Why you should try MR Chess

MR chess.

Through that lens, MR Chess is a bargain — plus you get a chess game to go with it.

Through that lens especially,

is a bargain — plus you happen to get a chess game to go with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usoKcn7VH5gthe discordVR Chess

Chess in VR mode is a straightforward review: You already know the pieces and rules. You can only move the virtual pieces with your hands. The cosmetic changes are subtle: picking up a game piece, blue dots will appear showing legal moves. Placing a player piece in an illegal position highlights the resting place red. You can play the computer (levels 1-9), you can play a friend who owns the app or find other players in

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. You can play the computer (levels 1-9), you can play a friend who owns the app, you can find other players in

.First EncountersWhat should MR be?

Mixed Reality should empower you to engage with your environment in new, invigorating ways. MR Chess is the perfect tool to ask and answer these questions. It’s a good thing for safety, but it also goes against one of MR’s greatest promises.

MR app delightfully breaks the VR/MR wall visually, but there’s still a hard line between you and your physical surroundings.MR Chess breaks down that physical barrier. Set up your board and pieces for a game. What a delight to feel the actual weight of a rook in your hand and the haptic response of placing it and releasing it!MR Chess trailer screenshotApple Vision ProMeta’s hand tracking in Quest has rough edges but deserves more praise. Of course

your hands are the ones that control your surroundings in daily life. See also: The controllerless

. The game of chess can be used to understand and experience this. The same concept is achieved by VR Arcades, which provide you with full-sized replicas of machine guns in an enormous room. Chess can also be played at home. The tracking capabilities of MR Chess are severely limited by the limitations Meta places on app access to cameras. Chess’s mixed reality mode doesn’t track your pieces in its current version. The same tracking and pinching as in VR is used, but with an added transparency filter. You may find that your virtual pieces and physical pieces do not match up, especially if you have pieces which are taller or smaller than the default generic VR size. The only way to fix it is by turning on VR mode again. But this still serves as a reminder about the limitations of 2024 Meta technology. I wound up finding it easiest to play with my real pieces on top of a virtual board.MR Chess trailer screenshot

MR Chess has a highly enviable task: It brims with potential. It might prove beneficial for competitive players to use physical boards that replicate the depth and viewline of live matches, as opposed to chess.com’s top-down views. It could be a checkmate in one puzzle for beginners or moderates. Or it could have AI play alongside or against you.