Oculus Rift VR Demo Menu
VR: Why it’s important
Trying to explain VR is a bit like trying to describe the taste of food- it has to be experienced. Since we know that people learn best from experiences, it follows that experiences in VR can be very educational. How that ends up happening may be up to you and other creative people who shape this new media of expression, and that’s why it’s important.
What follows is a menu of experiences I currently have on my Oculus Rift VR system that can be demo’d. While demos can only be done one at a time, a group can usually see and hear what the person in VR is experiencing. When someone is wearing the headset it is extremely important to give them space to move their arms and body around. The “play area” should be kept clear at all times.
Tutorials
If you’ve never experienced good VR before, the best introduction is this three minute intro that fires your imagination up for the possibilities of this form of media.
Next you would have to try the Touch Controller tutorial, First Contact, to get an idea of how the interactivity is developing in virtual reality.
Another tutorial, Oculus DreamDeck, takes you on several breathtaking experiences of about 30 seconds each, culminating in an encounter with a T-Rex dinosaur.
Animated Films
Computer animated films can be magical in VR. Allumette is an ambitious story (20 minutes) based on the Hans Christian Anderson story.
Dear Angelica is a landmark animated film because it was created entirely in VR as a showcase for the Quill app.
Henry is a lovable hedgehog on a quest for friendship.
Invasion is a thrilling film immersion in which you are one of two bunnies who encounter some crazy aliens.
Lost is an atmospheric experience in the woods.
Arcade Games
There are lots of silly but fun games you can play, this one might improve your fruit salad slicing skills.
Or grab a stuffed animal, wrap a controller around it and use it as a “real” kitten in this game.
Chess isn’t silly but playing it in VR is a bit strange.
Pinball FX2 has several cool tables, they’re all pretty good if you like pinball.
Open up the Toy Box and play with all kind of toys, you can break them and not get in trouble.
A full suite of NVIDIA VR Fun House games!
Wield a Light Saber or be a Goalie in VR Multigames
Be the quarterback or the star basketball, hockey or baseball player in this intense and very fun set of sports simulations.
Coasters
No lines and no way these could be done in the real world. This roller coaster takes you past bears and snowy mountains into a mysterious cave.
Darkness rollercoaster is a fun way to be slightly scared.
This short but breathtaking ride on a desert coaster will leave you wanting more.
Speed and Scream consists of three different rides, including one on the Moon.
Thrills and Chills are three coasters that weave in and out of city skyscrapers.
Ultimate Booster is a swing ride that goes a bit awry at the end.
Use the gamepad controller to activate this intense extraterrestrial coaster.
Creative
These apps allow you to use the Touch Controllers to create wonderful works of art, whether it’s spray painting a school bus or sculpting a friend, or immersing yourself in your creations.
Documentary Films
Telling a story in VR can be remarkably memorable and engaging. Here are some good ones that do not have the sharpest graphics nor allow you to interact but are still special.
Chris Milk’s original vision for VR storytelling
Moving story about Syrian refugees.
An experience of dance education.
Witness the origin and development of a song.
The story of film from the point of view of film.
Tribute to friendships and going to concerts.
Take flight above the streets of NYC.
Experience a large scale art installation.
Be in a music video.
Meet the newest types of Robots.
Travel on a modified quadcopter.
Take a ride up to see Earth from a new perspective.
Experience the power of satellite telescopes.
Free dive and hear how whales communicate.
Educational
Here’s the stuff that’s hard to pull off, where you learn something and you know you’re learning something. These are still worth a try.
In Colonist A514 you are in the school detention of the future and your assignment is to learn about the Planet Earth the way it used to be.
Take the perilous Journey up to the peak of Mt Everest.
Shrink down to the size of neurons and travel through the intricacies of your thoughts and mental processes.
Travel through the blood stream, into a blood cell and through the nucleus for an exploration of life’s structures.
The Unimersiv app includes several lecture style trips through the brain, the Acropolis, Stonehenge, Titanic, the ISS etc…
History
Experience a few moments of what it was like to jump out of a helicopter on D Day in 1944.
Be on the Apollo 11 crew for the historic Moon landing.
Observe a survey on the history of flight.
Try the first Earth orbit, the Mercury.
Visit the ruins of the abandoned city.
Ride along in an underwater delivery vehicle.
Go inside some iconic impressionist paintings.
Ocean
Swim with Manatees, Turtles, or even try the Shark Cage.
Close encounter with a whale, or beautiful reef migration.
Simulated scuba diving.
Planet Earth 2
Experiences inspired by the groundbreaking show.
President Obama
Join former President Obama on a trip to Yosemite or take a private tour of the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama.
Puzzle Games
These games can be quite challenging and I haven’t really had much time to explore them deeply.
It may be a slightly frustrating short demo but these games will challenge your brain. Do a little research on each game so you can maximize your demo time.
http://fantasticcontraption.com
A surreal building game for VR. Create life-sized contraptions as tall as you can reach, then send them whirling, flinging, and trundling off to solve puzzles on the other side of a floating island. There are no right or wrong solutions, so bring your creativity.
I’m looking forward to diving into this game, which features physics challenges and a great sense of humor. This is the kind of game that can make you smarter without realizing it.
https://iexpectyoutodie.schellgames.com
Be a world class spy in this virtual reality escape-the-room puzzle game. Complete each operation using problem-solving skills and wits… oh yes, and the power of telekinesis!
Since there are no jobs in the future, this is a nostalgic look back from the year 2050. Funniest game in VR.
In a world where robots have replaced all human jobs, step into the “Job Simulator” to learn what it was like ‘to job’ as a gourmet chef, an office worker, or a convenience store clerk. What’s next, teacher?
http://www.keeptalkinggame.com
This is the party game that requires a few people who use a printed manual to help the person in VR defuse a bomb. The title explains it well.
Get right inside the world of Minecraft with virtual reality. Build, explore and battle mobs from a fresh perspective. I know this can be educational but I personally have no clue on this game. It can make you a little motion sick as the environment and movements are not smooth, but if you love Minecraft it’s worth a whirl.
As you walk beside the lake on a cloudy night, a curious, organic artifact falls from the starry sky and transports you across the universe. The strange worlds of Obduction reveal their secrets only as you explore, discover, coax, and consider their clues.
Space Exploration
One of the most obviously cool things to do in VR is to leave Earth and check out other planets. These are the best available right now.
Marvel at Jupiter, Saturn and the mysterious moons of the outer Solar System in Discovering Space. Be mesmerized by the beauty of our own moon from a view impossible to see from Earth.
Land on the red planet. Walk the surface of Mars and interact with full-scale, realistic NASA Landers and Rovers.
Take a trip into orbit and experience life on board the International Space Station, then take a space walk.
Welcome to SPACETOURS VR, the galaxy’s finest agency for interplanetary travel. EP1 offers travels to the orbit of the eight planets of the Solar System, where you glide chasing the sun on your personal platform.
Explore the solar system, from the Sun to the moons of Saturn and out to the farthest reaches of Pluto. Gaze down and marvel at our solar system from above. Look up in wonder at the rings of Uranus. Feel the awe of floating in space around worlds no human has yet set foot on. See how the constellations of our night sky are made up of stars distant to each other in both space and time. Embrace the impossible distances and the inordinate scale of our universe.
Therapeutic and Travel
In just one minute you will acknowledge feelings experienced by person with autism in a regular café.
Fearless is inspired by the well-proven techniques of exposure therapy. Spiders or cockroaches can be overcome.
Virtual reality meditation your way, at your pace, anywhere in the world you choose.
Leave behind the daily grind and slip away to beautiful and relaxing locations. Perfect.
The world has so many beautiful and amazing places to visit. If we’re lucky, we’re able to travel and see a few of them. What if we could see them all? Google Earth VR is that awesome! Unfortunately it requires a great internet connection to work properly, and here at school it doesn’t work at all. Also it does not mirror to another display, so only the person in VR can tell how mind blowing it is.
Just a cheesy tourism promo but fun to fly over the islands and get some aloha.
Exciting Games
These are the big time games, the ones that you could spend many hours in and require skill to navigate. I’m not much of a gamer so I bought these out of curiosity and of course FOMO.
Launch into space in ADR1FT. Find out what happened. Find your crew. Find safety. This game is HARD to play!
Batman: Arkham VR immerses you and redefines what it means to be Batman. Think like Batman. Utilize his legendary gadgets in Virtual Reality to unravel a plot.
Chronos is an atmospheric RPG that chronicles a hero’s lifelong quest to save their homeland from a great evil. Grow wiser, stronger and more powerful as you explore the depths of the mysterious labyrinth. But beware, the labyrinth takes a heavy toll – each time your hero dies, they lose a year of their life!
Cosmic Trip is a first-person real-time strategy game. Embark on this groovy 1960s-inspired interstellar adventure where you must survive on hostile alien planets. Build and command swarms of cosmobots to harvest resources and battle against the slimy alien forces!
Live out your wild west fantasies to become the best gunslinger in the wild west. Battle it out in the old saloon. Rob a runaway train. Team up with other bandits and defend against hordes of ghastly creatures. Requires internet connection so might now work at school.
This one too requires internet and sometimes doesn’t work at school. If it does work, it’s awesome. With Eagle Flight THE SKY IS YOURS! 50 years after humans vanished from the face of the Earth, nature reclaimed the city of Paris, leaving a breathtaking playground. As an eagle, you soar past iconic landmarks, dive through narrow streets, and engage in heart-pounding aerial dog fights to protect your territory from opponents.
Follow the trail of a missing expedition that leads across the treacherous mountains of Antarctica. Scale massive ice walls and travel deep into alien caves in this unsettling psychological thriller. In Edge of Nowhere, nothing is what it seems and the unexpected lurks from all sides.
Project CARS is the most authentic, beautiful, intense racing game ever. Experience the action through the driver’s eyes with an unprecedented perception of speed and spatial awareness. Probably won’t work at school though because it requires an internet connection.
Robo Recall is the most popular game right now. Explore realistic environments as an agent tasked with recalling rogue robots while unlocking an expanding arsenal of weapons.
Step out on stage and rock out in Rock Band VR whether you know how to play or not. Check out the song list to see if there’s something you like. It’s a little tricky to slide the Touch controller onto the Guitar controller, and I’m set up as a lefty, but if it works properly it is pretty awesome.
This is the hottest game right now, whether you like Star Trek or not. Probably not going to work at school because it requires an internet connection so you can play live with other people. This is a team game and is all about cooperation! There are four roles: Helmsman, Tactical, Engineer and Captain. I have only had a quick look but the buzz on this one is that it takes VR to another level.
Enemies pouring into the room from all sides, a dozen bullets coursing through the air…wait. Something is different here… Superhot….. will have you dodging, diving, and sweating. One of the best games.
The Climb allows you to scale huge heights and feel the exhilaration of extreme free solo climbing. Explore and enjoy the view with the Touch hand controllers. For demos, do “Tourist mode” with simplified mechanics.
Magic is real. In The Unspoken you can cast powerful spells. Lift police cruisers with telekinetic force. Rain pyrotechnic fury down on your opponent. Summon a fiery skull with your bare hands. But since it requires internet, probably won’t work at school.
Waltz of the Wizard lets you feel what it’s like to have magical powers. Combine ingredients into a boiling cauldron to unleash creative or destructive wizardry. This one works well without needing internet access.
I have quite a bit more, and there’s more content coming out every month. There are data visualizers, music visualizers and anatomy apps. When 360 cameras get cheap in the next few years it will be fairly easy to make videos similar to the documentaries listed above. The question is will you have an interesting story to tell, an interesting experience that is worth sharing. The time to imagine such a thing is now. Developing VR content requires technical expertise and lots of iterating. Many of these game developers are being subsidized by Facebook as the market is not large enough now. An enormous amount of money is being invested by many different tech companies into virtual reality, augmented reality and ultimately the combination of the two, mixed reality.
Do you think people will try to escape from the real world by diving into VR with the same obsession that we currently have for our phone screens? That thought is scary. But what if we used VR as a way of redesigning the real world to make sure that it’s pleasant and human friendly? Cities and homes can be tried out in VR before we use Earth resources to build another ugly or inefficient building. Nothing can replace real green trees and real people as far as our biology is concerned. It’s our challenge to adopt and adapt these new technologies in a way to balance with the natural world. The games are fun and games are a great way to learn, but there will be much more to VR than just cool games. I hope you will help make sure of that.
