My Review of the Meta Quest 3 and VR for Murals

I’ve been painting and designing murals for years, and some challenges never go away. Creating a pattern in a tight space, like a narrow corridor, or scaling up a large exterior wall during daylight has always been tricky. I’ve spent countless summer evenings waiting for darkness so I could switch on my projector and sketch a design. It’s exhausting and adds a whole extra day to a project!

Recently, a friend sent me a link showing someone sketching a mural in VR. At first, I thought it was a joke. How could that even exist? Bananas, right? But after some research, I discovered it was real. The newer Meta Quest VR headsets even have three cameras on the front, letting you see the room around you while accessing the computer inside. Mind blown!

So, naturally, I invested in one myself… though my twelve-year-old promptly “borrowed” it.

Getting Started

As someone who’d never used VR for art before, there was a learning curve. I downloaded the Contour app and had to figure out:

• How to send an image into the headset.

• How to pin it to a wall.

• How to scale it correctly.

A cool discovery: using PNGs means I can remove backgrounds, making it much easier to trace designs accurately.

What Works

VR has genuinely transformed parts of my workflow:

• Scaling up in daylight: No more waiting for darkness.

• Working in tight areas: Perfect for corridors or small rooms.

• Working at height: On lifts, where projectors are impractical, the VR headset is compact, portable, and easy to use.

What Could Be Better

• Weight: The headset is heavy for long sessions.

• Image stability: When the headset comes off, the pinned image can move—sometimes massively—so it’s tricky to show clients exactly what I see. Casting to my phone works, but it’s not the same as letting someone experience it in real time.

• Surface detection: Right now, images can float slightly off the wall, which is fine for experienced artists but could be tricky for beginners.

Final Thoughts

This technology is just at the beginning, and it’s exciting to see where it will go. For now, it’s already a game-changer for scaling, tracing, and working safely in challenging spaces. I can’t wait to see how future iterations improve on weight, image stability, and surface detection.

VR isn’t going to replace the tactile joy of painting, but it’s a powerful new tool in my mural toolkit. And honestly? I’m hooked.