video really shows off how it can offer a kind of mixed reality playground.
“I immediately noticed that the experimental access to the passthrough composition on Quest 2 is extremely barebones; Oculus is taking this path carefully and I appreciate that,” Berkebile wrote to UploadVR. “I wanted to accelerate the communities’ ability by brining a solution for environmental mapping to them now. The solution presents a solid UX flow that walks a user through the necessary steps to measure, map, and align an extremely optimized model of the room. From there colliders are added, materials can be swapped, and suddenly your room has physicality within the AR/MR that the passthrough solution offers.”
Getting spooky good results with physical wall occlusions in my room mapper solution for #Quest2 passthrough #XR #VR #MR #AugmentedReality #Oculus pic.twitter.com/pv8MllTsXM
— Bob Berkebile (@pixelplacement) October 16, 2021
Facebook is due to announce updates for its AR and VR technologies on October 28 with a keynote from Mark Zuckerberg and more planned throughout the day.
