System: Oculus Rift
Price at Time Of Review: Free
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Tool/App
Input: Oculus Remote
Best Playing Position: Sitting, Standing
Multi-Player: No
Age Rating: PG
Description: DISCOVR WA is a 360°, 3d immersive virtual reality tour of the national parks and special places in Western Australia (WA). See the rugged south coast and hear the roar of the Southern Ocean, walk in the tree tops at the Valley of Giants and go underground in caves of the Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park. You can choose audio and information popup ups that tell you more about each place.
The Department of Parks and Wildlife manage the state’s national parks, marine parks and other reserves, which cover an area of more than 27 million hectares. Keep coming back to this app as we add more parks and places to DISCOVR WA to help you plan your next adventure. For more information go to parks.dpaw.wa.gov.au/discovrwa
Review: DISCOVR WA is another virtual reality tour brochure that takes you on a tour of various Western Australia parks and places of special interest. Featuring professionally taken 360° images, full narrated scenes and even recorded sounds, each one being put together to make each and every location more immersive than the last. There is probably close to 100 locations to see and discover and it is all navigated via a simple ‘look and wait’ system.
What I like about this sort of app is that it gives people a chance to see and experience somewhere they might not be able to visit in real life. I have an autistic son and the chances of getting on a flight from the UK to Western Australia is pretty much zero, he simply couldn’t deal with it, so as far as seeing and experiencing what these locations are like, this app is the closest me and my wife will ever get. But for other people, this is a great way to encourage people to visit and I am sure we will see more and more of these VR tour brochures in the years to come.
