MR Blueprint

Inspiration

Physics is often taught through static diagrams or fixed simulations that separate learning from real spatial intuition. We wanted to make physics feel like something people can author directly in their own environment. Logitech MX Ink inspired us to treat the stylus as more than a pointer - as a tool for building motion, relationships, and experiments in mixed reality. Our goal was to turn a room into an interactive sandbox where users can sketch ideas, place objects, and understand behavior by seeing it unfold around them.

What it does

MR Blueprint is a mixed reality physics-authoring sandbox for Meta Quest. Users enter a world-space XR environment, spawn 3D objects, arrange them in space, adjust properties like mass, friction, restitution, scale, gravity, rotation, and color, and then run simulations to see what happens. With MX Ink, users can switch between edit and draw workflows, create custom scene elements, and interact in a way that feels natural inside the headset. The experience includes a home flow, toolbar, content drawer, inspector, transform gizmo, simulation controls, help overlay, audio feedback, MX Ink connection status indicator, and live visual analysis tools such as vectors, motion paths, and real-time graphing. Rather than just showing motion, MR Blueprint helps users understand motion.

How we built it

We built MR Blueprint in Unity using C# for Meta Quest 3, combining Mixed Reality Passthrough, XR Interaction Toolkit, Logitech MX Ink SDK, and Unity's physics systems. The main experience uses a world-space editor shell with a floating toolbar, content drawer, inspector panel, and simulation controls. We created runtime object spawning, selection and manipulation logic, rigidbody property editing, multiple interaction modes, scene snapshotting to restore authored layouts after simulation, transform gizmo support, and usability layers like audio cues, help panels, and MX Ink status feedback. We focused on making the app feel like a coherent product, not just a collection of disconnected features.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was scope. Our original vision was broad: mixed reality sandboxing, stylus-driven physics authoring, educational overlays, and polished product UX. In a compressed timeline, we had to prioritize the strongest end-to-end loop first: enter the sandbox, build a setup, tune behavior, simulate it, and learn from it. Working in mixed reality also meant solving interaction clarity challenges - making UI readable in-headset, ensuring selection and manipulation felt understandable, and balancing experimentation freedom with a structured workflow. Another challenge was making the MX Ink feel essential rather than gimmicky, which pushed us to design around authoring, drawing, and feedback.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that MR Blueprint already feels like a functional mixed reality product experience rather than a raw prototype. Users can enter a clean home flow, build scenes without a pre-authored level, edit meaningful physics properties, run and reset simulations, and receive clear visual and interface feedback. We are especially proud of making the concept broad in appeal: it can support STEM learning, classroom demonstrations, engineering exploration, rapid prototyping, and interactive experimentation. The experience is approachable because users do not need advanced tooling knowledge to begin placing objects and testing ideas in space.

What we learned

We learned that mixed reality becomes far more compelling when users are not just consuming content but authoring behavior. We also learned that strong XR products depend heavily on workflow clarity - modes, feedback, selection states, and recovery tools matter just as much as the core feature set. Finally, we learned that MX Ink is most powerful when treated as a creation instrument that makes spatial interaction faster, more intuitive, and more expressive.

What's next for MR Blueprint

Next, we want to deepen the stylus-first physics authoring model by expanding how strokes map to physical rules and constraints, polishing the live analytics layer, and refining the UX toward store-ready quality. We also want to add richer guided educational scenarios, more simulation presets, stronger collaboration and sharing possibilities, and additional creator workflows for prototyping in MR. The long-term vision is to make MR Blueprint a mixed reality lab for learning, testing, and designing physical systems.