With Arkio on the Meta Quest, you can use passthrough mode to mix realities. You can toggle passthrough mode on to see your Arkio worktable in your real surroundings
Passthrough is black and white on Quest 1 and 2 while the Quest Pro and Quest 3 features color passthrough to blend the real and virtual worlds. You can design, pan and scale the model just like you normally do in VR mode. You can also lock the model's position in your physical environment using the toggle on the wristband. This will be your default model position when you teleport back to god scale.
Toggle between Virtual and Mixed Reality
Arkio starts in Mixed Reality on Quest 3 and Quest Pro as these devices offer a better MR experience. Any time you are in Arkio at god/model scale (1:1000-1:2) you can toggle back to VR using the Passthrough toggle in the secondary bracelet. This will switch your default mode for that Arkio session to always be in VR instead of MR when you teleport back to god scale from the ground.
When you scale yourself beyond the 1:10 scale the green worktable will disappear. This allows you to work on your interiors and architecture scale projects and prevents the ground surface from blocking your real surroundings.
If you scale yourself beyond 1:2 in Arkio (or teleport down on the ground) you will enter human scale mode which switches you back to VR for full immersion in your design. In human scale mode, you can still toggle to Mixed Reality to map your real environment with Arkio geometry or place furniture in your surroundings at human scale. Switching your default mode in human scale will always put you in MR mode when you teleport in your design until you restart Arkio but you can always switch back to default VR mode using the same toggle.
Boundaryless mode
You can move around freely in Arkio whether you’re working in fully immersive VR mode or using passthrough without worrying about your Quest's boundary limitation. Once you start to move, Arkio fades the real world so you can see where you’re going, Arkio fades back to the virtual geometry when you slow down.
This blending of real and virtual geometry allows you to walk around your real environment without restrictions or the size of your boundary. and prevents you from walking into objects or other people.
The blending transition depends on the speed at which you move and your active VR/MR mode (in VR mode you have to move more than ~0,2 meters, and in MR mode you can move ~0,4 meters before we blend in reality)
Aligning and locking the scene to your environment
When you use the lock button on your bracelet you lock the scene's position to your current environment. This allows you to place the model in god scale on a surface like a table but you can also use it to align and lock your scene to your environment in human scale. These locks are shown in the Arkio scene as green cylinders updating to your human scale position while walking around. You can teleport inside these human-scale locks in your scene and learn more about locks on this page.
Colocated Mixed Reality
Mixing realities
You can use the passthrough toggle on your wristband to show your real environment in both god and human scale. Things can get confusing when mixing realities but you can always turn off passthrough mode and jump back to god scale to get a better view of your project. The key to mixing realities is using the passthrough material and other materials to blend your real and virtual worlds.
I can bring existing objects from my home into my virtual world by making a passthrough shape around them. If faces around this shape are painted with other materials I can also erase parts of this real object by editing or removing the passthrough shape.
Passthrough material
Other materials mask the real world, while the passthrough material reveals the real world on that location. You can use passthrough material to create magic portals between your real and virtual worlds. Portals can be created by importing your room or modeling walls, floors or ceilings with passthrough material and turning passthrough mode off.
This will hide the white outlines but will keep showing reality on the shapes painted with the passthrough material. Cutting a hole into these passthrough shapes will now show the virtual Arkio scene and sky on the other side of the wall. I can model something behind this wall in Arkio like my kitchen, place props or even import 3D models like this Lidar scan that was exported from a 3rd party scanning app to Arkio. You can also make virtual portals into existing Arkio creations by modeling elements with the passthrough material anywhere in your scene.
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Good stuff. 👍
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