Like Doctor Strange: This is how metaverse portals should work
In the metaverse, there will be no more apps. Instead, you'll switch between rooms. A VR developer shows what that could look like.
Quentin Valembois runs a YouTube channel where you can learn the basics of VR development. Besides tutorials, he also publishes exciting VR experiments here and there, such as the latest one.
Valembois wanted to feel like Marvel superhero Doctor Strange and recreated a portal in augmented reality for Meta Quest 2, which you open in style by making circular hand movements. The result is impressive and also gives an idea of how you might switch between Metaverse apps in the future.
A magical gateway to another world
In his latest YouTube video, the VR tinkerer explains how he created the portal. The first step was to design a simple target environment. In this case, a green landscape with trees and rocks.
Then Valembois designed an impressive portal that sparks fiery sparks, just like in the movies. A special shader makes the landscape look like it's actually beyond a portal.
The developer then brought the magical portal into physical space via augmented reality. For this, Valembois uses the Meta Quest 2's passthrough mode, and for the circular hand movements that open the portal, he relies on the Quest 2's hand tracking.
Metaverse portals: Great vision, difficult implementation
The idea itself isn't new, but it's excellently implemented and can soon be tried out in your own four walls: Valembois plans to release a demo for Meta Quest 2 soon.
The portal concept also makes you think about the user interface of the Metaverse. Nowadays, you still launch VR and AR apps like any other program by clicking on colorful icons. This norm emerged with the first graphical user interfaces in the 1970s.
Since virtual and augmented reality are spatial media, this old paradigm may be replaced in the next few years by a new one that better suits the technology.
Meta itself has a vision of fluid spatial switching between apps, according to a video leak from last year (see above). The question is how this will be implemented technically. It might require an entirely new program architecture.
If you want to support Valembois' work, you can do so via Patreon. This will unlock all his tutorials and you can learn how to create such a portal yourself. Below you can find the full Youtube video. As soon as the demo is released, I will update this article.
Read more about Augmented Reality:
- Augmented Reality: Hardware and Definitions
- AR contact lens: This is the new Mojo Lens prototype
- Smartphone AR: Hey, this is really useful!
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