Softspace harnesses spatial computing to help thinkers and makers better see, understand, and develop the ideas that form the heart of their creative projects.

This is the second in a series of prototypes we’re releasing as a part of our open development process to build the augmented reality version of Softspace.

Help us invent a powerful new kind of tool for thought by 🧑🏽‍🔬 trying these prototypes, 🐦 following us on Twitter, and 👯‍♀️ joining the Softspace Discord.

• Get Prototype01 here
• Get Prototype02 here

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SoftspaceAR | Prototype01

SoftspaceAR Prototype01 is a passthrough augmented reality app for the Oculus Quest 2 that fills the space around with the subfolders and images of any Dropbox folder you select.

It implements several intriguing ideas that both our team and many users have long wanted to test:

🕸 3D force-directed graphs

🗃 3D folder structure explorers

😎 Passthrough augmented reality

🤲🏼 Controller-less hand-tracked UI

Quick explanation of each below:

• Force-directed graphs are an increasingly popular way to visualize information that consists of interconnected nodes. Apps like Roam and Obsidian have recently added them, where they seem marginally useful. But what if you could navigate one in 3D, immersively?

• Previous versions of Softspace all had some way to browse a connected Dropbox account from which to import files. But we've often gotten the question: what if the file browser were the entire app, and you stepped straight into your Dropbox?

• Augmented reality always made more sense for productivity than full-occlusion VR, but mainstream AR headsets seemed too far away to build for. After playing with the Oculus Passthrough API, we realized even today's crappy passthrough is good enough to build a great app on.

• Oculus has also been steadily improving the hand-tracking capabilities of the Quest 2. It's not perfect, but it's already workable, and the steep rate of improvement makes us comfortable committing to a controller-less future for the Softspace interaction paradigm.

Prototype01 combines these ideas into a single research demo.

Here's how to get started using it:

1. Log into your Dropbox account using the web browser that appears when you open up the app. Click on the page by holding up your hand and touching your index finger to your thumb. Type by pressing the keyboard with your index fingers.

2. Once you're logged in, navigate to a Dropbox folder that you would like to spatialize. This prototype only loads in image files (jpg, png, etc), and it will load everything in every subfolder, so it's best to select an image-rich folder that not too large (fewer than 1000 images).

3. To navigate around, you can "grab" the virtual space by making a fist with one or both hands. One hands is for simple moving, while two hands let you rotate and scale the space.

4. You can also move, rotate, and scale objects. Select them in the same way that you clicked on the web browser: by hovering over them with your hand and tapping your thumb and index finger together.

5. The next time you open Prototype01, you'll still be logged into the same Dropbox folder, but you'll be able to select another (or the same) folder to spatialize. Alternatively, you can log out of your Dropbox from this starting page to clear your data.

Please watch the video above to see these steps in action—they're much easier to show than to describe in words 🤓

That's it! If you have any questions or thoughts, we'd love to hear from you in our Discord:

https://discord.com/invite/45PYYsG