ShapesXR for Mixed Reality Collaboration

Update: I've now produced a Substack post which describes my experiences to date in mixed reality /XR wargaming with ShapesXR and other platforms.

I've been playing around with ShapesXR for the last couple of weeks and its looking really good as a general purpose MR collaboration platform. There is something very different, but also incredibly natural about having collaborators present in your own physical space but working with a mutual virtual toolset. The images below show Andy Fawkes (co-author of the forthcoming The Military Metaverse) and I testing out some prototype manual wargames in my office/game room and his VR space. But with the core ability to import 3D objects, rez objects from a library, move and place objects and add annotations ShapesXR could be used for a wide variety of use cases and is certainly the easiest to use that I've found so far for MR.

Note that both of use can scale, rotate and place the shared environment wherever we want in our own physical spaces, so at one point I had it scaled large and placed on my 8' x 6' table, where he had it shrunk down and sat on his lap. You can also use the scaling so that you can experience any build at eye-level/subjective mode, or loom over it in a more objective/god mode.

More posts (and maybe even some video) of our experiences in MR to follow.

Andy adding objects to the build

Ignore the spurious grey avatar, but Andy's scaled down avatar is visible just in front - so to him the build is scaled right up and he's getting a street level view

Andy scaled up to "god" mode looking down upon creation!

My first playable MR manual wargame - a WW1 dogfight!

Andy's view of me in VR mode. You can toggle at will between MR and VR. I can see the VR mode being the equivalent of blurring your background in Zoom.