vSpatial Review

vSpatial is an application for the Oculus Quest that allows the user to design room-scale spaces. It is very similar to Google Maps “My Maps” feature, where you can map out your own custom terrain using Google’s drawing tools. However, unlike My Maps, vSpatial isn’t limited to flat surfaces – instead of just mapping a two-dimensional plane on the ground, vSpatial maps out three-dimensional rooms and environments.

The walls of this building are mapped in blue with vSpatial

As an example of how useful this could be for people who want to experiment with different designs for their living space or even stage miniature scenes (like designing a home cinema set up), let’s say I wanted to make myself a little office space. Using vSpatial, I could do just that in minutes by drawing the floor plan of an actual room and then adding in my desired objects; shelves, chairs, tables – anything with dimensions I want to set myself.

Once you’ve designed your room (or rooms) using vSpatial’s simple tools, what do you do next? Thankfully, Oculus has my back here too! The Quest can be “hacked” into supporting third party applications like vSpatial via sideloading, which means that if everything goes smoothly then it should be possible to use vSpatial with the Quest without even needing a computer! This is great because it means that when you’re done designing your space(s), all you need to do is transfer the files to your Quest and test them out.

A logo from vSpatial being viewed on a screen in VR

Some potential uses of a room-scale tool like this could be: – Designing a new home cinema set up, altering it at any time without having to install anything (other than transferring the 3D models themselves). – Creating an engaging way to display interactive art installations, like Oculus’ Tilt Brush application, with multiple users navigating their own individual 3D canvases all within one space. – Creation of immersive role-play spaces; think designing your living space in vSpatial and saving it under your username for you and your friends (if they have Quests too) to go into via Facebookor Oculus friends lists. – Virtual walk-throughs of your own home, which you could record and share with others to show them the ins and outs of your own personal space in VR!

The possibilities are endless, but I’m going to use it for my home cinema set up at first. I’ll be sure to post a video about if/how well this works out next week so keep an eye on my feed!

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