Greenland Melting

I’ve been a little lapse on my articles here on VRFocus of late (mostly due to the time involved in setting up my own business over the last few months) but I didn’t want to miss the chance to offer up my Top 10 VR Education Apps of 2019 (PS you can read my Top 10 of 2018 here).

I have only selected apps which released in 2019 and I have decided to exclude ports of older apps (e.g. Tilt Brush on Oculus Quest). As with last year’s list, I would like to highlight the fact that every app was personally selected by me and this list does not represent the views of VRFocus as a whole. 2019 saw some excellent releases in the world of VR Education so before we dive into the main list, let’s give a few honourable mentions:

Honourable Mentions

Jigspace VR – One of my favourite educational AR apps is now in beta on Oculus. One to watch!

Mondly VR – This excellent language-learning platform came to PCVR this year.

Adam Savage’s Tested VR – Based on the TV show. Could offer some inspiration for future designers

The Rome Reborn series – I do like these apps… they just always seem like they could have done more.

Newton’s House of Forces – A fun little physics playground from the team at Victory XR

Ok, so now on to the actual Top 10 for 2019. In no particular order:

Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass

HTC Vive has continued to show genuine dedication to both the arts and education in terms of their projects and this collaboration with The Louvre is a real benchmark experience. Originally launched in situ, the app subsequently launched for free via Steam and Viveport and is simply stellar. Ultimately every single art student in the world deserves the opportunity to try this wonderful experience that brings one of the world’s most famous works of art to life like never before.

Dissection Simulator Pig/Cat Editions

After the award-winning success of their frog dissection app, Victory XR returned with multiple new iterations in 2019, offering fresh dissection experiences (no pun intended) to students. Once again these are hosted by the brilliant Wendy Martin (a national award-winning science teacher) and offer students a mess-free way to hone their dissection skills and develop their understanding of anatomy. The original frog app was notably excellent and Victory have clearly built upon what they learnt from that experience to refine and augment their new offerings significantly.

My Africa: Elephant Keeper

My Africa: Elephant Keeper pairs the original (and wonderful) Conservation International 360° film with an immersive, interactive elephant veterinary simulation experience in this Viveport app. It’s a great idea – pairing the 360° media with a hands-on companion piece and I’d like to see this approach used more by educational VR content developers. Even better still is the fact that every purchase of My Africa: Elephant Keeper helps support Conservation International’s work protecting elephants and other wildlife around the world.

Trash Rage

This little gem from Giant LaZer gamifies learning about recycling in a really fantastic way. Set in the near future, Trash Rage explores the impact of humans on the planet as you sort and recycle various types of garbage. Easy to pick up and hugely fun to play, this could really help students get a better understanding of the varying types of recyclables as well as the importance of recycling as a whole.

Gadgeteer

Gadgeteer is a physics-based puzzle app that definitely harkens back to the classic Rube Goldberg machines. Essentially you can build all kinds of crazy machines and contraptions using a huge range of parts and tools. The sandbox mode is where it’s really at for the classroom as it means students can have the freedom to really experiment and explore ideas. It’s a great example of something that would take a lot of time and physical resources to do in the real world whereas in VR, the imagination can run a little wilder! A great addition to a school’s STEM lab.

Raid on the Ruhr

A spiritual sequel to 1943 Berlin Blitz, the Raid on the Ruhr experience from Immersive VR Education showed once again that history really can be brought to life using virtual reality. Students get to experience first-hand the events of the RAF’s Operation Chastise and the bombing of the Mohne Dam. It’s more hands-on and interactive than its predecessor, with the user able to adopt multiple roles within the aircraft, but the historical accuracy and wonderful use of original audio recordings once again frame this as a genuine slice of history brought into the present through VR.

I try to avoid including 360° film content in this list but I have included Greenland Melting as it’s use of volumetric capture really does add to the sense of presence, despite the limited interactions that the user is afforded during this 12-minute documentary piece. The subject is a timely one and students will get a first-hand look at Greenland – from the sky, the ground and even under the surface of the water as they learn more about why Greenland’s glaciers are melting and the ramifications of this.

Golden Loft

This one is very unique – an immersive experience inside an attic to help you learn more about the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence! As you interact with various elements within the whimsical space, the mathematical concepts come to life before your eyes. This free experience is a definitely worth a look and a worthy addition to the frankly quite limited range of math-based VR apps.

National Geographic Explore VR

I really wanted to include something for the Oculus Quest as I’ve already seen the power of this great HMD in classrooms first-hand. That being said, I also didn’t want to include ports or this list would have been taken over by the likes of Tilt Brush and Apollo 11. There are a couple of brand new titles that launched directly for the Quest in 2019 though and this one from National Geographic is an excellent example of VR breaking down geographical boundaries and letting students explore the far corners of the Earth. In this case – Antarctica and Machu Pichu.

T-Rex: Skeleton Crew

Come on – there had to be a dinosaur one on here eventually didn’t there? It’s a good one though – an app that was developed for the American Museum of Natural History in New York by Immersion VR in association with Vive as a part of a special “T rex: The Ultimate Predator” exhibition. Much like the Mona Lisa app, this was then released for free via Viveport. It’s an engaging experience where students can build a T-Rex skeleton bone by bone and eventually witness it come to life! A great option in particular for anyone who loved Hold The World in 2018.

Greenland Melting

Directed by Catherine Upin, Julia Cort, Nonny de la Peña and Raney Aronson-Rath

After the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, Greenland Melting uses high resolution photogrammetry technology to provide an up-close view of icy Arctic locations that are disappearing faster than predicted. Audiences can stand in the water in front of a glacier, dive beneath the ocean’s surface and fly above the land at low altitude. My favourite element was observing these locations with NASA scientists by my side, explaining to me how climate change is affecting these spaces and how these changes will impact the rest of the world. There was a real juxtaposition here between experiencing the sheer beauty of these sublime spaces whilst simultaneously feeling a burgeoning sense of peril at our uncertain future.

Draw Me Close: A Memoir

Directed by Jordan Tannahill

This real-time animated piece is a vivid memoir about the relationship between a mother and her son in the wake of her terminal-cancer diagnosis. A partnership between the UK’s National Theatre and the National Film Board of Canada, it involves real, live acting in an installation space, where you embody Jordan, the son (and the playwright himself).

The seamless mixture of live acting and line drawn animation makes it a first of its kind. Creating it this way means you really get the best out of both worlds from both VR and performance: the immediacy that comes from the liveness of theatre with the myriad of stylistic creative opportunity that VR brings.

The Last Goodbye

Directed by Gabo Arora and Ari Palitz

The Last Goodbye was created with USC’s Shoah Foundation, whose mission is to preserve the testimonies of living Holocaust survivors. The piece introduces audiences to Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter and takes you with him to the concentration camp he was held in, on a visit he has vowed to be his last. When speaking of his experiences and reflections, Pinchas addresses the viewer directly.

Throughout the piece I felt a bond developing with Pinchas; a sort of pseudo relationship. This is something high fidelity VR is very good at: people and intimacy. Feeling present in the concentration camp and spending time with Pinchas left me feeling a real sense of urgency: it is up to us, today’s society to preserve the memories of Holocaust survivors – we need to be using tomorrow’s technology, now, to futureproof the past.

Alice – The Virtual Reality Play

Directed by Mathias Chelebourg and Marie Jourdren

As a little girl, I couldn’t help but place myself as Alice when reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Fast forward a few decades and here I am – I am Alice, and I am late for my coronation as Queen! Quick!

This VR play, like Draw Me Close, fuses motion-captured actors and real-time rendered advanced CG to place each audience member into their own interactive wonderland. I got to meet characters including Humpty Dumpty and the white rabbit whilst being invited to talk with them and take on their challenges. The story world expands with each new audience member; meaning that this piece will evolve over time.

Alice demonstrates not only that theatre and VR can be seamless bedfellows, but that there is heaps of potential for the live entertainment industry to adopt this technique.

The island itself, Lazzaretto Vecchio, has its own remarkable history. It was in fact a quarantine and mass grave in the 15th and 16th centuries for plague victims and people with leprosy. Knowing that we were literally standing on centuries of human history gave a certain texture to my time spent in each VR piece. VR’s public reputation verges on trivial, futuristic and slightly silly. The VR work I saw, and the island’s history was the antithesis of that. This grounded and meaningful approach is a sign of how VR should be handled; as something that has the potential to create deep, powerful audience experiences.

With VR coming of age creatively, the next challenge will soon creep up on us: how can we get this work to mass audiences?