Meta Quest 3 - xr.bbcmic.ro

[8bitkick]

Hi

A free virtual reality + mixed reality sim of the BBC Micro built into a webpage is available at https://xr.bbcmic.ro. On a Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro you should be able to load the page in the browser and enter full immersion mode. The game keys get mapped to the quest controllers so it's quite nice playing games now. Hand tracking also works, if you want to type on the VR keyboard and hear the beeb keyboard clacking back at you.

This has been in the works for a while, on and off, a total rewrite of the original (desktop targeted) virtual.bbcmic.ro was needed to hit performance target for VR! That's a whole article for another day.

Let me know how you go.

Dom

[MarkMoxon]

A free virtual reality + mixed reality sim of the BBC Micro built into a webpage is available at https://xr.bbcmic.ro. On a Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro you should be able to load the page in the browser and enter full immersion mode.

I have an original Oculus Rift, which is so old that it hasn't been officially supported for ages... and this works amazingly well! I have just been sitting in front of a fully working Beeb, surrounded by the sunset background and 3D shapes from the original BBC Micro literature, and I have to say it's retro-futurism at its absolute finest.

There is one glitch - the games menu doesn't work on the Rift at this point, which is not that surprising given the age of my hardware - but the Beeb itself is beautifully rendered and is amazingly lifelike, and the whole thing is seriously immersive.

If you have a VR set, give this a whirl! It's great.

(In case it's useful, I can get this working by firing up the Oculus app on my PC, then running Steam VR and opening the URL in Chrome. I then put on the Rift, which shows the Steam VR home, and bring up the Windows desktop by tapping the menu button and clicking on the Desktop icon. This shows the webpage in Chrome, and clicking on the "Start XR" button at the bottom of the page starts the XR experience. I had to grab the Beeb and move it in front of me, as it started in the wrong place, but I suspect this is down to my home spot being all over the place, as I have to do this with pretty much everything in VR...)

Edit: I just realised it's possible to choose a game in desktop Chrome before jumping into the VR part, so having no menu is not a big problem. I have now played Elite in VR on a Beeb. That is so cool! Hat-tip to you Dom, this is really great.

Mark

[8bitkick]

Thanks Mark - glad you got it working with the older headset! Nothing beats an actual BBC Micro, but this gets somewhere close!

I'm hoping this project carries the good word of the BBC Micro to a whole new audience of Meta Quest / Apple Vision Pro users

[anightin]

Looks awesome Dom, a great way of preserving history for old and young alike.

Wondering if it could emulate the Domesday system?

Could this even become a framework to preserve other treasures? A VR skin for MiSTer?

Andy

[8bitkick]

Thanks Andy! With an accurate 3D model and an emulator, you're a good part of the way there. I used JSBeeb under-the-hood of this simulation - so the whole app is a webpage and everything is running in a browser, which I love for the speed of development + and 'no-installs' user experience - but means it wouldn't support as high a fidelity graphics as a simulation built in Unreal Engine, for example. A middle ground might be compiling a C++ emu to WebAssembly.

Making this a generalizable framework is a nice idea...

[8bitkick]

Hi

A free virtual reality + mixed reality sim of the BBC Micro built into a webpage is available at https://xr.bbcmic.ro. On a Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro you should be able to load the page in the browser and enter full immersion mode. The game keys get mapped to the quest controllers so it's quite nice playing games now. Hand tracking also works, if you want to type on the VR keyboard and hear the beeb keyboard clacking back at you.

This has been in the works for a while, on and off, a total rewrite of the original (desktop targeted) virtual.bbcmic.ro was needed to hit performance target for VR! That's a whole article for another day.

Let me know how you go.

Dom

I've written a blog about the making of XR Beeb if you're curious:

https://www.dompajak.com/blog/webxr-bee ... index.html