Seidr Racing Lab: real racing in a personal VR workspace
Research and build evidence · 3 November 2026 · Quest 3 is the intended acceptance device.
The product is the workspace. Users bring their own subscriptions, official players, links and files. This testing version is free and has no checkout. Future software revenue would pay for original viewing tools, layouts and integrations; free official video remains free. No provider account, live-data plan or new paid service was purchased.
What is implemented
The watch-first room includes 40 official YouTube replays plus three self-hosted, credited real racing clips. Search by championship or type; save favourites, queue videos, resume playback and choose next-video autoplay. Official YouTube players retain their controls. The Portimão ELMS preset combines a full broadcast with two onboards from the same event. Select a single audio source, promote a view, close it, or align a side player's clock manually with an offset.
Personal setup accepts a YouTube link, a subscription/website shortcut, a website or timing panel, a permitted HTTPS direct video/HLS stream, or a local file. Website panels retain their own access rules and always offer an external fallback. Browser restrictions are not bypassed. Local files are never uploaded. Links are temporary by default, with optional on-device saving; common access parameters are detected, but private URLs cannot all be recognized.
Direct video uses its actual audio and decoded frames in a Three.js VideoTexture. The VR room offers cinema, pit wall, grandstand and cockpit settings, adjustable distance and screen size, curved/flat/focus/screen-only layouts, controller playback/seek/volume/recenter/exit and explicit mono 360° projection for compatible user media. Known flat clips remain flat. Native quality changes preserve time, volume, pause and mute.
What the research says we can deliver
| Experience | Available path | Practical limit |
|---|
| Free full races, onboards and films | Official GTWorld, ELMS, WEC, NLS, IMSA, Goodwood, WRC and Dakar uploads; publisher playback controls and outbound fallbacks. | Each upload has its own territory, login and embedding availability. A catalogue receipt is metadata verification, not proof that every video plays everywhere. |
| Live race video | Official event hubs and announced streams when races run. Users may add a current official video ID themselves. | No race is marked currently live without evidence. This research found no verified currently-live YouTube session to ship; the curated uploads are replays. |
| Existing paid subscriptions | Launch the provider in its normal browser/player or supported headset app with the user's own account. | A login does not make DRM iframe pixels available to WebXR. Paid provider video stays in its supported player. |
| Real positions and timing | AllKart's documented free classification widget; Owaka rally tracking pages; personal timing/map panels where framing is allowed. | Timing is not continuous GPS. Provider map freshness and coverage must be observed. No GPS is scraped or fabricated from video. |
| In-car audio and pit radio | Audio included by the source, selected official radio clips, or user-provided authorized streams. | No universal continuous pit-radio feed. OpenF1 documentation notes most 2026 sessions have no team-radio data; selected exchanges are not every conversation. |
| Presence in the stands or car | Flat video in a stationary virtual seat now; compatible personal mono360 files allow looking around the recorded scene. | Flat cameras cannot reveal off-camera views. True stereo180/360, spatial audio and live multi-angle capture require suitable source recordings/feeds. |
| Whole-field synchronized virtual race | Event-specific permitted data adapter, real track geometry, timestamps, delay controls and source-health checks. | The fictional Circuit lab is separate. It is not the car-position map for the watched broadcast. |
Strongest free sources
GT World official race hub and Portimão official replay; ELMS Portimão broadcast plus onboard one and onboard two; IMSA Live; NLS Live; FIAWEC+ ELMS; X-raid's official Dakar gallery. All 40 catalogue records retain their source and evidence URLs in the current catalogue.
GB3 announced free website/MSV TV coverage for its Barcelona finale on 7–8 November 2026. The source's November timezone wording conflicts with expected CET, so the UI links to the official timetable without inventing a converted start time. Official announcement.
AllKart documents its free widget. Owaka describes public tracking and replay; Chatarras Raid tracking is a real provider page for 31 October–6 November. An active date range does not establish the age of each GPS sample.
Data and immersion decisions
OpenF1 offers useful personal historical F1 data and a paid live tier; its data licence and current usage terms matter independently of client code. Approximate car coordinates are not geographical GPS and do not establish lane-level geometry. Team-radio documentation limits the continuous-radio promise. Jolpica and FastF1 do not create general rights to upstream competition data merely because their client/server code is open source. A commercial backend adapter is a separate planned decision; it is not necessary for personal viewing with official players.
Competitors demonstrate demand, but their rights and capture pipelines cannot be assumed available to this app. Apple advertises F1 multiview on Vision Pro in supported territory, and its MotoGP Tour de Force is an immersive documentary rather than a universal live race feed. XTADIUM has offered event-specific racing experiences, including archived NASCAR multiview and authenticated Indy500 immersive coverage. Country, event and provider support must be checked individually. Research did not find a clearly reusable full-race stereo/360 asset suitable for shipping here.
WebXR session setup requires a supported secure browser, user action and device permission. Video CORS, codecs and GPU decoding must be tested on the headset. Three simultaneous browser streams can raise thermal and decode load; side videos are paused when entering the native immersive cinema. No cross-origin iframe capture, subscription extraction or browser security bypass is used.
What makes this worth paying for later
- Personal race-weekend workspaces: event presets, remembered layouts, favourite drivers, one-audio routing and useful replay synchronization.
- A selected event done thoroughly: source-status checks, permitted timestamped positions, map geometry and explicit delay controls tied to the actual watched session.
- Quest quality: 15-minute headset comfort and thermal acceptance, controller reach, readable panels, reliable recenter/exit and recovery from network interruptions.
- Original immersive material: begin with owned/permitted stereo180 stands or pit-seat capture, then in-car360 where filming access permits. Spatial audio would add presence without claiming unseen camera geometry.
- Installable/native evaluation: compare a focused Quest app with the browser prototype after real-user headset tests. Subscription providers must remain on supported playback paths.
Pricing and revenue are untested. No business outcome or universal race coverage is guaranteed. The current free prototype is a way to test the viewing tools and identify the next event/device integration worth building.
Verification and limits
Actual GTWorld Portimão playback advanced for two minutes in the official embedded player, then paused correctly in the in-app browser. Actual self-hosted NASCAR footage decoded at 1920×1080 with source audio; the lighter1280×720 encode preserved paused/muted state and position during a quality switch. All 40 YouTube records were checked against official oEmbed metadata; individual playback is still provider-dependent. Three CC clips retain author, licence, source and encoding-change notices in media attribution.
Independent review covers source claims, URL storage, player lifecycle and the native VR module. Automated checks cover replay validation, source parsing, storage bounds, video controls and fallback behavior. The release receipt records the exact deployed revision and checks. There is no physical Quest, stereo capture, live whole-field positioning or continuous pit-radio acceptance result from this desktop environment.
Research evidence
The research source bundle is included in the downloadable source archive. The app catalogue is the public machine-readable evidence index. Research notes include a commercial data matrix, personal BYO integration assessment, live tracking/widget assessment and immersion capability matrix. These distinguish verified metadata, actual playback, provider statements and proposed work.