Step inside the dream
In a headset the dream is not a picture on a screen in front of you. It wraps all the way around you. Lie back, put on a Quest, look anywhere, and it is there. A dim nebula fills the rest, so there is never a black void.
Look around inside the dream sphere
This viewer needs JavaScript and WebGL. The text on this page says everything it would show.
Drag to look around, or focus the viewer and use the arrow keys. Space holds everything still.
This is not the headset experience. It is a sketch in your browser: it wraps this page’s small in-browser dream round you the way the headset does, so you can see the idea of a dream that surrounds you, and of coalescing it into a window. In the headset the real engine draws the dream on your graphics card and sends it to the Quest. The sketch is one flat picture, with no stereo depth, and it has no voyages or hallways in it.
A Quest, a cable, and a key
ADdes reaches a Quest through Meta’s Link, over the Link cable or Air Link.
- Wake Meta’s service Make sure Meta’s service can run: in
services.mscfind Oculus VR Runtime Service, set its Startup type to Manual or Automatic, and Start it. Then open the Meta Quest Link app (C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-client\OculusClient.exe). - Connect Connect the Quest with the Link cable (or Air Link) and enable Link in the headset.
- Go Run
ADdes.exe --vr, or press V in ADdes at any time.
Press V again to leave VR. The PC window also stays a control panel: its keys (N, S, R, 1 to 0, Space, C, O and so on) work while you wear the headset.
All the way around you
About a second after VR starts, the dream turns to face wherever you are looking, even lying down in bed, and then stays fixed in the room. Press O to re-aim it after you move.
Claude’s dream (C) is tuned for VR. Its white-hot heart is ahead of you, its threads turn around you, and it keeps the dark behind that its outer threads cool into. Its caption floats below your gaze, then fades.
- Flames have their heart ahead, and their wisps stream past you into a slow vortex behind.
- Silk (2D) attractors wrap around you like a shell.
- Orbit (3D) attractors are seen from inside, their ribbons arcing over and around you.
- The backdrop: a dim nebula fills the rest, so there is never a black void.
- Behind you, where the 360 image’s two edges meet, Meta’s compositor drew a thin bright line. A soft dark strip now covers it.
- Comfort: breathing, drift and orbiting are damped on the sphere, because there they move the whole world around you.
Gather it in front of you
Stick click, the dock, or G on the PC. Over 7.5 s the dream gathers from all around you into a window ahead, about 63° wide and framed as on the desktop.
Everything outside the frame fades, the backdrop stays, and the dream’s breathing and drift come back as on the desktop. Do it again and it flows back around you. Try it in the viewer above.
It is slow on purpose. The first version took 6 s, and its fastest point moved at 35.1°/s, too quick for the eye to follow comfortably. At 7.5 s the fastest point moves at 28.1°/s, under the 30°/s that the eye follows smoothly.
Everything common is on one hand
Everything common is on your dominant hand: the right by default, or the left if you choose Left-handed in the menu’s Headset tab (then X and Y take the place of A and B).
| Control | Dominant hand (right) | Other hand (left) |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | point and click (the dock, the menu) | point and click too |
| A / X | next dream (in the menu: click) | more like this |
| B / Y | menu: open / close | Claude’s dream |
| Stick click | coalesce: gather the dream in front of you, or let it surround you again | turn the dream to face you |
| Stick flick up / down | faster / slower (in the menu: scroll) | (in the menu: scroll) |
| Grip | hide / show the dock | none |
| Menu button | none | menu |
Clicks are forgiving: the pointer is smoothed, and a click lands where you were aiming just before the trigger pull moved your hand. The menu is the same menu as on the PC, so every setting is there, plus a Headset tab (hand, dock, and this controller map). Closing it saves your changes.
Common controls, below your gaze
A row of the common controls floats below your gaze. Above them are the dream’s name and the latest message, so you can see what each press did.
- It fades in when you use a controller, and fades away about 5 s after you stop.
- If you look well away, it glides back below your gaze.
- Pin keeps it where it is, always shown. Hide (or the grip) puts it away until you squeeze the grip again.
| Dock button | What it does | On the PC |
|---|---|---|
| Slower | slower | , |
| Next | drift to the next dream | N |
| Like | more like this | L |
| Claude | Claude’s dream | C |
| Voyage | a voyage now | J |
| Hallway | a neon hallway now | K |
| Random | every feel on (press again for just the one on screen) | R |
| Coalesce | gather the dream in front of you, or let it surround you | G |
| Face me | turn the dream to face where you are looking | O |
| Faster | faster | . |
| Menu | the menu | Esc / Tab |
| Pin | keeps the dock where it is | none |
| Hide | puts the dock away | none |
Voyages, hallways and tunnels
In VR a voyage flows toward wherever the dream was aimed (O or Face me re-aims it). On the sphere it is mono, without stereo depth yet: you see shapes approach by how they grow. Coalesce shows the desktop’s view of it in the window ahead.
- One picture for both eyes. Depth is parked for now, so the whole headset budget goes to a single picture, for fidelity over depth. Setting
spheretofalsegives the earlier curved screen, which has stereo depth for 3D dreams. - The Wormhole and Psychedelic Hallways leave the space behind you dark, are mirrored left to right, and are drawn 270° around ahead of you while they fill the picture.
- The Trance Tunnel is a still cone ahead, drawn 270° around, with no tube behind you. The Flame Tunnel’s tube runs behind you too, flowing away.
The journeys themselves, and sketches of them you can drive, are on the Journeys page.
A few keys, if you want them
Your settings are saved to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ADdes\settings.json. Under vr these tune the sphere:
| Key | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
sphere | false gives the earlier curved screen, which has stereo depth for 3D dreams. | true |
sphere_k | How large the dream’s heart is on the sphere. Smaller is bigger, and more enveloping. | 1.7 |
sphere_k2d | The same for 2D attractors, which are compact and framed whole. | 0.8 |
sphere_motion | The share of the breathing zoom and drift kept on the sphere, where they move the whole world around you. | 0.35 |
sphere_orbit | The share of a 3D attractor’s orbiting kept on the sphere. | 0.25 |
sphere_px_per_deg | Sets the sphere’s sharpness: pixels per degree of the 360 image. The sharper choices get fewer samples a pixel, so more grain. | 11 |
HDR
For HDR, turn on Settings, System, Display, Use HDR in Windows. ADdes detects it and outputs scRGB. On a TV, use its HGIG / game HDR mode.
If something goes wrong
Each session writes a log to %LOCALAPPDATA%\ADdes\addes.log (the previous one is addes.1.log), with actions, dream changes and the VR session lines, so a session can be read back.