VR Reading Room

A better way to read to maintain flow state or stay lost in the story

What is it

Reading Room is a VR app that lets you take a physical book off of your book shelf, open it (with the headset on), and will match the ambiance around you to the content of what you are reading so you can get lost in the story or stay in flow state for work.

Current Capability

VR works with Meta XR Simulator. Clicking the button runs OCR on a static image. When finished, the text displays in the game.

Reading Room VR OCR Working

Challenges

Calling C++ code libraries from Godot GDScript has proven to be more work than I thought (mostly slow and tedious learning)
Meta and Google have both announced their intentions to open up API access to the passthrough cameras in early 2025 (Meta finally opened up access in March 2025)

Abandoned Ideas

eBook reader

I originally thought about making it a ebook reading. But that would require a LOT of extra code and effort. This is also an idea I’ve seen others have. I expect there will be real competition for that style of app. Eventually Kindle and other existing companies will offer their apps in VR. Instead of competing with them, I decided it’s better to think of a bigger/grander idea.

Inspiration

I’ve been workshopping this idea since 2020.

Reading books with a small child around can make it difficult to get your imagination lost in a book. I would listen to classical music with earbuds which would help a lot, but thought about how to take things further.

I remembered some of the mixed reality R&D I did years before and so the idea of using VR/AR to aid ones imagination while reading excited me. I did a bit of googling and quickly found others who built similar VR/AR experiences (so I wasn’t crazy).

But none of them had implemented my crazier ideas, probably because VR headsets were just now adding the tools needed to make them a reality. I had been wanting to create a compelling VR experience for a while and this felt like the right idea at the right timing.