looking for a 2 way camera app for cosplay costume

Factual Questions
1

I’m going to a local con next week. It’s not huge, but it’s fun. I thought of a costume I’d like to do - costume details are below*, so as not to clutter up the question - that involves a ‘hole through the body’ illusion. I’ve got access to two ipads, and I was going to have on my chest/abdomen and the other on my back and have them each show the other’s camera view.

1- I can do this on face time easily enough, but I doubt I’ll have reliable wifi.
2- I can do it with Facetime using my camera as a hotspot, but then I’ll need a ton of cellular data. I think.
3- Another option that was suggested was using my phone as a hotspot, then having the two ipads communicate via an ip camera app, but most of these seem to use one phone or ipad as the camera, and the other as a viewer, not a two way viewing effect.

So. Any better ideas? Or a camera app that works like facetime?

*The costume. I want to go as a dead Kobayashi Maru crewman. Jumpsuit with Kobayashi Maru logo, nametag, big whole blown through body. LeVar Burton and Bruce Campbell are at the Con (Fan Expo) which I why this idea came to me.

2

God. ‘Hole’ blown through body, not ‘whole’. Jesus Murphy.

3

This has been done before (at least once–that might not be the one I remembered.) He used Facetime.

4

Mark Rober (the guy in that video) is a really smart guy, so I don’t understand why he didn’t line the two iPads up. The one on his back looks to be about 4-5 inches higher than the one in front. Don’t make that rookie mistake, AFT3D.

5

Problem with facetime is that it requires either wifi or cellular data. It seems that I ought to be able to generate the illusion with 2 ipods and an iphone just talking locally.

I spent a lot of time with the ipads this weekend. I am at an impasse. I can face time two ipads together with wifi. I can FaceTime two ipads together to my cell as a hot spot with my cell using wifi. I cannot facetime two ipads via my cellular hotspot using cellular data.

I cannot figure out haw to hardwire them to talk to one another.
Neither ipad has a sim card port, so I cannot just make one be a big phone and call the other.

Ideas?

6

Google Duo is another app that might work. I use it to do video calling between android-iOS. Not sure of the data requirements so you would have to experiment a bit.

7

Can you not directly Wi-Fi from one iPad to the other without going through a router?

8

This is what I was ~thinking. Get an app that makes one a WiFi router/hotspot and create a two machine network.

(I know that there used to be settings in PC WiFi routers to make direct connections but I haven’t seen anything like this is Android WiFi settings pages.)

9

It is Wi-Fi Direct on Android. I use it all the time to transfer files between devices.

10

Some googling find lots of apps for Wi-Fi Direct video chat for Android (such as this one), but iPad hits keep mentioning going through a Wi-Fi network.