Magritte VR

BDH Immersive / Samsung Gear VR Installation

Magritte VR was a large-scale shared VR installation created for BDH Immersive, designed to take audiences on an on-rails journey through 3D interpretations of René Magritte’s famous artwork.

The experience ran on Samsung Gear VR devices and was built for a seated audience of up to 50 people at a time. Everyone entered the same surreal world together, flying through dreamlike landscapes inspired by Magritte’s paintings.

Although the audience experience was passive, the technical setup behind it was much more complex. The challenge was making 50 mobile VR headsets behave like one synchronised installation, while also giving operators a reliable way to start, stop, and monitor every device during live public shows.

My Role

Lead Unity Developer

I was the Lead Unity Developer on the project, working closely with designers, artists, and another developer to build the VR experience and the systems needed to run it reliably.

My role covered the core Unity implementation, multiplayer synchronisation, device control, show flow, sequencing tools and operator-facing desktop software.

A large part of the work was about turning a visually ambitious art experience into something that could run smoothly across 50 Samsung Gear VR headsets in a live exhibition environment.

What I Worked On

The main experience was an on-rails VR flythrough, so timing and synchronisation were critical. Each headset needed to start at the same moment, stay aligned throughout the sequence, and recover cleanly if something went wrong.

I developed the custom LAN-based synchronisation system using Unity UNet, allowing all 50 devices to be triggered together from a central machine. This meant the audience could share the same experience at the same time, rather than each headset running independently.

I also created a bespoke Timeline-style system for synchronising animations, audio, particles and scene events along a single sequence. This was before Unity’s official Timeline system existed, so we needed a custom toolset that gave the team a clear way to control the pacing and structure of the flythrough.

Alongside the VR application, I worked on a desktop monitoring tool that gave the event team visibility over the connected devices. From there, operators could see device status, monitor battery levels, and start or restart the experience without needing to manually handle every headset.

Technical Challenges

The biggest challenge was reliability. Running one mobile VR headset is one thing; running 50 in a public installation is another.

The system needed to handle network discovery, device connection, synchronised playback, battery monitoring, timeline control and operator commands in a way that was simple enough for non-technical staff to use during busy public sessions.

Because the hardware was Samsung Gear VR, performance was also a major consideration. The experience needed to feel smooth and comfortable while rendering rich 3D scenes on mobile hardware.

The custom timeline system also had to be flexible enough for an art-led production. It needed to support creative changes without requiring every timing adjustment to become a risky code change.

Outcome

Magritte VR became a large-scale shared VR installation that allowed audiences to experience Magritte’s artwork in a completely new way.

The final system combined mobile VR, custom networking, LAN-based device control, bespoke sequencing tools and live event monitoring to create a synchronised 50-person experience that could be operated reliably in a public exhibition environment.

For me, it was a strong example of the kind of technical work I enjoy most: taking an ambitious immersive idea and turning it into a robust real-world system that can run outside a controlled development environment.