Never Objects / Experiences / Possibilities All work

VR sightseeing binoculars · 2023

A different
point of view.

An AI mood board. A fabrication brain.
And a very real measuring tape.

Look a little closer
Concept rendering of a blue pedestal viewer with a VR headset face cushion, two lenses, side handles and step-up rings.
Proposed design / Photoshop composite
Concept development & fabrication thinkingUnbuilt proposal
01 / The starting pointA familiar invitation to look.

I’d been around
this pedestal before.

A production company approached me to develop VR sightseeing binoculars for a proposed film-festival activation. I’d made this kind of thing before. That was why they called.

It was also why my first recommendation was to start from scratch. The familiar cast-iron sightseeing viewer wasn’t a workable retrofit for this project. I knew the fabrication problem well enough to steer us away from it.

A purpose-built design could accommodate the headset and give the experience its own identity: something more futuristic, with a shape and finish suited to the proposed activation.

Reference image of a traditional coin-operated sightseeing viewer on a tall pedestal with a circular footrest.
The familiar starting point.
Traditional sightseeing-viewer reference.
02 / Opening up the optionsImage generation

Change the prompt.
Change the silhouette.

At first, the images kept coming back to the same familiar forms. “Sightseeing binoculars” brought a lot of visual baggage.

So I got specific. I described the head and the body separately. I varied the support: pedestal, tripod, different proportions. Across hundreds of options, those decisions opened up a much wider range of shapes.

Head Shape & proportionBody Structure & materialSupport Pedestal or tripod
A contact sheet of blue generated viewers with boxy and rounded heads, narrow and wide pedestals, and triangular tripod supports.Explore the sheet
AI-generated form studies. A selection from the exploration.
The useful part

I was looking for a form I could see a way to fabricate. The image generator gave me options. Experience helped me choose one worth developing.

03 / Making the designPhotoshop

Then it was
hands on.

The selected image was close to what I had in mind. I brought it into Photoshop and rebuilt it into an appropriate design, cross-referencing measurements as I worked.

The head needed to receive a real face and headset. The pedestal needed different proportions. Handles, step-up rings and the relationship between the parts all became deliberate choices.

Selected generated concept: a blue viewer with two circular optical openings and a large horizontal collar beneath its head.View image ↗
The starting imageGenerated possibility.

A useful shape to work from.

Photoshop redesign: an Oculus-style face interface fitted into the blue head, side handles, a taller simplified column and two step-up rings.View design ↗
The Photoshop designHuman decisions.

A viewer developed around its intended use.

AI got the exploration moving. From here, it was Photoshop, Illustrator, a ruler and a measuring tape.

04 / Giving it dimensionsIllustrator

A picture has
to make room
for the hardware.

I took the design into Illustrator, drew the vector outline and built a profile view. I measured the head unit and cross-referenced it against an Oculus Quest 2.

The drawing brought the practical questions into the same frame: headset fit, access to the back, power, rotation, handles and a weighted base.

This is a concept drawing. Its original “Proportions are not to scale” note is retained. The proposed construction was never fabricated or validated.

Technical concept board titled VR Pedestal Binoculars by Dré Labre. Front outline, blue Photoshop rendering and side profile show the proposed headset enclosure and pedestal. Proportions are not to scale.Inspect drawing ↗
Original anonymized drawing / Version 1.1 / Concept design
Cropped side-profile drawing shows the Quest 2 inside the viewer, a magnetically attached back cover and USB power-bank location. The headset reference is annotated 2.68 inches and 8.8 inches.Inspect detail ↗
Drawing detail / Headset fit, power and access
Cropped front drawing with notes for grab handles, a face-shield hook, approximately 140-degree rotation, PVC or metal pipe, step-up rings and a weighted patio base.Inspect detail ↗
Drawing detail / Handling, rotation and base
Read the drawing notes

These are proposed features recorded on the concept board, not tested specifications.

  • Headset: Oculus Quest 2, with reference dimensions of 2.68″ and 8.8″ marked on the headset illustration.
  • Access and power: a magnetically attached removable back cover for quick access, with high-capacity USB power banks inside the head.
  • Handling: grab handles, a hook for disposable eye/face masks and approximately 140 degrees of swivel rotation.
  • Support: PVC or metal pipe, step-up rings and a weighted patio-style base filled with water or sand. The front view carries a 5′9″ height reference.
  • Surface details: screw heads, seams and technical texture are identified as nonfunctional decorative details.
05 / What came out of itAn exploration worth keeping

The project
stayed on paper.
The process
holds up.

The project was never awarded. These binoculars were never built.

What remains is a useful record of how I work: open up the possibilities, choose with fabrication in mind, then get specific enough to put the idea on a drawing.

AI served as a mood board and a concept instigator. The design developed through hands-on editing, measurement and decisions grounded in having made things before.

You still have to know what you’re looking at.

Design & development
Dré Labre
Tools
Image generation, Photoshop, Illustrator
Project
2023 · Client withheld · Unbuilt proposal

Full-size image ↗