I built a celebrity museum in VR for the Quest 3 – until the rights stopped me

The idea

I wanted to try a simple but exciting idea: a small museum in VR where you can walk around among famous faces – a bit like a wax museum, but in Mixed Reality right in the middle of my own living room on the Meta Quest 3.

How I built it

The technical side was surprisingly smooth. I generated 3D models from ordinary photos using AI, then brought the models into Unity. There I built a Mixed Reality scene with Meta's MR template and sideloaded the app to the headset via "Unknown sources". There were a few hiccups along the way – including an "App name not available" error during sideloading – but nothing I couldn't solve.

Built in Unity

Standing in my own room and seeing the figures appear around me was honestly a pretty magical feeling.

The wall: rights

Then reality hit. I can't release an app like this on the Meta Store, or sell it myself, without licenses. Using famous people's faces and likeness requires permission – both from living people and from the estates of certain well-known 20th-century figures, whose rights are still managed. A fun experiment in private, but impossible to publish.

Plan B: a car museum?

I reconsidered: maybe a car museum instead? But even there you have to buy the rights to car brands and models. That's exactly why games like Gran Turismo and Forza pay large licensing deals with the manufacturers to use real cars.

The takeaway

The fun – and slightly frustrating – part is that the technology is no longer the bottleneck. With AI-generated models and Unity you can build these kinds of experiences remarkably fast. The hard part is the legal side. For a public or commercial project you either have to use your own/fictional figures, motifs that are free (public domain), or pay for licenses.

So the next version might be a museum with my own characters or free historical motifs. The idea lives on – just with a better grasp of what you're actually allowed to use.

— Alfred