A new SideQuest prototype from Realities.io turns 3D models captured with photogrammetry into puzzles you can put together in VR.
Puzzling Places is a “very early” prototype concept for an Oculus Quest puzzle game that sees the player putting together 3D models made from captures of real places. The prototype was put together over the last several weeks in social isolation by the folks at Realities.io, a company which made the technology used for The Key and other VR projects. It only features one puzzle at the time of this writing because the creators wanted to release it quickly to get feedback on the concept. The included puzzle is described as fairly difficult with 98 pieces of the Tatev Monastery in Armenia, so if you’re looking for a VR alternative to real life puzzling this looks like an intriguing concept.
“We’ve had the idea of Puzzling Places floating around our heads for a while. One day, due to a Unity import error, the pieces of a scanned environment were scrambled around the scene. Someone made a joke that fixing this by hand would like making a 3D jigsaw puzzle, and so the idea was born,” Realitis.io photogrammetry expert Azad Balabanian wrote in a prepared statement. “When the Coronavirus Crisis travel restrictions forced us to postpone some of our planned scanning projects, the lockdown forcing us to work from home, and physical jigsaw puzzles selling out everywhere, we decided to make the best out of the situation.”
Check out the trailer below:
The game also includes audio recorded on location and the ability to “force pull” puzzle pieces toward you with the promise of more features to come.
You can download the Puzzling Places prototype free for Oculus Quest now from SideQuest. If you’re unfamiliar with sideloading content onto the Oculus Quest standalone we put together a guide that walks you through all the steps involved.
