New Benchmark for Mixed Reality: Tried "Laser Dance" on Meta Quest 3
"Laser Dance" demonstrates the progress of mixed reality on Meta Quest 3. We crossed the laser barriers and spoke with the developer.
A typical game situation in "Laser Dance".
(Image: Thomas Van Bouwel)
Brussels architect Thomas Van Bouwel traded blueprints for headsets and now develops innovative games for Meta Quest full-time. His 3D puzzle game "Cubism" is considered a flagship title for the system due to its timelessly beautiful and accessible design.
Van Bouwel also demonstrated great talent on a technical level: he integrated new Quest features such as mixed reality and hand tracking into his game early on, showing what the headset is capable of. With his new title "Laser Dance", he remains true to this pioneering spirit and once again pushes the boundaries of what is technically feasible.
"Laser Dance" transforms your own living room into a laser obstacle course reminiscent of heist and spy movies. The laser patterns, some static and some moving, dynamically adapt to the size and layout of your own premises. Players dance between two buttons at opposite ends of the room with full body engagement through a network of laser beams: sometimes ducking, sometimes crawling, sometimes maneuvering upright through narrow light slits.
"Laser Dance" will be released on November 6th in Early Access for Meta Quest 3 and 3S. We ventured into the laser dance in two differently sized rooms with Meta Quest 3.
Adaptive Mixed Reality: From the Living Room to the Laser Course
Before you start, the play area needs to be scanned. The more completely the environment is captured, the better the game understands the spatial conditions. This way, laser beams will later realistically bounce off walls and objects, and furniture can serve as cover.
After placing two buttons on opposite walls of the room, the approximate path of the obstacle course is determined. In the Early Access version, 18 levels with over 80 different patterns await players. Every six levels, the laser repertoire expands, and with it, the challenge: from static to moving beams, and even those that jump rapidly through the room.
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"Laser Dance" is a physically unexpectedly demanding, even sweat-inducing affair. Fortunately, the levels provide variety in rhythm and difficulty: sometimes it's about agility, sometimes about skill, and sometimes about studying movement patterns. Occasionally you win through patience and careful planning, then again through quick reactions and nimble feet. For less flexible or physically impaired individuals, the game offers special accessibility options.
One of the major challenges in developing mixed reality games is that developers do not know the layout of a room in advance. The level design must therefore remain flexible. "Laser Dance" masters this task: With the freely placeable buttons, even in a small living room, a curved path several meters long through the laser course could be generated.
In an interview with heise online, the developer explains how he managed this: "Over the past two years, well over a hundred testers have tried out the game. Many of them have provided their room scans, and I have developed several tools that allowed me to emulate these rooms locally. This enabled me to use the scans directly in level design to ensure that the levels adapt to very different room conditions."
New Interfaces Ensure Greater Realism
In addition to spatial adaptability, another aspect of the mixed reality game appealed to us: "Laser Dance" is one of the few games that utilizes the upper body tracking of the Meta Quest 3, a unique feature that no other headset supports to date.
The interface called "Inside-Out Body Tracking" is named so because it captures the user's upper body and arms using the side headset cameras, rather than external sensors or body-worn motion trackers. This allows "Laser Dance" to include the spatial position of the torso and arms in the collision detection, a significant advantage for the skill-based game that greatly increases realism. However, legs and feet are not captured. This would require the tracking cameras to recognize them reliably, which is technically not feasible at the moment.
Videos by heise
Another technology that distinguishes "Laser Dance" is realistic object occlusion, known in technical jargon as "Dynamic Occlusion." Overlaying virtual objects onto physical objects is not a problem in mixed reality. It becomes complex in the reverse case: when physical objects are supposed to obscure virtual objects. The headset must analyze in real-time when the user's hand or a piece of furniture is in front of a virtual object, recognize its contours precisely, and cut out the corresponding areas from the virtual elements. This is a computationally intensive process.
Meta Quest now supports Dynamic Occlusion, and "Laser Dance" uses it skillfully: the laser beams are realistically obscured by one's own limbs and even by walls and furniture if the room has been precisely scanned. This doesn't always work, and not perfectly, but better than we've seen in other mixed reality games so far.
"Laser Dance" reflects the current state of mixed reality and shows how the technology on Meta Quest 3 has evolved over the past two years through improved spatial and object recognition, as well as new features like Inside-Out Body Tracking and Dynamic Occlusion.
"When Quest 3 launched, some of these interfaces were still experimental or not released at all. It took a while for developers to figure out how to use these new tools to create a mixed reality that doesn't just use passthrough as a background, but actually adapts to the environment and the player's body," says Van Bouwel, who contributed to improving the interfaces through close collaboration with Meta.
"Laser Dance" Combines Technology and Aesthetics
"Laser Dance" has the makings of a mixed reality classic. Like the VR hit "Beat Saber", it impresses with an immediately understandable game principle, requires no prior knowledge, and can only be played with headsets. Beyond the technology, the mixed reality game also impresses aesthetically: the dance of geometric lines and shapes in space is pleasing to the eye and is likely a reason why architect Van Bouwel was drawn to the game idea.
In its current Early Access state, "Laser Dance" is still a bit short. Additional gameplay time is provided by unlockable modifiers that change the gameplay and make already completed levels more challenging. Van Bouwel also promises new content to be released during the Early Access phase, including a new laser type, additional levels, more modifiers, and music that dynamically adapts to the player's movements. On our personal wish list is a local multiplayer mode that allows players to see other players and their laser barriers and complete the courses alternately.
"Laser Dance" will be released on November 6th in Early Access for Meta Quest 3 and 3S. Older headsets will not be supported due to their limited mixed reality functions. In the Horizon Store you can add the game to your wishlist and reserve it for the launch.
(dahe)
