If everyone has to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.
— Malcolm Gladwell
Can you use VR controllers without ever putting on a headset? That was the question behind this 2019 installation — and the answer turned out to be a 4×4 grid of pads projected across an entire warehouse wall, played from a distance with nothing but a pair of Vive controllers and a pointing gesture.
The setup strips away the headset entirely and redirects the spatial input outward: instead of inhabiting a virtual world, the controller becomes a precision pointer aimed at a massive shared display. Standing in a dark, warehouse-lit space, a single performer can trigger any of the 16 pads by pointing and firing — the grid reads like an oversized Native Instruments Maschine controller, familiar in layout but radically different in scale and interaction distance.
Spatial Mapping
The core technical challenge was reconciling the physical dimensions of the projection surface with the coordinate data coming out of the HTC Vive tracking system. Unity's world space and the screen's pixel space need to agree precisely — a point aimed at the top-left corner of the projected grid has to land on the top-left pad, not drift by half a square at the edges. Getting that mapping tight enough to feel responsive at performance distance required careful calibration of the relationship between tracked position, ray origin, and the projected quad in world space.
Stage-Ready Interaction
Removing the headset changes everything about presence and performability. The performer stays visible to an audience, can make eye contact, and orients to the real room rather than a virtual one. The scale of the projection — filling a warehouse wall — makes the interaction legible from across the space. Every hit reads clearly as an intentional gesture, which is essential in a live or installation context where the interface itself is part of the spectacle.
The project was an early proof of concept for a class of performance tools that use VR-grade tracking without VR immersion: precise, expressive, and designed to be watched.
Tools
- Unity
- HTC Vive
- Logic Pro
- Roland Zen-Core