Space Setup for a heist: scanning your room so the lasers stop at your real walls

There’s a moment in a good mixed reality game when the room stops being a backdrop. In Laser Thief it happens when a beam doesn’t fizzle out in mid-air but lands exactly on your living room wall. That’s not luck — it’s your room scan. If the scan is sloppy, the laser stops 20 cm short of the wall or vanishes into your bookshelf. If it’s clean, the room feels like a wired-up vault.

This guide walks through Meta Space Setup, step by step, with an eye on what Laser Thief does with that data according to the studio.

Why the scan carries so much weight here

On launch, Laser Thief loads every room saved in Meta Space Setup via Meta’s Mixed Reality Utility Kit (MRUK). From that data the game builds three things:

• Walls: beams that touch the edge of the 3 × 3 m design area are extended to your real walls.
• Ceiling: tall posts reach up to your ceiling. If the scan has no ceiling height, the game assumes 2.5 m.
• Furniture: furniture under 1.3 m tall counts as an obstacle. The level fitter keeps pads and loot 0.30 m away from it and keeps the walking route clear.

Security cameras in gadget levels hang flush against a real wall too, 0.2 m below the ceiling. In other words: every mistake in the scan becomes visible in the game.

Setup checklist before you scan

1. Lights on. Normal, even room lighting. No direct sunlight on the headset lenses.
2. Floor clear. Clutter, cables and bags out of the way. Anything on the floor can be misread by the scan, and it’s a trip hazard anyway.
3. Furniture in its final position. If you move the coffee table out of the way to play, move it before you scan. The scan should show the room you play in.
4. Decide on doors. Decide whether doors are open or shut, and leave them that way.
5. Check the battery. A scan with corrections takes a few minutes.

Space Setup, step by step

1. Open Space Setup. In the Quest settings you’ll find Space Setup in the physical space section; the exact menu name depends on your system version. Alternatively, launch it straight from Laser Thief: in the room picker “CHOOSE YOUR HEIST SITE” via SCAN MY ROOM or RESCAN, or later in the game settings under ROOM ▸ RESCAN / CHANGE ROOM.

2. Scan slowly. Walk calmly through the room with the headset on and deliberately look at walls, corners, floor and ceiling. On Quest 3 and 3S this runs largely automatically via the depth sensors. The more slowly you turn, the cleaner the edges.

3. Check the walls. After the automatic scan, check every wall. If a wall surface sits visibly in front of or behind the real wall, correct it. For Laser Thief this is the most important step, because this is where the extended beams end.

4. Mark the furniture. Sofa, coffee table, sideboard, bed: everything in the room should show up as a piece of furniture in the scan. Height is what matters. According to the studio, furniture under 1.3 m counts as an obstacle for the fitter to plan around. A sideboard that’s scanned too low, or missed entirely, can end up with a walking route running right past it.

5. Check the ceiling. Look up and check whether the ceiling was captured. Without a ceiling value the game assumes 2.5 m. In a period flat with a 3 m ceiling the tall posts will visibly stop short of the ceiling; in a low attic room they may poke through it.

6. Save. Confirm the room. Multiple rooms are saved individually and later appear in Laser Thief as separate maps.

What to check in-game straight away

Once the scan is done, start Laser Thief. The room picker shows every saved space as a card, “MY ROOM n”, with dimensions and a rotating wireframe miniature on which furniture is marked in magenta. That’s your quickest sanity check:

• Are the dimensions right? If the card says 2.4 × 3.1 m and your tape measure says 3.4 × 3.1 m, a wall is missing.
• Is all the furniture there? A missing magenta object means it wasn’t scanned.
• Is the dot in the right place? The “you are here” dot shows where you’re standing. When you select the card, the game traces that room’s walls into your real room. If the lines sit beside your walls, the scan has drifted.

In mixed reality mode, glowing lines trace your real wall, floor and ceiling edges in the colour of the current world. In VR mode, virtual walls stand exactly where the real ones are (with a ceiling height of at least 2.3 m). Both make inaccuracies obvious immediately.

When a rescan is due

• You’ve moved furniture.
• Lasers visibly stop in front of or behind a wall.
• A camera appears to hang in mid-air rather than on the wall.
• The game keeps pads or loot conspicuously far from a spot where nothing is standing. That usually means there’s a phantom piece of furniture in the scan.

The route is short: in Laser Thief, go to Settings ▸ ROOM and choose RESCAN / CHANGE ROOM. That opens the room picker and launches Meta Space Setup directly. BLIP waits until you’re done.

Common mistakes

Mistake	Effect in-game	Fix
Wall set too far inwards	Room feels smaller, possibly thinned out	Correct the wall in the scan
Furniture missing	Walking route can run right past it	Mark the furniture afterwards
Ceiling missing	Posts stop at 2.5 m	Capture the ceiling
Scanning in dim light	Imprecise edges	Rescan in good light

Comfort and safety tips

• The room scan doesn’t replace the boundary. Leave the guardian on and keep it inside your real clear space.
• Don’t scan with pets or children in the room walking through the view.
• Whatever you clear away for the scan stays away while you play.

You’ll find Laser Thief itself in the Meta Horizon Store.

Scaler’s take: Ten minutes of careful Space Setup is the best investment you can make in Laser Thief. A game that stretches beams to your walls and posts to your ceiling can only look as good as your scan. Check the walls, take furniture heights seriously, don’t forget the ceiling, and the room becomes a vault.