This could have gone so much worse.
We’ve all seen those Meta Quest adverts, in which a practically-challenged human being wears a VR headset for basic construction tasks, like building a crib, with great success. However, The Swedish Maker has taken things further by several orders of magnitude—by wearing a Meta Quest 3 for the entirety of a woodworking project, including while using power tools.
He’s fine. That’s the main takeaway. Still, the project threw up some obvious challenges right from the off, as the headset’s outer cameras introduce a small amount of lag between what you see, and what’s actually happening with your hands in relation to high-speed cutting tools.
Our intrepid host set out to build a bedside table with built-in drawers, a not-entirely-simple project—especially with VR headgear involved in every step (via Hackaday). At multiple points he complains of nausea and discomfort, but the crucial step of cutting large pieces of wood with both a table saw and a handheld power saw is a difficult watch, particularly as visual warping means the blade seems to move and wobble by itself.
Rather you than me. Still, it’s not exactly The Swedish Maker’s first rodeo when it comes to woodworking, and as a result, he took some reasonable steps to up the safety factor.
After declaring “Let’s start, just do it” (surely the beginning phrase of all great human endeavours), he places his hands in a very wide stance on either side of a piece of wood being cut by a table saw, before letting a piece fall off the end of the bench after the cut was made rather than attempting to catch it.
It’s still a heart in the mouth moment, but hey, it could have gone a lot worse. In fact, all of this seems like a terrible idea—but the project does throw up the odd plus point for using a VR headset while you work.
The ability to bring up a PDF file of the project in his field of view seemed to help solve some design issues, and at one point he even displays a plan on the side of his workshop while working outdoors. Still, that visual warping effect meant that it was very difficult to measure things accurately, while looking at other displays through the headset’s camera delivered bouts of nausea that seem genuinely uncomfortable.
“I’m officially taking a break,” he declares at one point while looking like he might lose his breakfast. “It’s so good to take the headset off.”
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Who could have predicted? Anyway, eventually a very handsome set of drawers is created, and while The Swedish Maker admits that it’s not his best piece of work, it certainly looks a lot better than I could do without any headset “help.”
As a massive, honking, end-of-article warning: Do not try any of this at home. The Swedish Maker is a highly skilled (if perhaps, risk-taking) woodworker with obvious experience, and it’s this experience that means he emerges at the end with all his digits intact.
As the top YouTube comment points out, he’s probably now going to be personally responsible for several new warning labels on VR headsets moving forward.
Leave the limb-endangering experimentation to the, err, professionals, that’s what I say. It’ll be a while before my buttocks unclench after watching the footage, at the very least.
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