The 7 Best Non-Gaming VR Apps for Meta Quest
Most people put on a VR headset to shoot zombies, socialize, or watch movies, but there are a growing number of VR experiences on Meta Quest headsets that are aimed at more than just escapism. They’re about storytelling, empathy, or just immersing yourself in a weird job you’d never try in real life. Here are some of the most interesting non-gaming experiences I’ve had in VR: some are educational, some are artistic, and some are so realistic they make me sick, but they all prove that VR has more to offer than just games.
In the morning when you wake up (To the ends of the earth)
Remember that day in 2018 when the U.S. Emergency Alert System mistakenly sent every person in Hawaii a text alert that read: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT APPROACHING HAWAII. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” It probably didn’t seem like a big deal to you, but that’s because you weren’t in Hawaii at the time. If you had been, you’d have spent 38 minutes — that’s how long it took to get the clarifying text — in a world where everything was about to end. This wasn’t a drill, and all you could do was wait for the flash. On the Morning You Wake (To the End of the World) is a powerful VR documentary that looks at how those 38 minutes changed people’s lives, what it’s like to know the end has come, and how scary it is that the next text message about a ballistic missile probably won’t be a mistake.
Titanic VR
It’s not exactly fun to be on the deck of the Titanic just before it sank, but it is interesting – through the goggles, anyway. Titanic VR includes an immersive 360-degree cutscene in which you sail away on one of the Titanic’s few lifeboats, meet the “unsinkable” Molly Brown, and watch helplessly as the massive ocean liner plunges into the frigid North Atlantic, taking some 1,500 passengers to their watery graves. You can then jump back to the present for an interactive simulation in which you are a marine archaeologist piloting a bathyscaphe to visit the sunken site of the Titanic wreck. Your mission is to discover, recover, and preserve historical artifacts . I tried very hard to crash into the wreckage and go down with a bang, but it’s not the same experience.
Anne Frank House VR
This moving VR experience takes you through an accurate recreation of the Secret Annex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank, her family, and others hid from the Nazis for two years. Once you open the hidden door behind the bookcase in Anne Frank House VR , there are no avatars and no narration other than the occasional excerpt from Anne’s diary, spoken in silence. There are no goals or objectives to complete, leaving you alone with the weight of history, free to process what’s been left behind. There’s the small kitchen table where Anne Frank ate her meals. There’s the narrow bed where she shared her first kiss with Peter. There are the photos she cut out of film magazines and taped to the wall. Thankfully, there’s no sudden knock on the door announcing the arrival of the Gestapo; that would be too much to bear.
Mission: ISS
Sadly, you and I will never fly into space. The closest we will probably get to that is the virtual reality experience offered by Mission: ISS , a realistic space travel simulator that allows you to float in zero gravity in Earth orbit on the International Space Station, dock with a capsule, and go into outer space. Unfortunately, I only got to experience the initial stage of floating on the ISS: the game is so realistic that I immediately felt seasick, as if I were on a real space station!
Symtrix
I absolutely love the virtual reality training programs available on Meta. This uncharted genre is full of experiences that give you an unfiltered look at professions and vocations you’d never otherwise experience, like driving a forklift or taking apart a turbine engine , without dumbing them down to make them “fun.” Simtryx is the best I’ve found. This augmented reality medical training tool is designed to test the diagnostic skills of aspiring doctors and nurses. It’s an exam, so it doesn’t provide any instructions; it simply presents users with a set of tools — that thing for listening to a heart, that thing with a tongue that looks like a Popsicle stick, you know, all that doctor stuff — and an AI patient they can touch and feel. The system then expects you to make a medical diagnosis before time runs out.
I’m sure it’s a useful tool for doctors, but it’s just hilarious when you don’t know what you’re doing. With AI, your patients will answer any question you ask, and you can prescribe any medication you want. “Stomach ache, you say? 500cc of fentanyl, now !” I’ve killed a bunch of people and diagnosed more with “Who the Hell Knows,” but after much trial and error, I managed to correctly diagnose this poor guy with cirrhosis:
Being a doctor is easy. Note: This is serious doctor business. Credentials are “currently only available to Simtryx partners,” so you may have to beg to be let in, like I did.
OneLab VR
OneLab VR , created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was designed to train lab technicians and testers in best scientific practices, but they left it open-ended so any idiot can tinker in a virtual lab. The game takes place in a realistic 50,000-square-foot public health lab where (presumably crazy) scientists can operate centrifugal force machines, properly dispose of biohazardous waste, sterilize instruments in autoclaves, and more, all without actually dumping containers full of pathogens or consuming hazardous waste. The game is also multiplayer, so instructors can guide students, but there’s no reason you can’t use it to goof off with your friends. If you enjoy following meticulous procedures you don’t fully understand, or just want to pretend you’re wearing a lab coat, you’ll love OneLab VR.
Notes on Blindness
Based on the audio diaries of theologian John Hull, who gradually lost his sight in the 1980s, Notes on Blindness is an artistic journey into the kind of empathy that only virtual reality can offer. It doesn’t try to simulate blindness (it’s easy to do by closing your eyes), but rather immerses the user in the visual and auditory experience of what Hull called “the world beyond sight.” It’s a quiet, emotional, and deeply personal experience that you live in a VR headset so no one can see you cry.