Virtual Reality: The Best Apps for Beginners

With these beginner-friendly apps, you can get to know the advantages of Virtual Reality without having to take long detours or steep learning curves. In addition to the expensive headsets for powerful computers, there are also more and more affordable VR glasses for casual users.

Although Virtual Reality (VR) is relatively accessible these days, it is still considered by many to be bulky and complicated. This has a lot to do with the fact that not everything works as intuitively in virtual reality as it is often done. As a rule, games are the most affected: Here, even ordinary processes such as locomotion in three-dimensional space can quickly become an abstract finger exercise. Impressive VR experiences can, however, also be made without such hurdles.

According to a poll for students at a campus, the following apps are ideal for the first steps in virtual reality:

Big screen

An exciting aspect of VR are social experiences in which you can interact with people from all over the world via the online connection in virtual space. Bigscreen is an excellent example of this, as users can gather here in a virtual cinema or living room, chat, watch films with their prefered celebrities or play games together. The developers also mention the possibility of working together in a virtual office. However, the app is preferably used for entertainment purposes. In addition, users often gather in virtual cinemas for fixed events such as special film nights. In addition to the content transmitted via PC, a number of linear channels such as NBC, Bloomberg or Red Bull TV are also available.

Within

With top-class partners such as the New York Times, NBC and Vice, Within founders Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin have succeeded in creating the most comprehensive platform to date for sophisticated curated VR experiences. These include a large selection of short films, documentaries, visual art projects and music videos. The content is divided into different categories and can be easily viewed according to your own preferences. With Barack Obama on the road in the White House, a trip to North Korea or on the surfboard with John Ritter – new experiences are only a nod away.

The VR app from Youtube is the first point of contact for many new users, as Google’s video portal also offers an extremely extensive archive of 360-degree videos including corresponding playlists in this segment. This can be a curse and a blessing at the same time, because unlike a portal like „Within“ nobody carries out a strict quality control and accordingly a lot of unusable content ends up on the platform. On the other hand, some of the most exciting experiences come directly from the community – so a little patience while browsing can definitely pay off here.

A walk from the Empire State Building to the Eiffel Tower becomes a stone’s throw here, as you can travel to any place in the world in a fraction of a second. With the extensive Street View image material from Google, developer Parkline Interactive has succeeded in creating a simple experience in which you can quickly lose yourself. Impressive: Jumps in time make it possible to follow the transformation of cities and landscapes. In addition, curious users can use Wikipedia integration to read directly what special places are all about. The whole thing is also possible with friends via the multiplayer mode.

National Geographic VR

Nature lovers should get their money’s worth with the VR app from National Geographic, as the application offers numerous documentations about exotic animal worlds and foreign landscapes. With exclusive series from its own VR studio and its own virtual reality events, the historical educational organization has included the new medium in its portfolio without fear of contact. The films, which were produced with the usual high quality, profited significantly from the VR technology, as the new perspective allows a completely different feeling for the dimensions of the shots shown.


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