Google imaginatively calls it Google Earth VR. Specifically, for now, this version is for the HTC Vive which is the only consumer platform with dedicated 3D controllers for interacting in VR. Mar 16, 2020 Vesely took artistic license to color electrons and the largest-scale universe for more compelling visualization, but otherwise stayed close to reality. For now, Orders of Magnitude VR is a PC.
We’ve all been told a hundred times that VR is the future. But it’s also the present. Between and there’s already a mass of impressive VR experiences just waiting to transport you to new worlds and previously unobtainable experiences.Solid VR efforts aren’t limited to these bank balance-busting headsets though. Price:Sometimes, the simple things in tech are the most effective, and that’s certainly the case with YouTube VR, which lets you live fully immersive video content. Unlike Netflix or Hulu’s VR apps, YouTube doesn’t just plonk you in the middle of a virtual cinema and make you stare at a fake oversized flat screen. Instead, with the right content, it lets you experience the visual settings you want to enjoy.From exploring the depths of the ocean to climbing the peaks of Everest, and from enjoying the tranquility of a rolling Tuscan landscape to immersing yourself in the bustle of a Chinese street market, YouTube VR’s ever-expanding array of 360-degree explorable videos are a must, and a great way to explore the world without leaving your home.It’s also the platform that makes dozens of other VR experiences possible, such as the Great White Shark experience. Prev Page 3 of 17 Next Prev Page 3 of 17 Next 2.
VR Karts Sprint. Price:Grab the sick bag and strap yourself in – it’s time to enjoy the head-rolling, speed-providing fun of virtual karting.
Just because lengthy gaming sessions can be more than a little nauseating, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a wildly fun and compelling VR gaming experience. It’s essentially Mario Kart for the virtual world – and who doesn't like the sound of that?You look out through the eyes of your intrepid racer, and are tasked with winning the race against a grid of fun weapon-flinging foe.
Steering by tilting your controller, you’re not without some tricks of your own, with a tap on the controller’s minus key letting you utilize your own boosts and weaponry. You’ll quickly find yourself leaning into corners and hunching up on your sofa, willing your kart to go faster. Prev Page 4 of 17 Next Prev Page 4 of 17 Next Eclipse: Edge of Light. Price:Originally planned as a PSVR exclusive, Eclipse: Edge of Light instead made its way to Google Daydream. And while it might not look as good as it would have on PS4, you can definitely see its stellar graphical roots.Beyond just how it looks, which can't be understated compared to many other VR experiences, Eclipse satisfies the Metroid Prime itch with fun, floaty controls, a mysterious land to explore and satisfying puzzle solving.The Google Play Store is light on FPS games in VR and though this game isn't big on the shooting aspect, you won't want to stop playing this one until you've finished the story. Prev Page 5 of 17 Next Prev Page 5 of 17 Next Netflix.
Price:Imagine that you rented out a beautiful ski lodge just to watch a ton of Netflix. Sounds great, right? Well, that's what Netflix's VR app provides.Chock-full with Netflix's ever-growing catalog of shows and movies, you'll have full access to it all from right within the headset.Perfect for catching up on a show, watching ahead to preserve spoilers for others in the house, or staying occupied on the plane or terminal, Netflix for Google Daydream is an easy win. Prev Page 6 of 17 Next Prev Page 6 of 17 Next 3. Price:This is your chance to be a hero, and have fun in the process. You play Archer, a, yep, you guessed it, archer, who’s tasked with defending his rampart from a charging hoard of baddies.
As wave after wave of attack rolls in and the stakes increase, so the growing excitement and intensity help you fully immerse yourself in the cartoonish virtual world.Sure, it’s classic VR gaming, but there’s added polish. You move your head to look around, and once you've homed in on a charging attacker you use your wireless controller to aim and rain your arrows down on them. There are similar, admittedly slightly more impressive adaptations of this gaming premise on the likes of HTC Vive, but Daydream’s Archer E. Bowman is pure entertainment, and a game you’ll keep coming back to. Prev Page 7 of 17 Next Prev Page 7 of 17 Next 4.
Google Arts & Culture VR. Price:VR’s not just about shooting stuff and riding virtual rollercoasters, it’s also an opportunity to immerse yourself in the best this world has to offer, be that stunning views, natural wonders, or significant pieces of art, history and general human achievement.
That’s where Google Arts & Culture VR comes in.This isn’t a fancy app; there are no head-spinning tricks or immersive VR breakthroughs. Instead, it brings the wows by taking you closer to the best pieces of art in the world than you could ever normally get, backing it up with useful facts along the way. From letting your study the intricacies of a sculpture to the brush strokes of a multi-million pound painting. This is the art gallery of the future – and admission is free. Prev Page 8 of 17 Next Prev Page 8 of 17 Next Rez Infinite. Price:Call this one a big surprise.
When Rez Infinite released earlier in 2017 on PC and PSVR, we weren't expecting this cult classic game originally seen on the Sega Dreamcast to come to one of our favorite mobile VR platforms, but alas.If you've never played Rez, it's an ambitious on-rails shooter where destroying enemies with the cursor has an impact on the beat of the song. Going beyond this, your character is more or less an anti-virus deployment, sent to root out corruption and bring normalcy to the digital world.It's everything that you've heard it is: trippy, engaging and unforgettable.
But now that it's in VR, it's doubly so. Prev Page 9 of 17 Next Prev Page 9 of 17 Next 5. Price:This pretty puzzler will have you sitting in your VR headset way longer than your eyes should probably be subjected to in a single session, but it’s addictive fun that will keep you coming back for more.You play a waddling little robot, and you’re tasking with manipulating the world around him to help him get to his destination. At first the controls are tricky, but you’ll quickly find yourself using your Bluetooth remote to rotate planets and move bricks, clearing a path to ultimate success.
Beautifully pairing tricky puzzles with stunning artistry, it’s a must-try game. Prev Page 10 of 17 Next Prev Page 10 of 17 Next HBO Now VR. Price:Sure, you could cast HBO content from your phone to your TV via Chromecast, but it's way more cool to just watch it right from the Google Daydream View headset.In this app, like those from Netflix and Hulu, seats you in front of a massive screen. Your very own private viewing session to watch whatever you want, from hits like The Wire, Game of Thrones and Insecure to Curb Your Enthusiasm and many others.It's hard to keep GoT spoilers under wraps, but if you want to watch ahead, there's no better way to watch it by yourself. Prev Page 11 of 17 Next Prev Page 11 of 17 Next 6. Raptor Valley.
Price:Hands up who wishes they could visit Jurassic Park. Now keep that limb aloft if you learned absolutely nothing from John Hammond’s ill-fated attempts to bring these prehistoric lizards back to life yeah, we thought so. Well, Raptor Valley is what you get for not learning your lessons, as you find yourself alone in the long grass being stalked by a pack of velociraptors.Your Daydream View’s controller transforms to your virtual gun as you’ve got to blast these pouncing dinos. Your mind will tell you to run, but all you can do is spin on the spot, fending off attacks from all directions as your heart rate quickens. It’s not necessarily the smoothest VR game, but it's got dinosaurs, dammit – and what more do you need, really?
Prev Page 12 of 17 Next Prev Page 12 of 17 Next. Price:This is the sort of thing VR was built for – giving you the ability to leave terra firma and explore the far reaches of the solar system in immersive 3D, all from the comfort of your sofa. Encouraging you to learn as you explore, Star Chart VR lets you discover everything from our home planet to the rings of Saturn, and much more beyond.While its top-down view and ability to manipulate planets might give you a slight God complex, getting an immersive sense of the scale of the universe will quickly make you feel insignificantly small. Not only is is this a great educational tool, with the Daydream controller letting you grip and roll entire worlds it offers near endless exploration options.
Prev Page 13 of 17 Next Prev Page 13 of 17 Next 8. Keep talking and nobody explodes. Price:VR doesn’t have to be a solitary experience. Yes, it’s easy to feel isolated when you're sitting in your home in a space-age prat hat unable to see what’s going on around you, but there are already ways to make VR a group experience – such as the brilliantly innovative Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.One of you wears a Daydream View headset, and spends the entire game sitting face-to-face with a big ol’ bomb. Your mates, meanwhile, stay in the real world, using a printable bomb defusing guide to walk you through the process of making this dangerous device safe. It’s like a tension-raising game of VR Bop-It, just with higher consequences. Prev Page 14 of 17 Next Prev Page 14 of 17 Next 9.
The Turning Forest. Price:VR is an experience for the senses, and it's not just your eyes that are set to be wowed by the BBC-created The Turning Forest. As well as being a visually stunning, artistically playful creation, this is a VR experiences for your ears.Built around spatial sound, you’ll need to pair your VR headset with a decent pair of headphones to fully enjoy this app of exploration and mystery. As the world of wildlife and giant creatures evolves around you, you can pair the calming ambient sound with your own tunes, using the controller to play music on the monster’s teeth of hanging icicles.
There’s a relaxing beauty to this incredible creation. Prev Page 15 of 17 Next Prev Page 15 of 17 Next 10. LEGO BrickHeadz Builder. Price:There are certain things that, no matter how good VR gets, will always claw you back to the real world. Playing with LEGO is one of those things or at least it was.
But now LEGO’s made the VR jump, so other than meal and toilet breaks there's no need to leave your world of virtual escapism anytime soon.The BrickHeadz Builder lets you build and play, putting your favourite building bricks at the centre of a puzzler. You can’t create huge brick-based sculptures, not yet anyway, but you’ll still enjoy piecing together these compact creations. Prev Page 16 of 17 Next Prev Page 16 of 17 Next Virtual Rabbids: The Big Plan. Price:Ubisoft's Rabbids are silly, Minion-like creatures that, in every sense, should be the scourge of the Earth, but I can't get enough of them.If you're in the same boat, you'll definitely want to check out Virtual Rabbids: The Big Plan. Not only does it get you up close with the ridiculous Rabbids, but its batch of mini games are equally ludicrous, in the best way.This game is kid-friendly, both in content and how it engages players. Even young gamers will be able to figure out how to play through this title, as it requires them to, at most, know how to tap, twist and pull on virtual objects.
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There are times when everything happening in the world seems like too much — and there’s no question that recent events have contributed a lot to that feeling. But after three years of work, independent developer Ouroboro Soft is releasing a VR app that puts everything in perspective, enabling viewers to view the universe at cosmic scale, then drill down to the sub-atomic level to look at the building blocks of human life.
Think of Orders of Magnitude VR as Google Earth with radically expanded zoom options but a narrower path. Rather than showing a single planet down to street level, Ouroboro’s key coder Filip Vesely depicts the entire observable universe at the telescope-eclipsing magnification of 10 to the 27th power (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters), then lets you smoothly zoom all the way down to Planck length (10 to the -35th power), while seeing every step in between. The project was inspired by a 1977 science video called Powers of Ten, but is completely interactive and presented in 3D.
As examples of virtual reality technology go, this one is pretty incredible, as it really shows how head-mounted displays and computers can go beyond the capabilities of real optical systems. A magnification range like this would be impossible with any lens, no matter what size, yet the switch from unfathomably big to unimaginably small can be viewed by PC VR headset users, thanks to the really nice 3D engine and assets.
While the imagery includes artists’ renditions, Vesely says they’re based upon scientific underpinnings, including the use of multiple real-world databases to achieve a high degree of accuracy. Forty thousand galaxies’ positions were included, from the 2MASS Redshift Survey, with 100,000 nearby stars from the Hipparcos catalog, to brain connections from the Human Connectome project and DNA atom positions from the Protein Data Bank. Vesely took artistic license to color electrons and the largest-scale universe for more compelling visualization, but otherwise stayed close to reality.
For now, Orders of Magnitude VR is a PC exclusive. To run the $9 Oculus Store version, which is just emerging from Early Access, you’ll need a PC with at least an Intel Core i5-4590 and Nvidia GTX-970, plus an Oculus Rift or Rift S headset. Ouroboro plans to augment the already 3.1GB app with voice narration, more detailed models, and additional zoom paths that will “add much more content” in the future.
A SteamVR version with HTC Vive support will be released on March 23; no plans have yet been announced for standalone headsets such as Oculus Quest, or non-PC platforms like PlayStation VR. Ouroboro hopes to eventually see the app used in schools and museums, so if you don’t have a PC VR setup with the requisite specs, you might be able to experience it elsewhere in the future.