See an entire apartment recreated one-to-one in VR

Part of what's interesting about virtual reality is its ability to put you in the kind of bizarre spaces M.C. Escher would look at and say, "That's a bit much." But it's also cool to see ordinary places recreated with fidelity, especially when you can then walk through that space with a VR headset on as Greg Madison does with a wireless Oculus Quest after mapping his apartment in VR.

It's not just a pointless demonstration of what's possible, however. Sure, it would be nice to be able to reach out and touch walls and furniture in VR and feel actual objects, but the point of Madison's exercise is to demonstrate the ability to turn those surfaces into interactive touchscreens for different apps.

As you can see in his video, he turns the table into an interactive Google Map then sits down on a chair, presses some virtual buttons on the armrest, and summons a screen he can watch YouTube on. There's even a virtual display of sheet music over his keyboard, and a TV projected onto his TV if you want to get really meta.

As Madison explains in the comments, he spent 22 hours using SketchUp as the main tool for mapping his apartment, getting it within two millimetres of the actual measurements, then imported it into Unity. The end result turns his home into a sci-fi workroom where he can summon apps with a wave of his hand.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.