Off-Axis Projection Demo

Built by Ian Curtis from the World Labs Product team, this experiment explores head-coupled perspective rendering using Gaussian splat environments, realtime face tracking, and off-axis camera projection directly in the browser.

The Experiment

The project investigates how head tracking can create the illusion of depth behind a flat display by dynamically adjusting the camera perspective based on the viewer’s position.

• Head-tracked off-axis projection
• Gaussian splat environments rendered in realtime
• Environment switching and interactive scene exploration

The environments begin as simple Blender layouts before being transformed into detailed explorable splat scenes through World Labs workflows.

How It Works

Basic spatial layouts are modeled in Blender and processed through World Labs Chisel to generate detailed Gaussian splat environments. Those worlds are then rendered using Spark 2.0 and Three.js inside a browser-based realtime viewer.

MediaPipe face tracking continuously estimates viewer position and updates the camera frustum dynamically, creating a “window into another world” effect inspired by classic head-coupled perspective experiments.

Stack

• Blender for initial environment layout
• World Labs Chisel for splat generation
• Spark 2.0 + Three.js for realtime rendering
• MediaPipe for face tracking and head pose estimation
• React + TypeScript for the interactive viewer framework

What’s Next

• Character integration and controllable avatars
• More advanced physically-correct off-axis projection
• Expanded spatial interaction and navigation systems
• Larger environment streaming and scene transitions

Additional demos and source code available on GitHub.