Designer creates interactive VR version of his apartment

A designer has recreated his apartment in Unity, allowing him to walk through his virtual apartment in real time. He has made certain furniture, such as his piano, dining table and living room chair, interactive and made a kind of AR variant for VR glasses.

Augmented reality is one such technique that seems to come straight out of a sci-fi movie. A kind of digital layer over reality, which gives an extra dimension to what we see. When you see an empty table in front of you, you can ‘project’ a map onto it with your AR glasses, for example. Or that you see the sheet music on an otherwise empty wall when you sit down at your piano. For most people, it’s still a dream, especially since AR glasses aren’t widely available yet.

However, designer Greg Madison has transformed that ar dream into one that works with VR glasses. He has modeled his apartment in SketchUp and made a VR version of it via Unity. This allows him to walk through his apartment in real time, while digitally moving along. So when Madison takes his seat in the ‘digital world’, he does so in the real world. The aforementioned piano and card examples also work in its VR version. Strictly speaking, of course, it is not an AR, but rather a virtual augmented reality.

To Kotaku, Madison says it’s a “fantastic” experience. His ‘virtual’ apartment was not just for fun, but he also wants to use it as a test balloon to test some ideas he has. Examples of this are the ‘virtual television’ that he can call up when he sits down in his living room chair.

According to the designer, it took more than 22 hours to virtualize his apartment. He was mainly busy measuring his house, to achieve an accuracy of 2mm. The glasses used are an Oculus Quest.