The Future of LEGO Instructions Building in AR Augmented Reality

While the foundation of the LEGO® brick is the endless creativity it contains, instructions are an important aspect of the building process for many sets. LEGO instructions have evolved over the years. The early instructions weren’t very user-friendly, as I discovered when I rediscovered some of the sets from my youth. Modern instructions are much easier to navigate, apart from that brief period when 18+ sets had a black background. However, you may have noticed that in the lifestyle images for many of the sets aimed at younger builders, the traditional paper instructions are increasingly being replaced by a smart device and the LEGO Builder app. The app has been available for a few years now and provides access to digital versions of instructions for all new sets. While digital instructions are convenient, especially the ability to rotate them in 3D, the process is much slower, even painful when building the Mario sets.

But a recent advert for the Meta Quest suggests a possible future route for LEGO construction – augmented reality building. AR is becoming increasingly accessible, via smart devices and VR headsets. One such headset is the Meta Quest 3; in that recent TV advert for the device, a man is building a crib, using the Meta Quest to overlay instructions and videos as he builds. A similar feature is available on the super-expensive Apple Vision Pro. So I thought I’d see if I could replicate it when building a LEGO set.

Now, it’s not as simple as firing up Meta Quest and starting to build. There’s some work to be done up front. First, you’ll need the PDF version of a set’s instructions. You can easily find these on LEGO.com or by visiting a set’s product page. Download the instructions to another device, such as a laptop or smart device, and add them to Google Drive or a similar application.

On your Meta Quest, you can then access this via the device’s browser. The latest update for Meta Quest 3 adds better passthrough and multiple screens, so for my testing I had three virtual screens open, including the instructions on Google Drive and Disney+. You can choose to control Meta Quest using hand tracking, which works well enough, but can cause the virtual screens to jump around a bit. If you’re using hand gestures, you can simply pinch your fingers together to scroll through the screen. You can also use Quest controls

I definitely prefer paper instructions to the slow Builder App, but I really enjoyed building in AR. Playing a movie or some music at the same time added to the experience. A dedicated VR LEGO app would be awesome and a nice option to have.