XR soccer: Developer experiments with Meta’s new Mixed Reality API
A developer is putting Meta’s recently released Passthrough Camera API to the test, building a mixed reality soccer app that tracks a real ball in virtual space.
A developer recently shared their first experiments with Meta’s new Camera API on Reddit. The project: a mixed reality app for soccer drills, using object recognition and tracking to bring a physical ball into the virtual world.
A short demo video shows how it works. Digital targets are projected onto a real wall; when the developer kicks a real soccer ball and hits one, the target collapses virtually to the floor.
The demo highlights how the Meta Quest 3’s camera system can bridge physical and digital play — recognizing real-world objects (in this case, a soccer ball) and integrating them seamlessly into XR experiences.
Source: emulo2 on Reddit
Meta’s Passthrough Camera API: Expanding the Mixed Reality Toolkit
The app is built using the newly released Passthrough Camera API (PCA), which arrived with version 74.0 of the Meta XR Core SDK. PCA gives developers direct access to the Quest headset’s front-facing RGB cameras, unlocking more advanced mixed reality capabilities.
Meta says the new API is designed to boost the quality of mixed reality apps, enabling features like object recognition — precisely what the Reddit developer’s soccer demo showcases.
According to Meta, the new API is intended to improve the quality of mixed reality applications and allow developers to implement features such as object recognition. This is exactly what the Reddit user is doing for his soccer application.
After a short period of experimentation, Meta fully released the Camera Passthrough API last week. Since then, developers have been able to publish their applications in the official Horizon Store. In addition to the soccer experiment described above, full-blown features such as the 3D camera feature developed by immerGallery for Quest 3 have already been released.
Currently, PCA is supported only on Meta Quest 3 and 3S. Each camera can deliver 30 frames per second at up to 1,280 × 960 pixels. However, with latency between 40 and 60 milliseconds, tracking fast-moving objects or fine details could still be tricky.
What do you think of this little soccer experiment? Could you imagine an XR app based on it? Join the conversation on Facebook, Bluesky or X or share your opinion in the comments below.
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