Project description

Iron Ore Pelletizing in VR

Walk into a pelletizing plant with your hands only. The fines yard is ready, with the reclaimer working the pile; the plant comes station by station, in process order, towards voice-guided training.

Watch the video

Role: Project lead, with more experienced engineers on the script
Period: Aug 2026 – present
Status: in progress

3D and virtual reality
Unity 6
URP
OpenXR
Meta Quest 3
rastreamento de mãos
C#
Claude Code
Codex

Video excerpt, muted

Evidence

17 stations in 6 zones, in process order
A count of the route design and of the visiting points built in the app: 3 stations in the fines yard, with 7 visiting points, and 14 in the plant, with one visiting point in each.
Measured.
Frame time on the Quest 3 still being tuned, with 5 of 21 stops failing
Measured on September 23, 2026, on an earlier version, through the device's telemetry: temperature passed; the spikes were on the first visit and in two plant stations with too many draw calls. The current version has not been measured yet.
Measured.
A test with an audience
Not done yet, and the audience for the first pilot has not been chosen. The pilot comes after the zones and the narration.
To be measured.

The goal

To be voice-guided virtual reality training that teaches and leaves room to ask questions while studying. This does not exist in the app yet: today the walkthrough shows the stations in process order, with few signs, and the narration and the teaching flow come in once the zones are ready.

The walkthrough was designed for training, onboarding new employees and institutional visits, in place of an on-site visit, which is expensive, restricted and risky. It has not yet been tested with an audience.

What is ready and what is not

Ready: the fines yard, with the pile, the bucket-wheel reclaimer, the conveyor with its return underneath, the transfer house with tower and gallery, the dust and the field panel that starts the machine.
Under construction: the plant’s 14 stations, from grinding to the pellet yard, in measured volumes and without finish. The mill, the thickener’s bridge, the filters and the balling disc already move.
Only on paper: the plant’s finish, the narration and the signs, the pilot with an audience and the physical link from the yard’s gallery to grinding.
In the same app: the electrical room module, behind its own door, presented as another project in this portfolio.

On screen

The view from the headset: both hands in grey gloves and yellow sleeves over the lookout's floor, with the reclaimer in the background, under the text "On the Meta Quest, hands only". — **1. Hands.** No controllers; the first-person avatar wears a uniform and protective gloves.

From the lookout, the yellow bucket-wheel reclaimer over the fines yard pile, behind the guardrail. — **2. Lookout.** Pinch and drag to walk, twist to turn, point to teleport; walking by pinch is still being tuned.

The bucket-wheel reclaimer working the pile, with dust rising, under the text "The wheel digs, the dust rises". — **3. Reclaimer.** A field panel starts the machine; it digs, returns empty, and the pile is restored.

The fines yard line seen from the lookout: the pile, the reclaimer, the conveyor and the transfer house in the background. — **4. Yard.** From the lookout, the whole line can be read, from the pile to the gallery; the yard is the finished part.

The start of the grinding area seen from above, in untextured reference volumes, with the blue conveyor in the foreground. — **5. Grinding.** The plant is still in measured volumes, without finish, which is why it only appears from above.

The thickener seen from above, with the rake bridge over the tank, under the text "in development, early stage". — **6. Thickener.** In the thickener, the rake bridge already turns; this is where the water returns to grinding.

Tap outside the image to close it.

How it works

The map follows the process in order, and the zones are separated by the state of the material: from dry solids in the yard to product in the pellet yard.

Yard
The fines pile, the bucket-wheel reclaimer, the conveyor and the transfer house.
ready
Grinding
Mill, hydrocyclones, thickener and filtering; coarse material returns to the mill, and water returns to grinding.
under construction
Mixing
Roller press, silos and mixer; the binder falls onto the moving conveyor.
under construction
Balling
On the disc, the pellet is born; the off-size one returns to the disc.
under construction
Furnace
The bed, the thermal stages and the gases; the heat returns to the furnace.
under construction
Product
Discharge, screening and the pellet yard.
under construction

Each zone only sees its neighbors, and the person crosses from one to the next through a short passage: the material makes the long journey; the person does not. Today, between the yard and the plant, the crossing is closed, through a door.

The project thinks in stations, not machines. Where the person stands, what they look at and from how far.

Decisions

The choiceInstead ofCost accepted

The station as the unit

Instead of: Modeling machine by machine.

Cost accepted: Each station first needs the viewpoint, the distance and what is seen, and only then the machine.

The process with its four loops

Instead of: A straight line from the yard to the pellet.

Cost accepted: The map becomes a folded line, and each loop has to be read in the right place.

Hands only, no controllers

Instead of: The headset's controllers.

Cost accepted: Walking by pinch is not yet smooth; pointing to teleport works better.

Data-generated scenes, from a single plant definition

Instead of: Placing and measuring everything by hand in the scene.

Cost accepted: Every meter is generated, never typed, and the plant's domain needs its own tests, outside Unity.

The zones before the teaching

Instead of: Narrating before building.

Cost accepted: Today the walkthrough has few signs, and the guiding voice comes later.

How it was built

Aug 21
The restart
The idea restarts from scratch, in Unity 6 for the Quest 3; the first flow is the yard with the reclaimer.
Aug 30
The map
The map of 6 zones and 17 stations, in process order, with the four loops.
Sep 1
The plant in volumes
The whole plant in reference volumes, and the yard's comfort approved in the headset.
Sep 13
The hands
Locomotion with hands only, by pinch and by pointing to teleport.
Sep 23
The zones before the teaching
The overall plan puts the zones before the narration, and the Quest measurement shows where frame time fails.
Sep 25
The conveyor
The yard conveyor's belt wraps around the pulleys and returns underneath.

I lead the project, with more experienced engineers who help with the script. I choose what to build and judge it in the headset; the development is done with AI agents (Claude Code and Codex), under rules I define.

Today and next

Today

An early-stage prototype. The fines yard is ready; the plant's 14 stations exist in measured volumes, with a visiting point in each one, but still without finish. Since October, the work on the same app has gone to the electrical room module.

Bring the yard's finish to the plant's stations, starting with the balling disc.
The narration and the teaching flow, once the zones are ready, towards voice-guided training.
Measure the current version in the headset and cut the draw calls of the stations that went over the limit.
A pilot with an audience, after the zones and the narration.

The images are frames from the project's commercial. The first two come from a test recording in the headset, on an earlier version of the app; the others were rendered on the computer from the app's own scene, in Unity, with a scripted camera, and are not the app's locomotion. The text and markers over them belong to the video, not to the app's screens.

Next project on the tourImmersive Electrical Room