What will happen if you do an entire woodworking project using a VR headset? [video] | Hacker News Reader

What will happen if you do an entire woodworking project using a VR headset? [video]

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48 pointszdw35 comments

Other than having the drawings floating around it didn't seem that useful. Nice thick pair of eye protection, though.

But I guess it's mostly a problem with the tooling not being there. There could be made more special applications helping you to assemble a box, for instance, telling you exactly what to do and even live feedback. I do balk on not looking directly at the power tools while using them, though.

On an aside, living in a small apartment it's a bit of a hassle every time I want to do some wood working as I spend more time cleaning dust of everything after than actually working, which of course makes the hurdle of sitting down and doing my projects greater than it needs to. Like, I only do it a day where I can work 4-5 hours and then clean, as it's not worth it to do all the cleaning for 30 minutes of progress an afternoon.

But to fix this (I mostly do wood carving with a dremel, sanding etc) I built a "glove box" this weekend. Holes for my arms with elastic band sewn into some fabric so it fits snugly. Then a computer fan connected to a random vacuum filter creates a negative pressure so no wood dust escapes and instead falls to the bottom or into the filter. Also doubles as a storage unit for my tools when not in use. https://imgur.com/a/JhdrOft

> But I guess it's mostly a problem with the tooling not being there.

For me, it's the tooling plus AR glasses that have roughly the same form factor as my safety glasses. Having plans in front of me, ability to measure distance and angles to within a centimeter, etc. would be nice enhancements to my workflow. A "where did I leave that tool?" feature would be very frequently used.

Finding tools requires an indoor positioning system which is somewhat different to vr headset.

To solve the general problem, sure, but the tool I'm looking for is usually one I was just using and mindlessly set down somewhere I shouldn't have. If the VR headset could recognize tools and remember where in the shop I set them down, it could do the trick just fine. That's how I usually find them, after all. When that fails me, my fallback plan is to start cleaning, which turns up what I'm looking for in pretty short order.

That's not something AR headsets do.

That is a arbitrary object detection problem, which is in general harder to solve than just using an ips.

> Nice thick pair of eye protection, though.

I wonder. These aren’t built for protection and have a ton of components inside, so it seems plausible that an impact may instead break stuff on the inside with direct access to your eyes, making it worse.

And if passthrough lags at a crucial moment, bye bye body part.

I've never seen passthrough lag of any significance. It has on very rare occusations frozen, however. (I can only recall a single incident of that in 5 years)

Once is all it takes. I’d rather have a headset fail five thousand times but they’re all when playing a game, then having it fail just once when I’m dealing with power tools.

Ha, as the OP posed it as a question: “what will happen…” and I was going to answer “lose a limb”

The eye angle is even more troubling, to be frank.

If I’m brining 2024 tech into wood shop, let’s make it robotic hands!

It's absolutely not sufficient, and the lag has nothing to do with it. Wood dust is nasty, it tends to get through slightest cracks, and the protection has to be airtight. I've been sanding an old log cabin with an angle grinder before repainting it, and I had to visit an ophthalmologist to pick a piece of dust from my eye. I had safety glasses that looked exactly like [1] and the holes were enough for the dust to enter.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Safety_G...

> I do balk on not looking directly at the power tools while using them, though.

I might be nervous to use power tools, but passthrough tech has gotten amazing over the last 2-3 years. I just hope we can shrink the headsets down a bit more.

That glove box came out real nice, what a good idea. I inhaled too much dust as a young man and eventually became sensitive to it. Now I have to wear a respirator all the time. It is smart to contain the dust in your appt since you spend so much time breathing the air there.

To each their own, but for me my woodworking shop is one place I go to get away from screens.

"Rule: I shall use no technology other than the VR headset"

pulls out $4000 Shaper Origin mobile milling machine ...

Any latency is too much latency for power tools, in my opinion.

The word "any" is doing a lot of work here.

Chances of me putting a computer screen between my eyes and a lathe are exactly zero.

Sometimes even eye to brain to hand latency is too long...

I want proper CAD tools in vr. It’s mostly organic or sub d stuff right now. I just want to parametric ally dimension in Vr like in solid works or fusion.

This would add so much

Good grief. Please don't do this.

I am a furniture maker, here's what I see in this video.

The latency looks like it'd really be something to deal with; the distortion of vision looks like it'd be miserable to deal with. Stuff happens fast when it goes sideways, and not having a clear picture of exactly how it's going sideways could be disadvantageous, to say the least. Watch him fumbling the piece on the table saw at 7:15.

Never mind that he really ought to have an outfeed table to catch it (as should I), but this is a relatively low-risk situation where having excellent awareness of everything around you is key. I would be curious how the peripheral vision works on the headset; he's clearly struggling a little bit with the arm he's trying to grab the piece with, but he has a whole 'nother arm that's also in proximity to a loose piece of plywood and a spinning blade. Fixating on your right arm while having limited awareness of what's happening with the left in this situation wouldn't be something I'd recommend.

Flush trimming on the router table looks spicy and is similarly something I'd strongly encourage nobody ever to do while wearing a VR headset. I've tossed a couple pieces off as has probably everyone who's ever used a bearing-guided bit with a small piece. I also knew a guy who was trying to flush trim with a hand-held router near a corner of a table top. He didn't get on the corner right, and the bit climbed the end grain and caught him in the nose. Like I said, stuff happens really fast when it goes wrong.

Personally, I'm super-impressed with the Shaper Origin in this video. I'm going to assume this isn't his first rodeo, but that it has enough tolerance to how he's using it with the input latency and distortion blows me away.

On the subject of undermount drawer slides. It doesn't look like he's using Blums. Blum comes with pretty clear directions and doesn't require adjusting the length of the box from the nominal length of the slide. That's not to say I've ever made a set of drawer boxes the wrong length, but it has been emphatically my fault for misreading the tape, not a failure of doing math.

If you're in the US and generally work in US customary units as a result, and you're doing anything with Blum slides, get a metric tape[0] and ruler[1]. Blum has thoughtfully specced everything in US customary as well as metric, but I don't usually care to work in 32nd's of an inch if I don't have to. You can build the piece in inches and switch to metric for building the drawer boxes. Millimeters are small enough and the tolerances are good enough that if you're off by a smidge because you didn't land on a whole number of mm, the drawers still work. I haven't used undermounts other than Blum.

Lastly, a tip on mounting drawer fronts: Drill a pair of oversized holes in the drawer box (typically) 1/4", and put the drawer in its hole. Insert dowel centers in those holes, shim the drawer front as you'd like it, and give it a light wallop to imprint the dowel centers. Drill the back of the drawer front on those marks for your favorite cabinet head or washer head screws. Mount it up and make fine adjustments as needed. Once you're happy, fix it with a pair of regular screws. If you're doing a large piece, don't fix the drawer fronts until it's landed at the customer's site. Uneven floors will twist carcasses and throw off the reveals.

[0] FastCap makes one if you can't rustle one up locally. You want one with metric on both sides of the tape. Trust me on this. EDIT: Both sides meaning marks extending the full width of the top (convex) face of the tape, not on both the concave and convex faces of the tape.

[1] Starrett makes them for their excellent combination squares.

> What will happen if you do an entire woodworking project using a VR headset?

You will have less fingers when you finish than when you started.

You end the project with less fingers than when you started?

This got gears turning in my head. What if we could simulate a woodworking or metalworking shop in VR and people could do virtual projects? I think most people reading this will feel a visceral sense of disgust, but I think this idea is just early.

> I think most people reading this will feel a visceral sense of disgust

Not disgust at all. More like a sense of pointlesness. You can't sit on a stool made out of virtual wood in a virtual workshop. So what is the point of "making" it?

And if the point is to 3d model objects then why constrain yourself to the skeuomorphism of a virtual woodworking/metal working?

It could be like how people enjoy assembling Gundam models. Sometimes it’s fun just watching something beautiful emerge from many separate components.

People also enjoy the “how stuff is made” type videos. Simulating a manufacturing process in VR could scratch the same itch.

I have no experience in woodworking and metalworking, but I would love for there to be a low-cost way I can start learning or familiarizing routines and techniques. I currently don't even know where to start because I don't have anyone in-person to learn from. I could watch a bunch of YouTube videos, but that sounds less fun than a set of guides or tutorials in VR.

Why not take a class?

> So what is the point of "making" it?

Perhaps the point is greater than building something in minecraft.

lots of people play games about making virtual stuff like gmod, gearblocks, minecraft creative mode etc. i'd probably play a woodworking sim to be honest.

I like this idea. The machine shop can be quite intimidating. It could be a fun little experience to get people exposed to heavy equipment in a safe environment.

There's a lot of feel involved with tools. A bandsaw or a drill or a bridgeport gives you a ton of feedback. Something as simple as torquing a fastener will tell you tons about the alignment of the fastener, the surface roughness, thread quality and tolerances, whether there's swarf at the bottom of the hole, whether you're about to tear threads out...

For macro workflows it could be useful, but on the same level as a non-VR Machine Shop Simulator. 2¢

Teleworking, or robotics training? Using a workshop on the moon, for instance, to repair broken remote equipment.

Nah, more like just a video game.

VR isn't even a toy compared to the real thing. You cant feel the process. When milling you're turning the hand cranks to move the table so you will feel chatter and vibration along with the resistance so you can feel the quality of the cut. You also have to compensate for backlash in the lead screw which is another game of feel.

I had this idea too, imaging creating 3d assets using a virtual lathe

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