Camp Fire MR

Inspiration

In a high-stress world, we often lose touch with primal elements. We wanted to create a "Digital Hearth"—bringing the relaxing, "hygge" atmosphere of a camping trip directly to your desk. Our goal was to leverage the Meta Presence Platform to make a virtual object feel like it genuinely occupies physical space, creating a sanctuary without leaving the office.

What it does

Camp Fire MR is a relaxation tool available now on the Meta Quest Store. It blends thermal warmth with digital comfort via Passthrough.

Instant Reality Blending: Utilizing Unity AR Foundation, the app detects real-world floors and tables to establish physical context.
Interactive Placement: Users can pick up a virtual campfire and intuitively anchor it to any physical surface.
Immersive Atmosphere: Once placed, spatial audio (crackling wood) and flickering flames transform a cold room into a warm retreat.

How we built it

We built this using Unity and the Meta Presence Platform.

Unity AR Foundation: We utilized plane detection to identify horizontal surfaces, providing the coordinates needed to place the campfire accurately in the real world.
Stylized Visuals: We prioritized color balance over complex rendering. We carefully tuned standard Unity assets to ensure the fire looks natural against the grainy video background of reality.
Sound Design: We integrated immersive audio, as sound is half the experience in creating a convincing illusion.

Challenges we ran into

The "Floating Fire" Collision Bug: The campfire mysteriously floated above the floor. We discovered that the floor meshes generated by AR Foundation had the "Convex" flag enabled on their Mesh Colliders. This created invisible, balloon-like collision volumes over the flat floor, pushing the fire upwards. Identifying this Unity physics interaction was a major hurdle.
Hand Tracking False Positives: Initially, users simply resting their hands triggered accidental "pinch" events, causing the fire to jump. To prioritize a frustration-free UX, we disabled hand tracking for the release to focus on precise Controller input.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Live Store Release: Successfully launching the app on the Meta Quest Store for free.
Simple UX: We stripped away complex UI. The fire simply "exists" in your room without the distraction of menus.

What's next for Camp Fire MR

Passthrough Relighting: We aim to make the virtual fire cast realistic flickering shadows onto real-world furniture by analyzing the environment mesh.
AI Companion: We plan to integrate Generative AI (Llama) to turn the campfire into a storyteller (e.g., ghost stories or poems).
Hand Tracking 2.0: We are refining inputs using Gaze Filtering (only detecting pinches when looking at hands) to eliminate accidental triggers.