Is the idea of the metaverse dead? Even without a much hotter technology in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) capturing the public conversation, most ordinary people have stopped talking about it, beyond reminiscing about the COVID-19-era hype and catty quips at the technology's expense.

The hype was once so loud that one of the biggest names in the technology industry capitalized on it by changing its own name — we're looking at you, Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook. Several years on, however, Meta has quietly divested itself of its interests in the area. After losing more than $70 billion since 2021 as of December 2025, the firm was preparing to cut metaverse development outfit Reality Labs' funding by 30%.

Recently, Meta announced it was shutting down its virtual reality environment Horizon Worlds in June 2026 — meaning the new paradigm we were all promised would have become one of technology's infamous short-lived flameouts. Then, days later, it reversed course — with company representatives saying the platform would remain available on Quest, Meta's VR headset.

The original iteration of virtual reality (VR) emerged in the 1990s, primarily for gaming, but the theory goes back further, with immersive digital worlds featured in science fiction as far back as the work of author Ray Bradbury in the 1960s. A real-world attempt at digital worlds, Second Life, made an early splash when released in 2003, but technical and copyright issues hobbled adoption.

The idea was resurrected by Facebook in the early 2020s. CEO Mark Zuckerberg believed we’d increasingly use shared, immersive experiences that go beyond flat screens as digital social interaction became central to life and work, and scientific studies confirmed users were ready, particularly after COVID lockdowns had made remote work the new normal.

But, several years later, things have changed. While Meta wasn't the only company touting a new generation of VR, it’s a fairly damning indictment of the faith the technology industry has in this concept. But does that mean it's dead and buried for good? Although it was a non-starter for many, for others, it's not dead but simply still finding its place in the modern world.

The failed promise of the metaverse

"The branding is wounded, or under correction from its initial expectation," said Lik-Hang Lee, assistant professor of augmented reality (AR) and VR at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He authored a study on the metaverse, which was published Oct. 21 in the journal Computers and Society. "The grand vision of a single, shared virtual universe where we all work, play, and socialize in headsets all day was always a bit of a sci-fi oversell."

Futurist Mark van Rijmenam, who writes and speaks publicly about future technologies, agrees. He added that the vision of cartoon avatars in virtual reality (VR) lobbies was never going to happen. But he thinks the metaverse is very much alive nonetheless. "It's maturing into something more meaningful than the hype once promised," he told Live Science. "What felt like abandonment was actually a pivot beneath the surface. It's being rebuilt with purpose, not PR, and with technology that's actually ready for the spatial internet."

There's no denying that something went seriously wrong with this idea after Meta popularized it during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Spending our time in virtual utopias, at least in the short term, did not enjoy wide appeal, and what little interest there was evaporated. When asked why metaverse proponents failed to convince the masses, Lee said there was no "killer app" for non-early adopters.

"VR meetups and virtual offices were marketed as the future, but for most of us, they were just clunkier versions of Zoom, Slack, or games we already had," he said. "The friction of putting on a headset is high and the reward wasn't clearly higher."

For van Rijmenam, the metaverse that received all the hype also missed one crucial unique selling point — it was disconnected from real use cases. "It focused on virtual hangouts and flashy graphics instead of solving real-world problems or merging with everyday workflows. Early metaverse projects promised novelty before utility," he said.

A common theme that experts brought up was that the hardware wasn't seamless or mature enough to deliver the promised experience. "The current hardware suffers from limitations like a small field of view, heavy designs, motion sickness and poor graphics," Bob Gourley, CTO at intelligence and analysis firm OODA, told Live Science. "The future of the metaverse lies in the hands of technologies in AI, 5G, edge computing, and display like microLEDs and better optics that are still to come before it can be fully realized. The debate now isn't about the metaverse being dead or alive but how the technological support will catch up."

Presenting a particular stumbling block were the VR headsets touted by Oculus (later Meta) and Sony (for use with PlayStation). Not only are they bulky, and much harder to set up and use compared to a laptop or phone, but reports of headaches and nausea were widespread, thanks to something known as a "vergence-accommodation conflict."

We focus on an object when the brain uses muscles to pull the eyes in different directions so that their combined focal point converges on an object, no matter how far away. But when you wear a VR headset, your eyes constantly focus on a small flat screen just fractions of an inch from your eyes, an illusion that works — but only up to a point. Prolonged exposure causes a contradiction between the visual field and how your brain directs muscles in your eyes to focus in response, a phenomenon that was central to a 2024 study in the Journal of Optometry.

"Interestingly, humans aren't purely visual-first organisms," said Jennalyn Ponraj, founder of Delaire, a research lab focused on voice and human nervous system regulation in AI systems. "Presence is actually regulated through interconnected systems that include vestibular balance, proprioception, breath, and timing. When you flood vision with high-resolution but low-latency input, the rest of the sensory system receives conflicting or absent signals, and it often results in fatigue, nausea, dissociation, and cognitive strain. The technology functions, but the models of human perception are incomplete. Meta's divestment looks like an admission that immersion ultimately depends on attunement to biophysical regulation."

This lack of comfort is something of an insurmountable barrier, experts suggest, with virtual worlds likely going nowhere until accessing them is as easy as putting on a pair of glasses and forgetting they're there. We also can't forget one of the most common barriers to uptake of any new technology paradigm: tech fatigue.

"A lot of people already feel overwhelmed by digital life," said Lee. "Asking them to strap a gadget to their face for casual interaction is a big ask. There wasn't a clear "why" — why do this in VR instead of just using a phone or laptop? Outside of gaming and some enterprise use cases, developers struggled to find sustainable business models and reasons for people to come back."

The case against the metaverse's revival

But not everyone’s so certain of such manifest destiny for the metaverse. As long ago as 2023, a market research firm told the media: "The metaverse was briefly attractive to enterprises, but few invested seriously in moving the concept further within their organization."

Even before that, when metaverse hype was still at fever pitch, a Pew Research study reported that 46% of respondents said the metaverse won’t be a refined, truly immersive and functioning aspect of daily life by 2040.

Former software engineer at Facebook, Unity and Adobe, Mircea Dima, now currently founder, CEO, CFO and software engineer at AlgoCademy, thinks there’s little future in mass-market metaverse use. The limiting factor, he told Live Science, is human behavior — not graphics or computing power.

"Wearing a headset isolates you from other people, puts a physical strain on your body, and demands prolonged focus," he said. "No one will wear a device on their face for an extended period of time for tasks that can be done just as quickly with a laptop or smartphone. Hardware getting to a point where it’s comfortable to wear on your head isn’t going to remove that friction."

He added that the metaverse still has proponents because the concept is "emotionally appealing."

"Engineers love working within a closed system where almost anything is programmable. Investors hate to admit they’ve thrown good money after bad and founders are often emotionally attached to a publicly promoted vision of what they wanted to create, and won’t easily abandon it."

In one example, Mark Friend, Company Director at education IT provider Classroom365, delivered and ran VR classroom pilots. While such programs captured students’ attention, he said, the metaverse will never be mainstream in the field. He told Live Science the pilot data showed increases in the level of focus in students of up to 150%, but the model collapsed in the real world. The primary barriers to scale, he added, was hardware cost and the time to meet compliance requirements.

Saswata Baksi, co-founder of Local Glyph, tells a similar story, saying the metaverse is a non-starter because it solves a problem users don’t have. "A retail brand spent six months creating a virtual showroom for their customers to browse products as avatars," he told Live Science. "Peak usage was 200 people in the first week — but by the end of the first month, usage had plummeted to single digits. It simply took too long for customers to navigate the virtual space. They preferred scrolling through Instagram on their phones, which offered no setup friction."

As for why so many organizations continue to assert the metaverse will have its day, almost everybody Live Science spoke with highlighted the "sunk cost fallacy" phenomenon.

The metaverse is down, but is it out?

Many think the general philosophy of meeting, working and playing in virtual worlds in digital form is still coming. Lee said that if you strip away the hype, more and more of our lives are moving into persistent digital spaces: "Games, virtual collaboration tools, industrial simulations and augmented reality on phones and headsets are all growing."

But perhaps the ultimate irony is that AI, which left the metaverse in the dust on the hype scales, will be one of the cornerstones that enable it. "The original metaverse failed because content creation and responsiveness were manual and static. AI changes that," said van Rijmenam.

Joachim van der Meulen is the secretary and facilitator of DROPS Asia, an industry association to prevent harm from dropped objects in the workplace. He began building VR training content in 2017 and quickly learned "how difficult and expensive it is to deliver a genuinely good immersive experience," but now he can see a way to rekindle the effort by using AI.

"Much of our effort went into maintaining core systems and keeping the software up to date, leaving little budget or capacity for new features or content," he said. "AI-assisted development proved effective for routine, labour-intensive tasks, in some cases solving long-standing technical problems, and we’re now seeing experimentation with generative AI for 3D environments."

Lee agreed, adding: "If anything like the metaverse is ever going to work at scale, AI will probably be a huge part of what makes it viable when it comes to content creation, intelligent characters and agents, personalization and usability and real-time understanding of the 'world model' and translation."

We also can't forget the roll call of technologies, from the Apple Newton to Google Glass, that only failed because they were too early — a position the metaverse finds itself squarely in today, with almost everybody we spoke to for this article agreeing it still shows potential despite a subpar early hardware experience. We can also see echoes of the Google Glass in the Ray-Ban Meta devices and similar AR-powered smart glasses today, which face regulatory and privacy hurdles.

"The metaverse feels like it's in its middle phase," said Lee. "The initial "this will change everything tomorrow" phase is over. What we have now is slower, more incremental progress. It's a classic technology trough — less visible, less glamorous, but often where the most important engineering and design work actually happens."

Even though Meta has cut funding and effectively neutered the idea, for many others, the underlying technologies and architectural foundations are now emerging, says van Rijmenam. AI, spatial computing, AR and VR hardware, as well as real-world physics models driven by spatial intelligence and real-time rendering, are all converging to provide a foundation for a future attempt to resurrect the metaverse. "What once felt abandoned was actually incubation," he says.

It has been over a decade since Google Glass smart glasses were announced in 2013, followed by their swift withdrawal — in part because of low adoption. Their subsequent (and lesser known) second iteration was released in 2017 and aimed at the workplace. They were withdrawn in 2023.

In December 2025, Google made a new promise for smart glasses — with two new products to be released in 2026. But why have Google smart glasses struggled where others are succeeding? And will Google see success the third time around?

What is clear from developments in wearable tech over the last decade, is that successful products are being built into things that people already like to wear: watches, rings, bracelets and glasses.

These are the types of accessories that have emerged over centuries and currently adopted as normal in society.

Some of the most recent academic research is taking this approach, building sensors into jewellery that people would actually want to wear. Research has developed a scale to measure the social acceptability of wearable technology (the WEAR scale, or Wearable Acceptability Range), which includes questions like: "I think my peers would find this device acceptable to wear."

Noreen Kelly, from Iowa State University, and colleagues showed that at its core, this scale measured two things: that the device helped people reach a goal (that made it worth wearing), and that it did not create social anxiety about privacy and being seen as rude.

This latter issue was highlighted most prominently by the term that emerged for Google Glass users: Glassholes. Although many studies have considered the potential benefits of smart glasses, from mental health to use in surgery, privacy concerns and other issues are ongoing for newer smart glasses.

All that said, "look-and-feel" keeps coming up the most common concern for potential buyers. The most successful products have been designed to be desirable as accessories first, and with smart technologies second. Typically, in fact, by designer brands.

A fine spectacle

After Google Glass, Snapchat released smart glasses called "spectacles", which had cameras built in, focused on fashion and were more easily accepted into society. The now most prominent smart glasses were released by Meta (Facebook's parent company), in collaboration with designer brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley. Most of these products include front facing cameras and conversational voice agent support from Meta AI.

So what do we expect to see from Google Smart Glasses in 2026? Google has promised two products: one that is audio only, and one that has "screens" shown on the lenses (like Google Glass).

The biggest assumption (based on the promo videos) is that these will see a significant change in form factor, from the futuristic if not scary and unfamiliar design of Google Glass, to something that is more normally seen as glasses.

Google's announcement also focused on the addition of AI (in fact, they announced them as "AI Glasses" rather than smart glasses). The two types of product (audio only AI Glasses, and AI Glasses with projections in the field of view), however, are not especially novel, even when combined with AI.

Meta's Ray-Ban products are available in both modes, and include voice interaction with their own AI. These have been more successful than the recent Humane AI Pin, for example, which included front-facing cameras, other sensors, and voice support from an AI agent. This was the closest thing we've had so far to the Star Trek lapel communicators.

Direction of travel

Chances are, the main directions of innovation in this are, first, reducing the chonkyness of smart glasses, which have necessarily been bulky to include electronics and still look like that are normally proportioned.

"Building glasses you'll want to wear" is how Google phrases it, and so we may see innovation from the company that just improves the aesthetic of smart glasses. They are also working with popular brand partners. Google also advertised the release of wired XR (Mixed Reality) glasses, which are significantly reduced in form factor compared to Virtual Reality headsets on the market.

Second, we could expect more integration with other Google products and services, where Google has many more commonly used products than Meta including Google Search, Google Maps, and GMail. Their promotional material shows examples of seeing Google Maps information in view in the AI Glasses, while walking through the streets.

Finally, and perhaps the biggest area of opportunity, is to innovate on the inclusion of additional sensors, perhaps integrating with other Google wearable health products, where we are seeing many of their current ventures, including introducing their own smart rings.

Much research has focused on things that can be sensed from common touchpoints on the head, which has included heart rate, body temperature and galvanic skin response (skin moistness, which changes with, for example, stress), and even brain activation through EEG for example. With the current advances in consumer neurotechnology, we could easily see Smart Glasses that use EEG to track brain data in the next few years.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Holograms that can be physically manipulated have made their way out of science fiction and into real life thanks to a breakthrough in mixed reality technology.

In a new study uploaded March 6 to the HAL open archive, scientists explored how three-dimensional holograms could be grabbed and poked using elastic materials as a key component of volumetric displays.

This innovation means 3D graphics can be interacted with — for example, grasping and moving a virtual cube with your hand — without damaging a holographic system. The research has not yet been peer-reviewed, although the scientists demonstrated their findings in a video showcasing the technology.

"We are used to direct interaction with our phones, where we tap a button or drag a document directly with our finger on the screen — it is natural and intuitive for humans. This project enables us to use this natural interaction with 3D graphics to leverage our innate abilities of 3D vision and manipulation,” study lead author Asier Marzo, a professor of computer science at the Public University of Navarra, said in a statement.

Related: Weird lickable lollipop invention lets you taste in virtual reality

The researchers will present their findings at the CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Japan, which runs between April 26 and May 1.

Holographic hype

While holograms are nothing new in the present day — augmenting public exhibitions or sitting at the heart of smart glasses, for example — the ability to physically interact with them has been consigned to the realm of science fiction, in movies like Marvel's "Iron Man."

The new research is the first time 3D graphics can be manipulated in mid-air with human hands. But to achieve this, the researchers needed to dig deep into how holography works in the first place.

At the heart of the volumetric displays that support holograms is a diffuser. This is a fast-oscillating, usually rigid, sheet onto which thousands of images are synchronously projected at different heights to form 3D graphics. This is known as the hologram.

However, the rigid nature of the oscillator means that if it comes into contact with a human hand while oscillating, it could break or cause an injury. The solution was to use a flexible material — which the researchers haven’t shared the details of yet — that can be touched without damaging the oscillator or causing the image to deteriorate.

From there, this enabled people to manipulate the holographic image, although the researchers also needed to overcome the challenge of the elastic material deforming when being touched. To get around that problem, the researchers implemented image correction to ensure the hologram was projected correctly.

While this breakthrough is still in the experimental stage, there are plenty of potential ways it could be used if commercialized.

"Displays such as screens and mobile devices are present in our lives for working, learning, or entertainment. Having three-dimensional graphics that can be directly manipulated has applications in education — for instance, visualising and assembling the parts of an engine," the researchers said in the statement.

"Moreover, multiple users can interact collaboratively without the need for virtual reality headsets. These displays could be particularly useful in museums, for example, where visitors can simply approach and interact with the content."

Virtual reality (VR) experiences could soon get a lot more realistic thanks to a lickable device that lets you "taste" in virtual environments.

The small, lollipop-like interface simulates up to nine flavors and can even be combined with smells to make the sensation of taste feel lifelike, scientists said in a new study published Nov. 25 in the journal PNAS.

"In reality, there are five human typical sensations, including vision, audio, haptics [touch], olfaction [smell], and taste," first author Yiming Liu, a researcher in biomedical engineering at City University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, told Live Science in an email. "To develop an immersive VR experience for users, we hope to display all the five sensations to users, where we will establish a flawless 3D virtual world (similar to OASIS in the movie "Ready Player One")."

The lickable device contains small pouches filled with gels. These gels contain chemicals that, when mixed with saliva, simulate different flavors. So far, these flavors include salt, sugar, cherry, citric acid, green tea, passion fruit, grapefruit, durian and milk.

Each flavor is released only when a small electric current passes through each respective gel, and the quantity delivered depends on the voltage applied. This means several flavors can be mixed to create new taste sensations.

Related: Future VR headsets could use a new type of lens inspired by holographic tech

Aside from making VR gaming more immersive, the device could have practical applications, including taste tests by doctors, online grocery shopping and education, the team suggested.

This is not the first time researchers have tried to bring taste to virtual reality. Others have explored directly applying flavor chemicals to the tongue and stimulation using heat and electricity.

This latest development offers a precise, low-energy option with a compact, handheld design. However, Liu noted that the technology is still in its infancy and has limitations. For example, the gels currently last for only about an hour's worth of licking. The team plans to extend this life span and expand the number of flavors available.

NASA's first year-long mock Mars mission has come to an end.

That mission, the first in the CHAPEA ("Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog") series, began on June 25, 2023, when four volunteers were sealed inside a simulated Mars habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. 

The quartet exited the habitat on Saturday (July 6), returning to regular Earth life after a staggering 378 days.

The four volunteers for the CHAPEA-1 mission were Kelly Haston, Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell and Nathan Jones. Their home for the past year-plus was Mars Dune Alpha, a 1,700-square-foot (158 square meters) 3D-printed habitat designed to feel like an isolated Red Planet outpost.

The quartet's experiences in Mars Dune Alpha will inform NASA's planning for real-life crewed missions to the Red Planet, which the agency aims to start launching in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

"For more than a year, the crew simulated Mars mission operations, including 'Marswalks,' grew and harvested several vegetables to supplement their shelf-stable food, maintained their equipment and habitat and operated under additional stressors a Mars crew will experience, including communication delays with Earth, resource limitations and isolation," NASA officials wrote in a CHAPEA-1 mission description.

Related: Grand Canyon-size 'scar' on Mars revealed like never before in striking new satellite photos

NASA celebrated the quartet's exit with a "welcome home" ceremony at JSC on July 6. 

"CHAPEA-1 has been a unique experience, with great challenges, joys and sorrows and a lot of hard work, with a fair bit of fun thrown in as well," Haston, who commanded the mission, said during the livestreamed event.

"I am humbled that being away on a one-year Mars analog brought me closer to those I was with and those I left back at home," she added.

Originally posted on Space.com.

Science fiction, be it in the form of a book, movie, game or comic, is often a rich vein to tap for predictions of what technology could be on the horizon, or a sign as to where existing tech could go next. But you may be surprised to know that a good swath of what may seem like sci-fi actually exists in one form or another today. 

Sure, we’ve yet to find ways to jump to hyperspace or have robots take care of our every whim, but there’s a lot of technology available right now that would have seemed like the fever dream of an impassioned fiction writer only a handful of years ago. 

So here are 32 science fiction technologies that exist today — many of which you can try out for yourself.

3D printing

Star Trek’s replicator gave sci-fi fans the idea of creating things quickly out of some mystery energy/genetic material, with Captain Jean-Luc Picard barking "Tea, Earl Grey, hot."

Once total fantasy, 3D printers have made it possible to make a lot out of base polymers or even 3D print food. Modern 3D printers can create all manner of products out of polymers, metal and resin in a matter of hours, from car and vacuum cleaner components to toys, guns, models and more. And food can even be 3D printed by making use of paste-like foodstuffs such as gels and doughs.

Electric cars

The idea of cars powered by anything other than gasoline — and steam in the late 19th century — used to feel like a fantasy, with 1910’s Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout; Or, The Speediest Car on the Road envisioning an electric car that could travel 300 to 400 miles (480 to 640 kilometers) on a single charge and hit speeds of 100 mph (160 km/h). But what was fantastical 100-plus years ago is now a stone-cold reality. 

Driven forward by the likes of Tesla, modern electric cars can go hundreds of miles on a single charge and hit top speeds well in excess of 100 mph, with instant torque delivered via battery-powered motors offering huge acceleration. The only real limits to EVs are a still fledgling charging infrastructure and concerns over the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries.

Video calls and conferences

The idea of long-distance visual communications has been a staple in sci-fi for years, arguably iconified in Star Trek’s barking command of “on screen” resulting in a ship's forward window becoming a video feed of an often disgruntled alien. Fast forward a handful of decades and video calling has become commonplace in all manner of jobs where the need to be in an office or set location is no longer paramount.

The likes of Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams surged in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, not only facilitating remote working amid lockdowns and stay-at-home directives, but also providing a social outlet for people isolated at home. 

Of course, before that the rise of smartphones and Apple’s FaceTime had already made video calling seem only moderately novel, with rapid adoption by other phone brands and technology companies democratizing video communication and conferencing for pretty much anyone with an internet connection and even a basic smartphone.

Creative AI and virtual assistants

JARVIS in Marvel’s Iron Man and Samantha from Her cemented the idea of AI-powered virtual assistants that can aid their users in everyday life; be it creating a new element or simply being around to discuss one’s love life in natural, spoken language.

With ChatGPT, Claude 3, Google Gemini and other multimodal generative AI systems, we now have smart tools that can intelligently create things rather than simply seek out existing information. This can manifest itself in asking ChatGPT to come up with a haiku based on alliteration or create images of a dog on a moon, via simple commands spoken or written in natural language. Such AIs can still be a bit hit and miss, but they open a whole new avenue to creating content even if you don’t have the requisite art or Photoshop skills, or providing a virtual friend for times when one feels lonely.

4D movies

The creepily named “Feelies” of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 Brave New World conjured up the idea of movies that are not just seen and heard, but also felt and smelt via physical feedback through the arms of a seat and via a "Scent-Organ" producing smells relating to what’s on-screen. 

Roll on 52 years and we got the first 4D movie with The Sensorium, which released scents into the theater and used bodysonic seats to provide some physical sensations. Such 4D movies and cinemas haven’t taken over from the more traditional 3D viewing experience, but improvements in sound, lighting and haptics have made them more convincing. And immersive cinema experiences from the likes of Secret Cinema can incorporate people into a movie setting in a blend of film and live action, adding an extra dimension again to the watching experience.

Driverless cars

The original Total Recall featured a taxi driven autonomously by sporting a robotic driver. What seemed fanciful in the 1990s is now a reality. No, there aren’t robot taxi drivers, but there are driverless cars. Some of these are at the trial stage, in that they are used in restricted areas for full autonomous driving. Others offer autonomous driving so long as there’s a person behind the wheel to deal with the unexpected maneuvers of fallible humans. 

Legalization and insurance hurdles are the main roadblock to a driverless car future. But with a lot of work being done in everything from autonomous driver aids to full driverless systems, the future of cars may kill the idea of an enthusiastic motorist. 

Jetpacks

An iconic moment in the James Bond film Thunderball was when Sean Connery’s Bond uses the Bell Rocket Belt to escape a villain's chateau and get to his Aston Martin DB5. Such compact jetpacks are also a dime a dozen in all manner of far-future sci-fi, but while these have yet to be created, there are some real-world jetpacks that use clusters of small-scale turbo jet engines that can be vectored to provide some form of flight. Their major limitation is fuel consumption, with flight times limited to mere minutes. 

For those with an affinity for the sea, there are jetpacks like the JetLev that use jets of high-pressure water sucked up from the sea to provide a form of flight. These aren't exactly the tools one would want at hand for escaping a building full of murderous mercenaries, but they show that jetpacks aren’t completely limited to sci-fi.

Cloning

From A Brave New World to Blade Runner and beyond, clones or replicated humans are a regular fixture in science fiction. Human cloning has yet to happen, but cloning animals is very much a reality, first established with Dolly the sheep in 1996. 

Technical obstacles — it took 270 trials to get Dolly — and ethical concerns mean directly cloning a human, called reproductive cloning, remains in the realms of fiction, and even researching techniques for doing so is illegal in many nations. However, therapeutic cloning, whereby stem cells with the same DNA as the donor are created to aid with regenerative medicine such as bone marrow transplants, is an active area of science and is being researched in nations like the U.K., Australia and China.

Humanoid robots

Robots have been around in manufacturing industries for decades, but humanoid robots that can provide a convincing human-like impression, such as those in 2004’s I, Robot, remained very much in the realms of sci-fi until recently, 

Now with Engineering Arts’ Ameca, the so-called “world’s most advanced robot” powered by generative AI, there exists a humanoid robot that can interact with people in a — mostly — near-natural manner, and pull convincing facial expressions thanks to its intricately articulated joints and a flexible, skin-like coating on a robotic skeleton. Having seen Ameca in action, the robot’s ability to create human expressions is almost uncanny. 

Robotic limbs

Many a cyberpunk novel, comic or game has explored the idea of robotic limbs as a form of human augmentation. The Deus Ex games stand out in particular, with robotic limbs being used for both curative surgery, as well as elective replacement of inferior flesh and bone body parts. 

Human augmentation hasn’t reached cyberpunk levels yet, but there are now robotic arms and hands that can carry out far more dexterous movements than prosthetics of the previous few decades. As medical science and robotics advance, we’re likely to see robotic limbs become just as capable as their biological counterparts — maybe even more so. 

Talking cars

Think about talking cars and your mind’s eye will surely think of KITT from Knight Rider. But talking cars are a reality… sort of. 

Thanks to the integration of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto into many modern cars, you can access virtual assistants like Siri and Google Assistant to respond to voice commands in natural language — modern car infotainment systems have some voice control but aren’t as sophisticated as the dedicated assistants in iPhones and Android phones. Meanwhile, chipmaker Qualcomm has its Snapdragon Digital Chassis platform, designed to bring generative AI into cars and let people have discussions with an AI about where to eat nearby and what problem a warning light on the dashboard is indicating. 

Holodecks via virtual reality

Star Trek: The Next Generation conjured up the idea of a Holodeck where the crew of the USS Enterprise could go into an expansive room that would realistically replicate all manner of settings, though commonly the crew would go back into 20th century settings or earlier. While true Holodecks have yet to arrive, University College London has the Immersive VR Lab, which lets people explore a virtual setting without the need to wear a virtual reality headset. 

But that’s more for experimental purposes. In the consumer world, a form of Holodeck exists via virtual reality headsets, ranging from simple ones that use mobile-grade chipsets to provide virtual experiences and games, such as the Meta Quest 3, to advanced headsets like the Valve Index and PlayStation VR 2 that can deliver high-fidelity virtual reality games, complete with room-scale VR, eye-tracking and advanced haptic feedback to simulate things like climbing a mountain or the tension of a taut bowstring. Such headsets can effectively turn a room into a form of Holodeck, albeit with a few limitations such as cables.

Virtual worlds

Building upon the concept of Holodecks is the idea of virtual worlds — think the simulated Earth in The Matrix. Thankfully we’ve yet to build AIs that enslave humanity as biological batteries and control them in a virtual take on the late 20th century, but we do have some fairly advanced virtual simulations. 

Games like Second Life provide virtual communities, with people exploring them via avatars and interacting with real humans. Second Like has grown to support some one million players at its peak and has seen people foster real friendships and even relationships that have resulted in real-world marriages. 

Elsewhere, sci-fi space massively multiplayer games like Eve: Online have bloomed into virtual economies with a real-life monetary value — this has seen virtual corporate wars, conspiracies and theft at a massive scale, resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars of virtual assets. And the now venerable World of Warcraft gives people a vast and evolving fantasy world to explore with interwoven quests and storylines.

Food in pills

Food in pill form is a classic staple of space-based sci-fi, but even Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory featured a gum that could impart the flavors and feeling of a roast dinner. 

That level of tech remains the stuff of fiction, but food supplements and the ability to create meals by simply adding hot water to a dried food mix are the real-world parallels. And appetite suppression pills are arguably one way to help people feel full without ever taking a bite out of anything solid.

Rebreathers

Another iconic moment in Thunderball was when Bond was thrown into a shark tank and managed to escape with the assistance of a pair of tiny oxygen tanks connected to a mouthpiece. And in the maligned Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Jedis Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi use similar devices to dive down into the underwater cities of the Gungan.

Such tiny tanks and rebreathers are still fiction, with their size unlikely to provide much more than a few breaths in a real-world application. However, compact oxygen tanks with a mounted mouthpiece are used as emergency backups when a SCUBA aqualung runs out of air or malfunctions. Furthermore, air scrubbing and recycling can act as a form of rebreather on the International Space Station, and in the Extravehicular Mobility Units (spacesuits) used by Space Shuttle astronauts when spacewalking. 

Exo-skeletons

Powered exo-skeletons have featured in sci-fi for years, with some popular examples being the P-5000 Powered Work Loader in Alien, which Ellen Ripley uses to battle a Xenomorph queen, and more recently the exo-skeleton battle suits in Edge of Tomorrow and Elysium. 

But they exist in the real world too. Notably, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Warrior Web program developed prototype exo-skeletons to enable soldiers to carry heavy loads. And Lockheed Martin’s Human Universal Load Carrier allows soldiers to carry loads of up to 200 pounds (91 kilograms) thanks to the use of titanium legs and onboard computers to mimic human movements.

Nuclear-powered vehicles

In 1914, H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free envisioned vehicles running on atomic power, and more recently the Fallout game and TV series ran with his idea, with an alternative history that saw the Atomic V-8 car powered by a nuclear fusion engine. 

Now, while nuclear fusion-powered cars are theoretically possible, safely shrinking a reactor to car engine size is a technical challenge that humans have yet to overcome. However, we do have nuclear-powered vehicles in the form of nuclear submarines and ships. For example, the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier that operated up until 2012 was powered by an unprecedented eight nuclear reactors. And the U.K.’s Royal Navy's Vanguard Class submarines make use of a Rolls-Royce PWR 2 reactor. Unlike their land-based equivalents, these marine reactors use a metal-zirconium alloy rather than ceramic uranium dioxide as fuel, with the goal of having a long core life, so that refueling is only needed after 10 years or more.

Living in space

OK, so the ideal of living in space under giant domes or in vast space stations such as Star Trek’s Deep Space Nine are far from reality. But humans have been living in space for decades, notably with the International Space Station. 

A joint effort between the space agencies of the U.S., Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada, the ISS can support astronauts and scientists living in the zero gravity of space while orbiting Earth. Solar panels harvest energy, while supply runs via space shuttles and unmanned rockets keep people in the ISS alive. Resistance training is needed to keep muscles from atrophying in zero-g and the space station is far from self-sufficient, but the ISS does provide a gateway to living in space.

Railguns

Featured a lot in so-called hard sci-fi, railguns can be found mounted on spaceships like The Expanse’s Rocinante, the Daedalus in Stargate, and a lot more. Also known as gauss guns or mass drivers — such as the mass accelerator guns in BioWare’s space opera games Mass Effect — railguns work around the idea of using electromagnetism to accelerate a slug along twin rails, bypassing the need for a combustible accelerant like gunpowder. In fiction, these weapons are generally line-of-sight, firing unguided tungsten rounds at targets within a range where the shot can’t be easily dodged. 

Actually first conceived in 1879 as an electric cannon, functional railguns didn't become a reality until 2010, when BAE Systems developed one capable of firing a 7 lb (3.2 kg) projectile at 3,390 m/s. This used the same concept as the sci-fi equivalents, and saw the U.S. Navy flirt with railgun development until 2021, when it shelved the project. 

Other nations like Japan are also looking into developing rainguns. However, the biggest drawback is the huge energy needed to accelerate a slug. As such, gunpowder-based shells with large caliber guns are still used for close-quarters ship combat. Equally, there are consumer railguns that use electromagnets to accelerate small metal discs. Again, the charge they deliver doesn’t make them effective combat weapons; instead they are more niche guns for casual target practice. 

Space tourism

Exploring the stars is likely the fantasy of many people who’ve looked up at a star-studded sky on a clear night. But with a lack of an efficient fusion engine or faster than light travel, the sci-fi idea of space tourism — adventures to spa facilities on Titan or the joys of Starfield’s Neon city — are still stuck in fiction.

But a form of space tourism does exist, in the guise of Virgin Galactic, whereby a specially-designed ship can take a handful of people to the sub-orbit of Earth — near enough space with low gravity and all. Just be aware you need a spare $450,000 and likely a direct line to Sir Richard Branson.

Stealth tech

Star Trek’s Klingons and their Bird of Prey ships are iconic for their ability to cloak and avoid detection by the likes of the USS Enterprise. The idea here is that the ship can bend light around it to become invisible. In more realistic sci-fi, stealth is less about being invisible than about hiding a ship’s heat signature and radar profile, as seen in Mass Effect’s Normandy stealth frigate and the angular Anubis class stealth frigates in The Expanse. 

Currently, humanity has no spacefaring stealth ship, but stealth ships and craft are very much real. The U.S. navy’s experimental Sea Shadow (IX-529) used an angular design to give it a low-radar profile in order to avoid detection, while the French frigate Forbin has a faceted appearance to reduce its radar cross-section. 

Stealth aircraft work in a similar way, with passive low observable features to minimize their radar profile, while they also use surfaces that can absorb radar energy, preventing it from being bounced back to a receiver.

Smartwatches

Dick Tracey and the likes of Thunderbirds introduced the idea of being able to speak into a watch, even one with video displayed, while the Seiko G757 Sports 100 watch in James Bond film Octopussy, could display messages from MI6 on a small digital display. 

These days this all seems very basic, thanks to smartwatches, led by the Apple Watch. Not only can calls be handed via these watches, the latest smartwatches can track your health metrics, intelligently assess your physical performance, act as an organizer of daily life, control smart home gadgets and more. In the nine years since the original Apple Watch was launched, smartwatches have evolved from phone accessories into wearable computers that arguably eclipse even much of what sci-fi envisioned.

Smartphones

The idea of handheld, do-everything computing devices is a staple in sci-fi, with the likes of Star Trek’s Tricorders purportedly being the inspiration for flip phones. But the hand terminals of The Expanse series are smartphones that have the ability to spool through cross-solar system news feeds and alert people to take specific medication. 

Modern smartphones are arguably rather sci-fi devices in themselves, as they’re basically computers in slim, pocketable, rectangular form. Even budget phones are now capable of putting nearly any information you can imagine at your fingertips, as well as being a portable camera, video editing suite, games console, streaming device, media player, smart tech controller, productivity tool, home for an AI and a lot more. And now some of them fold.

Real-time translation

Universal translators, up to and including the Babel Fish in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, have long been a way for sci-fi to handwave away the problems of communication between “advanced” extraterrestrial lifeforms. However, thanks to Google Translate and now AI-powered translation apps and tools, we are approaching a reality where universal real-time translation is a district possibility. 

Right now, translation tools in phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 can provide two-way audio translation of speech in select languages. We still need to discover extraterrestrial life before we can have the universal translators of sci-fi, but we have the rudiments of the technology. 

Targeted advertising

Minority Report envisioned targeted advertising dynamically adjusting ads to suit your interests back in 2002. Around a decade later, it became a reality. As you read this very article you’ll have likely encountered so-called cookies that can scrape what you’ve searched for on your computer or phone’s browser and serve up adverts that are (or should be) relevant to your browsing. 

This has evolved with apps like Google Maps serving up places you might be interested in visiting based on your trips and wandering, while algorithms in streaming services like Netflix and Spotify work to flag content they think is relevant to your tastes.

Sometimes today’s targeted advertising can be uncanny, with the feeling that a conversation you’ve had with friends about a holiday suddenly results in adverts about vacation services popping up on Instagram. However, there's no evidence of such apps being quite that advanced — and users can, thankfully, opt out of targeted advertising. 

Drones

1974’s Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy featured what was basically a drone, in the form of a tiny flying device packed with sensors that could be flown remotely. Now, some 40 years later, consumer drones are very popular, used to take photos and videos that would have previously needed a helicopter, or simply piloted around for fun. Furthermore, drone racing is a legitimate sport and drones can be had in all sizes. 

On the more sinister side, drones are used for military purposes, not only to deliver explosive payloads in a form of a bootstrapped pilotable bomb, but also as dedicated unmanned aerial vehicles armed with cutting-edge guns and missiles that well-equipped militaries can send into a battle zone without the need to risk manned aircraft. With drones being considered for delivery of goods and not just offensive payloads, expect drone use only to expand as this decade marches forward.

Mass surveillance

George Orwell’s 1984 envisioned a dystopian world where people could be watched by the governing powers in their own homes. While this has yet to happen in daily life, U.K. TV show Big Brother borrows from Orwell’s overseeing antagonist and puts willing contestants into a house where they are isolated from the outside world and are constantly monitored by the all-seeing-eye “Big Brother,” who also directs them to do various, often humiliating tasks.

This is entertainment, but mass surveillance also happens in a very real way in daily life. We now live in cities with interconnected surveillance cameras feeding into hub systems. Currently used predominantly as a crime prevention and law enforcement tool, as well as a way to monitor footfall, this level of surveillance can easily track suspicious people from street to street, acting as an eye-in-the-sky guide for police and security. Beijing and London are two of the most-surveilled cities in the world, with the latter having some 67 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people. 

Flying cars

The Jetsons seeded the idea that flying cars are the future, but while electrification of power trains was explored in the past few decades, the idea of flying cars had seemed pie-in-the-sky. 

Yet in recent years more concepts for short-range, electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) taxis and cars have popped up, with many looking set to become a reality this decade. We currently have the technology for somewhat efficient flying cars, but safety, legal and insurance hurdles currently stand in the way, though nations like the U.S. and China are working on establishing guidelines for safe, legal flying cars in the next decade. 

Wireless earbuds and communication

From Star Trek’s ComBadge to James Bond gadgets, the idea of wireless communication via a form of wearable device, mostly earbuds, permeates a lot of sci-fi. But the advent of Apple’s AirPods wireless earbuds galvanized not only cable-free audio but also wireless, hands-free communication. 

The latest iterations of wireless earbuds and headphones contain all manner of smart technology, from active noise cancellation to touch-sensitive controls and movement detection. And now we have bone conduction audio that allows one to receive audio via devices like smart glasses without the need for in- or over-ear headphones. 

World Wide Web

While the concept of the internet existed before William Gibson’s 1984 Neuromancer, the novel is credited with popularizing the term “cyberspace” and envisioned a global network of connected computers transferring information in a graphical interface. If this sounds familiar it’s because that’s the premise of the World Wide Web we have today, though back in the 80s when personal computers were a novel idea, the concept of such linked technology and information highways was science fiction. 

That really started to change in the 1990s, when the Web opened to the public. It has since blossomed to become the place where one can access pretty much the sum total of human knowledge, masses of entertainment, content both pure and sordid, and a whole lot more. Tim Berners-Lee’s invention may have seemed like sci-fi but has changed the way information is consumed, and economies and even societies are influenced at an unprecedented scale and pace; often for the better, but at times for ill.

Synthetic and plant-based meat

Both Bethesda’s Starfield space-exploration epic and the hard sci-fi of James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series feature synthetic meat, with the idea being that getting fresh, real beef or pork out in deep space would be a logistical nightmare. 

But the idea of using either cultured meat proteins or alternative proteins to replicate meat is very much a reality today. Impossible Foods made waves in recent years by creating a beef burger out of soy protein that mimics the look, feel and flavor of real beef, with many people swearing they can’t tell the difference. 

And vegan food company Beyond Meat makes readily available, plant-based products that aim to replicate the flavor of their real meat counterparts, though discerning palates can still taste the difference between the real and fake. 

While we may hit a limit to how closely vegan foods can replicate real meat, lab-grown meat is being explored as an alternative to the traditional rearing and slaughtering of animals. This process grows meat from real animal cells, thus producing real meat — just without killing a pig or cow. Companies like Eat Just already sell cultured meat, but the problem is producing it at scale at an affordable price; expect things to develop over the next decade.

Household robots

Robot butlers and house-based bots are a staple of science fiction; a recent example being the Codsworth robot in the Fallout TV show and games. While we’ve yet to get humanoid robots to serve us martinis at leisure, many of us do have robots in our homes right now. 

Mostly, these come in the form of robot vacuum cleaners and grass mowers, many of which have advanced tracking and automation regimes so that you can simply leave them to their tasks. But there are also robot pets, most notably Sony’s AIBO robot dog, which can respond to voice commands and sense when it’s being petted. And Amazon’s Astro aims to be an automated home monitoring robot, complete with Alexa built-in to respond to natural language commands.

A tech startup is building a headband that it claims can induce stabilized lucid dreaming in a wearer — letting them take control of their own dreamscapes. Prophetic described how its device, called "the Halo," works in a post on X on Jan. 25. 

The headband will use an artificial intelligence (AI) platform dubbed "Morpheus-1" to induce lucid dreams when it is fitted onto somebody's head, company representatives said. 

Prophetic wants to give wearers the ability to explore their sense of consciousness and will follow up this announcement with multiple studies focusing on lucid dreaming. However, an expert told Live Science that, with Morpheus-1, it's not clear they've achieved this goal.

Lucid dreaming is a type of dream state in which the person is aware they are dreaming and can at least partly control its direction. It has been previously used by writers and artists for creative inspiration or to treat recurring nightmares. Although lucid dreaming is a trainable skill and has been studied for years, we still do not fully understand its causes or purpose.

Scientists at Prophetic, however, have said they have identified that the defining characteristic of the lucid dreaming state is higher activity in the frontal regions of the brain during sleep. These regions are typically less active during other dream states.

Related: Lucid dreamers can hear and answer questions while still asleep, scientists find

Several studies have attempted to forge similar links, including one published in December 2018 in the journal Nature and another published in May 2019 in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

Morpheus-1 will use "transcranial focused ultrasound stimulation," — a non-invasive way to modulate brain activity using high-frequency sound waves beyond the normal human hearing range.

The headband monitors the wearer's EEG activity and then uses the generative AI Morpheus-1 platform, which will be trained using a large data set of EEG scans from people who were lucid dreaming.

By learning what the characteristic EEG signature of lucid dreaming looks like, the device can stimulate key brain regions to recreate that pattern, thereby inducing lucid dreaming, Prophetic representative said. But one expert told Live Science it's hard to say whether Morpheus-1 can achieve what company representatives have claimed it can.

"The study that they've got on their technology roadmap demonstrates different patterns of activation in the prefrontal cortex associated with lucid dreaming and they're trying to modulate those circuits," Guy Leschziner, a professor of neurology and sleep medicine at Guy's Hospital and author of "The Secret World of Sleep" (Simon & Schuster, 2020), told Live Science. "A lot of the time, we don't fully understand what we're doing by using either deep brain stimulation or transcranial stimulation, and sometimes the effects of these technological interventions are not necessarily doing what we think they're doing."

Any device capable of modifying brain waves would ordinarily be subject to significant ethical oversight, however. There's also been little research into the long-term effects of regular lucid dreaming, let alone the impacts of regularly inducing the dream state using brain modulation.

"The stuff that they've put out there suggests that dreaming can be modulated by this, but the research that I've seen suggests that they need to do more detailed assessments and to systematically demonstrate the efficacy of this device on a larger scale," said Leschziner.

Do lab rats have the ability to imagine, like humans do? A new study says yes.  

Rats may be capable of a type of imagination that's crucial for route planning, research from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) suggests. Although the creative arts spring to mind when we think of imagination, the ability also plays roles in everyday tasks, like navigating our environment. People constantly imagine the route they will take to get to places, whether it's a routine commute to work or a trip to an unfamiliar location.

This type of imagination is controlled by the hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory. People with a damaged hippocampus struggle to imagine scenarios, including future routes, co-lead study author Chongxi Lai, a research specialist at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus in Virginia, told Live Science. Until now, scientists couldn't determine whether other animals, such as rats, possess this form of imagination.

In the study, published Thursday (Nov. 2) in the journal Science, the researchers used virtual reality (VR) and a brain-machine interface to show that rats have this capability.

Related: Neurons aren't the only cells that make memories in the brain, rodent study reveals 

The study is provocative because it challenges the long-held assumption that rats might not be capable of thinking beyond their immediate circumstances, said Kenneth Kay, a neuroscientist at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute who was not involved with the work.

The team implanted electrodes into the rats' brains to measure their hippocampal activity. They then immersed them in a VR world by putting them in an arena surrounded by a 360-degree screen that displayed a virtual environment. The rats were placed on a spherical treadmill that allowed them to rotate freely and view the entire panorama.

The researchers then trained the rats to run toward a virtual goalpost to receive a treat. The treadmill's movements updated the rat's position in the virtual environment. After several rounds, each with the same goalpost at a random location, the rats had explored the whole landscape.

For each set of coordinates in the virtual environment, the electrodes detected a specific pattern of activity in the hippocampus. The team hypothesized that rats could recreate those patterns if they imagined following a route along those coordinates, rather than actually running the route.

_{The researchers disconnected the treadmill and rewarded the rat for reproducing the hippocampal activity pattern associated with a goal location. In this "Jumper"  task — named after a 2008 movie of the same name — the brain-machine interface translates the animal’s brain activity into motion on the virtual reality screen. Essentially, the animal uses its thoughts to navigate to the reward by first thinking about where they need to go to get the reward. (Video credit: Chongxi Lai)} 

So, they set up a game where rats only had to think about moving toward a goalpost; the virtual environment jumped to coordinates based on the electrode readings instead of treadmill movements. Named after a 2008 movie about teleportation, this "Jumper" game showed that rats planned efficient routes to the goalpost without meandering and regardless of how they physically moved.

Lastly, the researchers tested whether the rats could imagine moving an object toward the goalpost, rather than themselves.

Nicknamed the "Jedi" game, this required the rats to "use the Force" to move a virtual box toward the goalpost. The rodents' success showed that they could harness their mental maps to think about navigating an object through their environment, without moving themselves.

_{In the second task, the "Jedi" task — a nod to Star Wars — the rat moves an object to a location by thoughts alone. The rat is fixed in a virtual place but "moves" an object to a goal in the VR space by controlling its hippocampal activity, like how a person sitting in their office might imagine taking a cup next to the coffee machine and filling it with coffee. The researchers then changed the location of the goal, requiring the animal to produce activity patterns associated with the new location. (Video credit: Chongxi Lai)}

Lai noted that scientists already knew about patterns of hippocampal activity that correspond to environmental locations in humans and rats. "But it hasn't been shown that animals can control it" until now. 

Similar to humans, the rats took only a few seconds to plan routes, suggesting this form of imagination may be similar between these species. "I could see the same experiment being run in human subjects and producing similar results, which by itself gets at the potential similarity," Kay said.

Senior study author Albert Lee said he would like to explore whether rats can imagine navigating an environment without receiving cues, as well as probe how other brain regions communicate with the hippocampus during imagination to "get a whole picture of the underlying processes for this very high-level cognitive function." 

Using an unconventional, centuries-old method, researchers have identified hidden animal figures on the walls of a cave in Spain. The technique, called stereoscopic photography, dates back to the early 1800s but is perhaps best known for its use in the View-Master, the pre-VR viewer beloved by generations of kids.

Cave paintings are a well-known and long-standing artistic medium in Europe, dating back at least 40,000 years. Although archaeologists have studied this ancient art form for over a century, their focus has typically been on the two-dimensional features of the designs and, when recording the art, they have relied on sketches, tracings and photographs.

Recently, 3D recording and viewing methods have become popular among archaeologists. These methods capture more rock art detail than the 2D ones but are still typically viewed and studied as 2D images on a computer screen, which is not how the art's creators would have seen it.

A new study, published Aug. 17 in the journal Antiquity, changes how archaeologists view cave paintings, with stereoscopic photographs of art from the cave of La Pasiega in north-central Spain.

Raquel Asiain, an archaeologist and photographer at Complutense University of Madrid, and her colleagues devised a simple method for capturing the three-dimensional nature of the cave walls and the art on it.

Related: Pinwheel Cave rock art in California may depict hallucinogenic 'trance flower'

Pairs of high-resolution photographs taken 2.5 inches (63.5 millimeters) apart — the average distance between an adult's two pupils — can be viewed together, forcing the brain to perceive a 3D image. While stereoscopic photo pairs are best seen with a viewing device, the hidden 3D image can also be spotted with the naked eye, similarly to those in the trippy "Magic Eye" designs of the 1990s.

Over 700 depictions of animals, symbols, dots and lines cover the walls of La Pasiega, which was first discovered in 1911. But through their systematic study using stereoscopic photography, Asiain and colleagues discovered three previously hidden animals: two horses and one aurochs, an extinct cattle species.

The horses are easily viewed in high-resolution images that the researchers posted to Flickr. The digitally enhanced images reveal a horse below the deer image in the center, as well as the mane, neck and chest of another horse on the left. This latter horse is situated so that its head rests in a concave area of the cave wall, while the chest is in a convex area, enhancing the three-dimensionality of the animal.

Using 3D glasses, or even just by slightly crossing your eyes, it is easy to see the undulating character of the cave walls just as someone tens of thousands of years ago might have seen it.

"In Paleolithic cave art, artists used the natural shapes of caves to create their paintings," Asiain told Live Science in an email. "The need to preserve that 3D perception of the caves was one of the reasons that inspired me to use these stereoscope images." With their high photographic quality, the images let the researchers see the art in "real" 3D, not simulated with 3D scanners.

"The technique these authors employ is useful for reminding us how technically skilled these artists were and for giving us insight into the creative process," April Nowell, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. Publishing the stereoscopic images means the general public can come much closer to experiencing the art as people would have in the past, Nowell said, but "you are still missing the sound of dripping water, the cool dampness of the air."

Asiain remains fascinated with the evolution of the cave artists' techniques over time, particularly as "those artists began to understand the rock as another element of painting." She plans to incorporate additional methods in the future to more fully understand Paleolithic cave art, such as whether ancient artists manipulated and modeled the rock, perhaps through carving, to create figures in 3D.

Mindfulness can mean different things to different people. For some, settling down with a puzzle can bring inner calm, whereas a more guided approach does the trick for others. Whichever way you choose to relax, our list of the best VR mindfulness games will have you feeling Zen in no time.

When the outside world gets too much, slipping into virtual reality can create an amazing barrier, wherein meditation and relaxation become easier to access. The immersive nature of donning one of the best VR headsets allows you to free yourself from notifications and distractions, and haptic controller feedback can draw you into experiences and provide a strong sense of focus.

While many of the best VR experiences focus on adrenaline-pumping action, finding a new fitness regime, or streamlining your workflow, there are plenty of apps and games to try if you’re looking for something completely different. The best VR mindfulness games cover a wide range of genres, and we’re sure no matter what kind of relaxation you’re looking for, we’ve got you covered.

Best VR mindfulness games

Sitting down to complete a puzzle is, at its core, a pretty mindful process, and Puzzling Places adapts this gentle pastime for virtual reality. This 3D miniature builder takes scans of real locations and items and breaks them into parts to be reassembled thoughtfully. This modern twist not only adds an interesting dimension to the traditional format of putting together a puzzle but makes its VR home more immersive.

Everything in the game’s world feels exceptionally tactile and inviting, with each block begging you to inspect it and seek out its adjoining pieces. Across the range of puzzles available in the main game, there is a good range of difficulty. So, as you become more adept, you can shift into more complicated puzzles. Additional downloadable puzzle packs are also available and can be purchased for those looking for more environments to rebuild.

• Find Puzzling Places on the Meta Quest or PlayStation Store

Creating a relaxing, mindful space is easy with this free VR extension to the meditation app Playne (please note that you will need to purchase Playne: The Meditation Game first before downloading this DLC). This DLC add-on lets you step into a calming island space and nurture it, growing flora as you meditate.

Those who may not be as familiar with the practice of meditation may also find the guided and almost quest-based nature of Playne VR easy to partake in. Many of the mindful lessons you learn in the app itself can be transferred into the real world, with Playne VR encouraging an overall connection with the self inside and beyond its UI.

Playne offers a generous range of mindful activities, such as journaling and sandbox mode, allowing players to plant and grow trees at leisure. This makes it easy to find an avenue that suits you each day instead of being locked into just one mindful practice.

• Find Playne: The Meditation Game and Playne VR on Steam

Tetris Effect Connected is a classic 80s game couched in layers upon layers of thoughtful worldbuilding and mindful moments. Every interaction with the grid and its tetrominoes affects the sounds and sights shown to the player. Each and every bundle of levels grows with intensity and interactivity as you move through them.

While the premise is familiar and simple, and the process of stacking blocks is mindful in its own right, the worlds you build in can garner profound emotions. They allow your mind to wander while keeping your body engaged at the same time.

There are a variety of difficulties to choose from, making it easy to slow down gameplay if you need to take a beat or just want to engage with the puzzle gameplay without the fear of a frustrating restart.

• Find Tetris Effect Connected on the Meta Quest, Steam, or the PlayStation Store

Embracing your inner artist can be a peaceful way to explore your creativity and wind down after a busy day. While the prospect of painting and tidying up may be off putting for some, Vermillion - VR Painting removes all of the hassle and simply asks you to pop on your headset, sit down in a comfy chair, and start creating your masterpiece.

The intuitive UI makes picking up a brush easy and mixing colors a delight. Plus, the rooms you can choose from have a clean and serene feel that helps draw you into your own imagination. Vermillion also features an integrated YouTube portal at the side of the easel, meaning you can add custom playlists, guided meditations, or, if you’re feeling it, some Bob Ross magic to your painting sessions.

If painting alone feels daunting, Vermillion also supports up to four artists in a room, meaning you can decompress with those who matter most alongside.

• Find Vermillion - VR Painting on the Meta Quest or Steam

No matter how familiar you are with mindfulness, Guided Meditation VR offers a great onramp into a world of calming curated activities designed to help you relax. The app transports you to 27 unique locations where you can tune into 16 hours of meditative audio cut up into bite-size pieces. Whether you’re after a quick two-minute winddown or looking for a more sizable chunk of rest and relaxation, there is an option for you.

While some meditation apps lock you into specifically ordered tracks or programs, Guided Meditation VR focuses more on finding and nurturing a meditation style that suits you. Less rigid options like the music visualizer or Motion Mode break up traditional listening tracks, which is great if you aren’t in the mood for a directed meditation.

• Find Guided Meditation VR on Meta Quest or Steam

Which VR headset is best for mindfulness apps?

There are loads of different VR headsets out there to choose from, and they all do different things well. Some offer incredible graphics and processing power, while other focus on comfort and portability.

As a general rule, we'd recommend the latter if you're looking to relax in VR. Trying to melt away into a virtual experience can be difficult when you're feeling the wires connecting your headset banging against you as you move.

For that reason, a wireless headset like the Meta Quest 2 or HTC Vive XR Elite would be our first recommendation. Both can be used completely wireless, both are very comfortable to wear, and both have access to a great library of mindfulness apps and experiences.

The Meta Quest is far cheaper than the XR Elite and has a library of exclusive games, so it's going to be the obvious choice for most users, but the XR Elite does have it's niche too. It features full-color passthrough camera so it can achieve augmented reality - where game elements are transposed onto the real world.

If you want a regular, wired VR headset and don't want to break the bank we'd also recommend checking out the HP Reverb G2. It's a bit of a jack of all trades, but it's a solid headset that is regularly on offer.

With virtual reality well and truly in the mainstream, there’s no time like the present to dive into the best VR experiences on offer. And we do mean experiences, not games. Yes, there’s fun to be had soaring through space in an X-Wing or gunning down bad-guys from behind a dumpster but VR has so much more to offer besides.

There are a whole range of VR applications that, from the comfort of your own home, let you visit places, times and even whole worlds that would otherwise be out of your reach. Sometimes you’re just you, while some titles put you in someone else’s shoes, offering a perspective you might never have considered. VR fitness apps are becoming more popular, and you can even work in VR.

Without the need to fend off murderous bandits or face-eating xenomorphs, you can take your time to immerse yourself in the experience of your choosing. And if you haven’t already picked up a VR headset (they’re surprisingly affordable) check out our list of the best VR headsets here.  

The only snag is there are so many VR experiences out there that it can be hard to know where to start, even if you’ve a specific area of interest in mind. For example, put “dinosaurs” and “VR” into the Steam Store and you’re greeted by 80+ results.

That’s why we’ve rounded up the ten of the best VR experiences available. Some are free, others sport a reasonable price tag but all offer the chance to expand your horizons without even leaving your living room. And if you want to pick up a VR headset to check out these experiences, head to our VR headset deals page to get the best price. 

Space Explorers: The ISS Experience

• Platforms: Oculus
• Price: $2.99 for each of the 4 episodes (via Oculus Store) 

If anyone is looking to experience the wonders of space, this VR experience may be close to what you’ll get to seeing what its like aboard a space station. Shot over two years, the VR experience was filmed at the International Space Station. It’s a gorgeous look at life aboard the station, told through four parts as you follow eight astronauts on a journey through some missions. It’ll give viewers an intimate look at living the life on orbit. 

There won’t be much interaction, but the experience does dive deep into space exploration through the eyes of these astronauts. With these extreme close-ups of these workers in space together, you’ll feel like you are with them during the joys and dangers of their profession.

• Check out Space Explorers on the Oculus Store.

BRINK Traveller

• Platforms: Steam VR, Meta (including Meta Quest)
• Price: $9.99 / £7.99 (via Steam Store, Meta Quest Store)

BRINK Traveller takes you on a tour of twenty stunning natural spots, across thirteen locations. That may not sound like a lot when you can run Google Earth on most headsets, but BRINK Traveller’s locales are more than just 360° videos or shots.

Instead, you get to roam around each lookout spot, gazing down into the Grand Canyon, for example, watching the odd bird soar overhead. Should you be so inclined you can pick up a rock and pitch it into the water or take photographs. Or why not pull up a chair and just relax? It’s not 100% photorealistic but it’s convincing enough that it’s almost as good as being there. 

The locations are, mostly, American but the developers are slowly adding more international locations. Besides which, (virtually) taking in California’s Death Valley, Arizona’s The Wave rock formation and more, you’re bound to come away impressed.

• Buy BRINK Traveller on Steam.
• Buy BRINK Traveller on Meta Quest Store.

Star Chart VR

• Platforms: Oculus, Steam, Google Play
• Price: $9.99 

Speaking of space, this VR experience is also out of this world as it allows you to explore the solar system in a beautiful rendering of a real-time space simulation. You can take a closer look at all the planets in our galaxy whether its Saturn’s rings or the moons that orbit it. This is a great way to educate yourself in what the solar system has to offer and see how these constellations are formed in the night sky. Choose from different Star Chart modes to give you some choices in your star gazing activity. 

There’s also tons of experiences like Moments in Time that take you throughout history in space expedition like the moon landing and the rover’s exploration in Mars. No matter what you choose, you’ll enjoy what our solar system has to offer thanks to this one-of-kind VR experience.

• Buy Star Chart VR on Steam.
• Buy Star Chart VR on Oculus.
• Buy Star Chart VR on Google Play Store.

National Geographic Explore VR

• Platforms: Oculus
• Price: $9.99

There are plenty of discoveries to be made in this world, and National Geographic help make this possible with their app called Explore VR. There are countless experiences to uncover and it’s a nice educational tool to see what this world has to offer regarding culture and exploration. 

Users can explore the old ruins of Machu Picchu or even scale the icebergs in the far-off region of Antarctica. It’s perfect for the whole family to travel the world without ever leaving the house. The main goal is to capture photos on these exhibitions, so the National Geographic Explore VR experience is a nice way to discover these vast locations to get to know the landscape and learn its history.

• Buy National Geographic Explore VR for $9.99 at Oculus store.

Ocean Rift

• Platforms: Steam VR, Meta (including Meta Quest 2)
• Price: $9.99 / £7.99 (via Steam Store, Meta Quest Store)

It’s estimated that 80% of the ocean’s depths remain unexplored and while Ocean Rift is based on what we do know, it still offers some amazing encounters. Swimming around one of several sub-aquatic areas, you’ll get to gawp at humpback whales, play with dolphins and, should you so choose, swim with a handful of prehistoric animals. 

Ocean Rift isn’t the only application to offer a similarly watery experience, but what’s impressive is the freedom it grants you. You can roam to your heart’s content, assuming you’ve not chosen the shark cage area, and, occasionally, stumble on some unsettling aquatic items. Ocean Rift doesn’t set out to kill you, but we still got the chills when we stumbled across an abandoned submersible.

• Buy Ocean Rift on Steam.
• Buy Ocean Rift on Meta Quest Store.

All Kinds of Limbo XR

• Platforms: All
• Price: £6/$8

Live theater still draws in a big crowd with the likes of Broadway shows, concerts, and other types of entertainment. If you would rather see live entertainment from your own home, look no further than the performers behind All Kinds of Limbo. The musical performance is developed by artists Raffy Bushman and Nubiya Brandon alongside the NuShape Orchestra in the U.K. 

Using just a VR headset on a mobile device or PC, audiences can take part in this immersive experience that brings the Caribbean culture to life in a story of a life in limbo across different genres of music. Called All Kinds of Limbo XR, this special production from the National Theater utilizes VR technology to create a place for audiences to watch these musicians perform with the tunes of the Caribbean.

• See upcoming All Kinds of Limbo events here.

Universe Sandbox

• Platforms: Steam VR
• Price: $29.99 (via Steam Store, also includes non-VR version)

Universe Sandbox happily caters to those who just want to watch the planets leisurely orbit the sun or, with the click of a button or two, watch days pass in seconds. Even without touching the extensive and sometimes silly Steam Workshop items (space whale included), just poring over solar systems (ours and a handful of others) will keep stargazers happy. 

However, it’s the option to experiment that really elevates Universe Sandbox. You can move planets, alter their size, their composition, blow them up – the Solar System is your oyster. Yes, there’s nothing to stop you swapping the Sun out for a black hole and the resultant planetary chaos is really something. But you can have just as much fun making little tweaks and observing the knock-on effects.

• Buy Universe Sandbox VR on Steam (Early Access) 

Perspectives: Paradise

• Platforms: Steam VR
• Price: Free (via Steam Store)

Perspectives: Paradise starts with a bang and ends with a whimper which, given the subject matter is entirely appropriate. It’s a virtual reality dive into the 1952 test detonation of the first hydrogen bomb and the effect it had at Enewetak/Bikini Atoll, both upon the environment and the original inhabitants. 

Aside from a spectacular VR recreation of the detonation of the bomb, you get to delve into the unsettling aftermath, standing atop the sealed mound where radioactive materials were buried. On top of that, there are 360° views of the island, interviews (including with the people who live there now) and more. 

The subject is treated with an appropriate level of dignity – it’s not a fist-pumping celebration of America’s might, thanks in part to the involvement of some Finnish journalists. And it’s absolutely going to leave you with food for thought. 

• Get Perspectives: Paradise on Steam.

The Book of Distance

• Platforms: Steam VR, Meta
• Price: Free (via Steam Store, Meta Quest Store)

Aside from visiting remote locations, VR allows you to experience other people’s stories. The Book of Distance tells just one such story, about a Japanese man who emigrated to America. That might be an interesting tale in its own right, but what makes his story so significant is that he was one of the many, many Japanese American citizens who spent some or all of WWII in American internment camps. 

What makes this such an impactful experience is that it has such a narrow, personal focus. It was produced with the involvement of Randall Okita, the man’s grandson, and it lets you delve into various aspects of his life. It’s presented as sort of a play, one that will absolutely hold your attention, and it’s the perfect way to illuminate an important but often glossed over chapter of America’s history. 

• Get The Book of Distance on Steam.
• Get The Book of Distance on Meta Quest Store.

Within - Cinematic VR

• Platforms: Oculus, Steam, Google Play, Apple
• Price: Free

For those in need of a cinematic experience at home, Within VR can make that happen. Get immersed in some amazing stories in different genres like documentaries, horror, music videos, animation, and so much more. What’s great is that these are viewed at no charge at all. 

You can catch the best from indie filmmakers and studios from around the world. These videos are also available to download in high-resolution, so you can take it anywhere you go if you don’t have an internet connection to stream it. If you’re up for some video content, then you’ll find plenty of that through Within.

Best of all, there are no platform limitations, as the Within website proudly states that it's "available everywhere fine VR is served".

• Check out Within VR on Steam,  Oculus, Google Play, or Apple.

While virtual reality headsets are perhaps most commonly used for gaming, there’s a lot more that can be done in VR and we ask the important question of is it possible to work in VR?

Thanks to the best VR headsets, VR has so much to offer. There are interactive VR experiences, live events, mindfulness exercises, as well as VR fitness apps, but what about doing actual work in VR?

While VR can give your office new dimensions, it also adds a sense of normality to those that still can’t travel back to their place of work – making users feel as though their colleagues are at the desk next to them.

It can also give your workflows new potential, be that through a creative process like drawing with your hands, video conferencing with an avatar, or just putting the content you’re working on front and center.

Whatever your reason for working in virtual reality, the good news is that it’s very possible, even at this nascent stage in the technology’s life cycle. Sure, you’ll find odd quirks, but you may be surprised at just how well everything works for the most part.

Why work in VR?

As we mentioned above, working in Virtual Reality has its own set of advantages. For one, it ironically might make you feel a little less isolated, particularly when working with a team that also has headsets – it’s a strange feeling to turn and see colleagues in a virtual office, especially if, like this writer, you’ve not set foot in one for over two years.

Then there are the more obvious boons – added focus on your current project, for example, or adding a whole new perspective to a project. It’s likely to be transformative for architects and CAD engineers, who will be able to manipulate objects with ease, or even step inside virtual buildings before they’re built.

However, it is an experience that takes some time to get used to. Having a screen with your employer’s Slack channel floating in front of your face is jarring at first, as is moving around without being able to see your surroundings. It won’t be for everyone, but there’s potential here.

Working in VR

In our time working in VR using the Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest 2), we wanted to experience as much as possible within the headset – including the apps we use every day. 

The Quest 2 offers connectivity with a PC (wired or wireless), and this meant it was able to replicate our PC desktop. In fact, it was able to replicate almost everything – our application shortcuts, our menus, and even our wallpaper.

Everything is just… there, divorced from a screen and hanging a foot from your face. There are other options, of course, that mean you can work from a spaceship or a cozy coffee shop, but doing so maps out the extremities of the room in a way that felt like a waste of processing power given that the Quest 2 is by no means a performance powerhouse.

We kept the connection wired, too, to avoid any battery or Wi-Fi-related-related dropouts in connection, and the headtracking worked smoothly enough without ever bringing on any sickness – at least once we’d acclimatized within an hour or two.

The biggest obstacle, as you can imagine, is using a keyboard and mouse. The Quest 2’s touch controllers are great for gaming, but using pointers for typing away on a PC was never going to fly in a text-based workflow. Thankfully, we were still able to write emails, articles, and Slack messages using the keyboard and mouse on the desk.

Were we less distracted? Honestly, yes. By taking the rest of the room out of the equation (and with audio playing through the headset’s speakers), we were able to get plenty of work done – at least until the meetings started piling up.

While all of your “flat” meeting apps will work in VR when mirroring a desktop, we wanted to put some alternatives through their paces and two stood out above the others.

There are a few options, each with different ways to show off your virtual avatar. Immersed, for example, lets users work within the same “room” and communicate with each other while collaborating on tasks. It lets each user create their own monitors out of thin air, and offers some fancy features like a remote whiteboard and screen-sharing for tasks that require teams. It supports plenty of applications, too, including Adobe suite for creative projects.

Meta also offers its own app, Horizon Workrooms. It’s still in beta, but will eventually give users the chance to connect within a virtual room, scribble on whiteboards, and type on virtual keyboards. It’s a bit strange seeing avatars without legs under the boardroom table, and the animations never feel particularly lifelike, but it’s a solid start that’s likely to improve over time.

And yet, we still found ourselves getting a little distracted in meetings. Perhaps it’s the novelty of head-tracking and looking at avatars, but we found ourselves preferring a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams call – at least for now.

Should you work in VR?

Surprisingly, we did find several situations where we worked better in VR than we do in our normal office set-up. Enclosing yourself in a virtual cocoon does wonders for your productivity by removing all the distractions of your home or office. Being able to touch-type is key though, as you're going to struggle to type at anything close to a reasonable rate with VR controllers and a virtual keyboard.

You should probably keep your VR working escapades for your working from home days though, as we imagine you'll draw quite a bit of mockery in the office if you turn up, say good morning and then jack into the Matrix for the day.

Virtual meetings seem to be a big part of the metaverse push from companies like Meta, but we found them to be a little gimmicky and distracting - Zoom or Google Meetings are far more efficient for now.

Take your fitness regime to the next level with our guide to the best VR fitness accessories. 

It’s a familiar challenge — finding a way to get a good cardio workout at home. There are plenty of machines designed to achieve just this, but treadmills, bikes, and ellipticals are expensive, bulky, and, let’s be honest, boring.

Enter virtual reality on the Oculus Quest 2 (now the Meta Quest 2) wireless headset, which can transform a small patch of living room into a customized fitness center. VR provides personalized fitness training on demand, in locations as diverse as a gorgeous beach or the surface of Mars. Boring, it is not. 

The fitness options on Quest 2 are diverse and effective, but they all come with the same problem: exercising in VR goggles can be uncomfortable. The good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. Pick up these accessories and you’ll create a welcoming environment for your sweaty exertions. The better news is that none of these extras will break your bank; big increase in quality of life, small investment of cash. And isn’t a healthier you worth it?

If you’re just getting into VR because of the fitness options, you’ll want to bone up on some crucial basics. First, here’s how to avoid motion sickness in VR. That probably won’t be much of a problem when you’re working out, as workout routines have you moving in real space, but not virtual locations. It’s good info for when you start to branch out into other VR activities, though. More immediately practical is how to clean your VR headset and lenses — they’re going to get very sweaty, very quickly, and proper hygiene will not only keep your headset smelling springtime fresh, it’ll also ensure you’re always seeing crisp, clearly-defined images.

It’s also worth mentioning that you don’t have to use a Quest 2 to work out in VR; technically, the apps work on any headset. Quest 2 is the best option in our opinion, because it’s both wireless and affordable, but check out our review of the best VR headsets to help choose the tech that’s right for you. Then, when you’re ready to get your sweat on, tick off the items on this shopping list.

1. Vented insert

Work out in VR a few times and you’ll immediately discover the biggest problem: sweat. Having half your face sealed into the headset isn’t a problem for watching movies or playing games, but the heat and sweat from your workout will fog up the lenses in no time. 

Look on forums and you’ll find plenty of homebrew solutions, everything from wiping the lenses with spit to taping maxi pads to your forehead. However, we think that the easiest solution is a vented insert, which allows air to escape the mask without letting light in. There are plenty of options out there, but we like this one from Kiwi, for its effectiveness and easy installation.

2. Prescription lenses

For any VR headset to work properly, its lenses have to be the correct distance from your eyes. The Quest 2 comes with an insert to add a little extra space to help anyone who wears glasses compensate, and it works just fine for most VR usage. But why not just skip the glasses altogether? 

Many companies offer prescription lenses for Quest 2, and for far less than you might expect. Installation takes just a few seconds; simply pop off the default lenses and add the prescriptions. The process is easily reversible if several people share a headset. We had great results using VR Lens Lab, even with a strong prescription.

3. 6-ft round yoga mat

It’s surprisingly easy to get turned around when you’re in VR. You might be certain you’re dead center only to realize you’ve traveled several feet to the side. The Quest 2 has visual cues to let you know you’re close to the edge of your playfield, but, in our experience, having a physical boundary does a better job of keeping you safely where you’re meant to be. 

Work out on a yoga mat and you’ll feel when you’re too close to the no-fly zone. Quest recommends a 6-foot space circle for working out, so we’re recommending that size mat from Schriner, but you can use whatever size and shape makes sense for your situation.

4. Headphones

The whole point of using VR as opposed to your phone or laptop is the immersion, so do it right. Headphones shut out the real world and let you focus on your workout, but Quest 2 doesn’t support Bluetooth (officially), so your wireless earbuds are a no go. 

Wired earbuds will work, but we found the dangling cord to be a real annoyance while working out. Custom headphones, like these from Amavision, split the buds apart so each can plug into either side of the headset with an extra short cord. And at less than $20, it’s a no-brainer.

5. Rechargeable AA batteries

The Quest’s controllers tear through batteries like they’re Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. The batteries don’t even have to be all the way dead before the controllers start to lose accuracy, which is frustrating at best and a workout killer at worst. Don’t put yourself through the hassle of trying to wring every last drop of energy out of your AAs, just get a bunch of rechargeable ones and swap them out at the first sign of weakness. 

You’ll keep the workout interruptions to a minimum without having to constantly top off your copper-top supply. We like this set from Energizer, which comes with 4 AA batteries and a charger.

If the monotony of treadmills and hefty gym fees are cause for concern, and you can't stomach wiping down another shared weights bench, this list of the best VR fitness apps and games is for you.

With exercise, there is no one size fits all, and the dynamic worlds and activities available in Virtual Reality can twist classic repetitive workouts into interesting adventures, where you’re one button press away from exploring intriguing worlds and rocking out to music, all while working up an impressive sweat.

When discussing the best VR fitness apps and games, it’s important to mention that cleaning your VR headset is a must. Just like any other kind of gym equipment, wiping down and keeping the headset bacteria-free will ensure its long life. Additionally, being aware of your surroundings is always worth a thought. While some of the best VR headsets offer cable-free VR experiences, like that found in the Meta Quest 2, creating a clear workout space for maximum safety is always important.

The world of VR is growing fast, and the VR experiences on offer now branch into all aspects of life, from working in VR to play and beyond. No matter how you like to exercise, our comprehensive list of the best VR fitness apps and games will have you covered.

Best VR fitness apps and games

Beat Saber is one of VR’s most acclaimed games, and for good reason. Created by Beat Games, this iconic rhythm game is a great example of a simple premise executed perfectly, swapping the plastic accessories of older music games for a VR headset and motion controllers. Giving you two colored light sabers in each hand, all you need to do is slice the corresponding blocks, avoiding any obstacles like bombs or walls along the way.

It's a brilliant workout and the game has always warned players this requires high physical activity levels, so get those warm ups in first. However, Beat Games took this a step further post-launch with FitBeat, a free fitness focused song that’s an intense ride on higher difficulties. Beyond this, Beat Saber’s largely been fueled by an active modding community on PC and Quest, who’ve continued making new maps and songs at pace, alongside official DLC packs.

• Check out Beat Saber on Steam, Meta Quest, Oculus Rift, or PlayStation Store.

Kayak VR: Mirage offers an intense upper body workout set in some of the world's most stunning aquatic vistas. Using controllers in unison as a paddle, players row their way through a series of incredibly detailed real-world locations, spying local wildlife along the way. From the vibrant beaches of Papagayo in Costa Rica to the glaciers of Ciera Cove in Antarctica, each location can be explored at your own pace and intensity.

If self-led workouts aren’t your thing, there’s a Time Attack mode that plots a specific course, leading to some high-octane racing. This works great when paired with the game’s asynchronous multiplayer and leaderboard systems, which add a highly competitive angle to your kayaking. Each setting in Kayak VR: Mirage also features a meditative mode that works well as a cool-down after your workout. Here the kayak leads itself down a track with peaceful music and wildlife all around.

• Check out Kayak VR: Mirage on Steam or the PlayStation Store.

Those panicking about gym class trauma from school years can lay those concerns to rest despite Gym Class VR’s title, because this particular title is all about playing basketball to improve and maintain your fitness.

While some games take a more “functional” look in VR, Gym Class VR looks great, with customizable courts and characters available in the premium version, and matches against both AI and friends or players online.

Pass, shoot, dribble and even dunk, with your shot charts and stat records held to help you improve over time. You may have so much fun, you won’t even realize you’re building up a sweat. Quest 1 owners should note that there are fewer modes for the older headset.

• Check out Gym Class VR on the Meta Quest store.

Following its success on Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Harmonix established itself as the king of rhythm games, and many of us remember Dance Central from the Xbox 360 days. Starting life as a Kinect launch game, Harmonix took a small hiatus before making a surprise return with Dance Central (2019). Bringing us a new 32-song soundtrack, this latest entry ditched those camera peripherals for VR.

It adapted to this new format well and Dance Central leaned into the fitness aspect of VR gracefully.  However, this isn’t just another incidental workout. Harmonix went further by releasing an integrated fitness tracker. Appearing in-game as a virtual smartphone, Dance Central estimates how many calories you’ve burned during a dance off once you’ve input your weight and height. Even if you’re not playing to lose weight, it’s a great time that comes highly recommended.

• Check out Dance Central on Meta Quest or Oculus Rift.

A good soundtrack can make a workout, and Synth Riders understands that concept and runs with it. Where Beat Saber has players slice blocks and dodge to the music, Synth Riders asks you to move and flow along with tracks, riding a fun variety of neon rails to a curated list of bangers. A Gorillaz song pack recently launched for Synth Riders, bringing classic upbeat tracks like Feel Good Inc into the fold.

Glorious cyberpunk stages set the scene for players to really engage with each note, while a range of fitness updates have provided new features to boost workout potential. An in-game watch has been added that tracks your heart rate alongside how many calories you’ve burned, and the introduction of a non-stop mode means no interruptions as you get into a fitness flow.

• Check out Synth Riders on Meta Quest, Steam, or the PlayStation Store.

Holofit is best described as a companion app to existing fitness equipment, compatible with any Bluetooth enabled exercise bike, rowing machine, or cross trainer. Featuring over 100 different workout settings, Holofit aims to liven up your home exercise experience when using these machines. This provides 10 different environments, taking us to space stations or tropical environments, instead of spending your time staring at walls.

Boosted by a virtual coach and five workout modes, there’s plenty to keep you occupied here. Because of its reliance on physical exercise machines, Holofit is best suited for those who already own one, so it won’t universally appeal. Still, you can trial it for seven days free first to decide if it’s for you. While it’s available on PC, the Meta Quest’s wireless design makes it a much more preferable platform to test this out on.

• Check out Holofit on Meta Quest or Viveport.

Fit Reality's Viro Move is a strong choice for PC players, aiming to replicate your gym results. Career Mode offers four sports with 30 levels each. Boxing turns your motion controllers into punching gloves, hitting blue and orange orbs while dodging incoming walls. Swords has you swiping through these orbs without the color coordination. Shooting sees you taking down enemies once a hitbox aligns with them. Finally, Weapon Master combines all three into one mode.

If Career Mode starts getting too easy, Viro Move houses some tougher ‘Challenges’ that’ll keep you on your toes, awarding new cosmetics once completed. Alternatively, should you seek variety without necessarily making it harder, ‘Playlists’ mix up the levels to keep it interesting. It's a good workout, there’s a fun EDM soundtrack backing it up, and if you’re playing alongside friends, you’ll also find some online leaderboards.

• Check out Viro Move on Steam.

YUR.Fit is an app that provides a real-time overlay, monitoring your heart rate when playing VR games to track your weight loss. Ranking progress through a level system, YUR breaks down your workout for each game. So, when you’ve finished your latest round on Pistol Whip, expect an email detailing how long you played, calories burned, and more. It’s a good fitness companion and for greater accuracy, one that’s also compatible with Bluetooth heart rate monitors.

If you’re not fond of the set overlay, some games directly integrate YUR support. Often, that’s achieved via unofficial mods, though official adoption of the YUR Watch has increased. Allowing you to track progress through an in-game virtual watch, it’s supported by games like Gym Masters, OhShape, Synth Riders, and more. Quest users can access it through SideQuest, though there’s a similar built-in app called Oculus Move.

• Check out YUR.Fit on Steam or SideQuest.

Sparring in the ring can be a scary, adrenaline-heavy approach to working out. The Thrill of the Fight doesn’t pull any punches with its VR adaptation of that process, even if your adversaries are AI. This lifelike boxing simulator prepares fighters with a Rocky-esque training regime before making them step up against a series of challenging opponents as they grow their virtual fighting careers.

The Thrill of the Fight deftly teaches you boxing skills and techniques that will buff players with confidence and push them to become the next world champion. The simulated weight of your controllers adds to the hyperrealism, making it feel as if the gloves are well and truly on. Sizing up your opponent between rounds and throwing your body weight around to slip away from their reach makes for a consistently exhilarating experience.

• Check out Thrill of the Fight on Meta Quest or Steam.

If you’re looking for a high-intensity VR fitness experience, there are few more thrilling than Stride. In this parkour-focused platformer, the exciting nature of navigating a metropolis and evading enemies makes exercising feel secondary to the fun. Losing yourself to the imagined city skyline can be thrilling, if not a little scary at times, and adds to the heart-pounding excitement of the workout.

A suite of game modes provides players with options to finetune the game’s intensity, opening it up to all kinds of fitness styles. Time Run focuses on speed and careful route choices, whereas Endless Mode rewards long-term commitment, calculated decisions, and high scores, offering a slower but more intense workout. In addition to solo modes, Stride also boasts a decent selection of multiplayer game types that can make working out with a crew an exhilarating experience.

• Check out Stride on Meta Quest or Steam.

Which VR headset is best for fitness?

There are more than a handful of excellent VR headset models, but they’re not all created equally. While some offer incredibly high resolution in each eye, they often require a powerful PC to get the most out of – or to use at all.

Trying to move your body, throw punches, or slam dunk a basketball with a cable tied to the back of your head is more than a little uncomfortable, but there are some impressively long cables available for headsets that allow it to be swapped out.

Better yet, though, we’d advise something wireless like the Meta Quest 2. Everything is built into the headset itself, so you don’t need to connect to anything else to install apps. The battery life is solid enough to work out for a while (although we’d advise picking up rechargeable ones for the included controllers) and the Meta store has a huge number of the best VR fitness apps and games available. 

Meta’s library includes plenty of the games on this list, and while its not the cheapest storefront (PC fans will know all too well how affordable Steam can make PC VR titles), regular discounts and gift vouchers certainly help users build up their own fitness game and app libraries. You can even plug it into a gaming PC and use it as a more powerful Oculus Rift, too.

Aside from the advantages we’ve already mentioned, the Meta Quest 2 is still one of the most affordable entry points for VR, even after a price hike to $399 in 2022. It’s not got the power or pixel count of the HTC Vive Pro 2 or Valve Index, but at a considerably lower price it’s much easier to recommend for a foray into VR fitness and exercise.

Why is it that people suffer from motion sickness in VR? Plenty of users have reported that while testing out the revolutionary technology for the first time, even if they’re someone that doesn’t traditionally get motion sick, they can find themselves feeling overwhelmingly nauseous after only a short session.

This has led many to wonder if there’s a way to stop themselves from getting motion sick, or why it happens in the first place. What is it about VR that makes this such a common occurrence, even among the best VR headsets, and is there anything that games can do on an individual basis in order to make it easier for players? 

With more and more VR games coming out, and headsets like the Valve Index and Oculus Quest 2 (now renamed the Meta Quest 2) continuing to grow in popularity, it’s a factor that many people keen to enter the space are thinking about.

Why does VR make you feel sick?

Exactly why VR makes you feel sick is something that will be illuminated more as the technology continues to grow and the research into how to make it more comfortable for the widest possible audience gains momentum. Research into traditional motion sicknesses, such as car sickness or seasickness, is much further along, and according to those who’ve looked into it, it’s all to do with how your brain is reacting to what it believes is reality, and what signals it is receiving.

According to Dr. Hilary Hawkins: “You don’t get sick when you’re walking; you get sick when the body is in a still position but something else is generating motion,” Hawkins told Live Science. “The balance centers in your inner ear perceive something different than reality.”

This pretty much perfectly sums up why gaming is so notorious for causing feelings of motion sickness. In large RPG games or first-person shooters, you’re often not only moving forward, but moving at a walking pace, making your brain immediately cross its wires in terms of how to respond, thus the motion sickness.

In order to combat motion sickness, Hawkins recommended that you “Keep the mixed signals to a minimum,” but doing that in VR is difficult, especially when the experience typically revolves around wearing not only a headset but large headphones and controllers, making it an experience that is hard to escape from unless you’re willing to quickly take some of the equipment off.

This is something a lot of developers are thinking about. Legendary developer John Carmack has long been an advocate and pioneer of VR and he’s had strong thoughts on what does and doesn’t make a player sick.

During his time at Oculus, he tweeted “Stick yaw control is such VR poison that removing it may be the right move – swivel chair/stand or don't play.” This is important to consider, especially with the number of flight-based games that appeared on VR platforms. Games often combat this by including a static reference to the playing space, like a cockpit or something similar.

How to avoid motion sickness in VR

Ultimately, exactly what works for each player is going to differ based on your circumstances, and the kinds of experiences that you’re having in VR. Faster paced games, such as first-person shooters and certain music games might prove slightly too intense, and the high amount of motion has been known to cause some issues in VR. 

However, through moderation, slowly training your eyes to the platform, and making sure that you’re taking regular breaks from play, you may be able to limit or entirely eliminate some of your issues. This isn’t going to work for everyone and, unfortunately, at this stage in the technology there’s still going to be some people that simply can’t use VR, but we’re hopeful that as the technology expands and comes more integrated into other forms of tech, that these issues will be resolved. 

It’s also worth doing plenty of research into the games you’re interested in playing in VR to see if they’ve got any setting or ways to make you feel better when playing. Many games that require a lot of acceleration or fast motion have toggles that will slow these motions down, or add darkened frames to the sides of the screen in order to lessen the impact of swinging the camera and your head around quickly.

Games like Skyrim VR have started implementing different styles of movement that allow you to warp, rather than walk, to whichever point your character needs to be, which is said to help reduce some of the mental stress that large games with traditional human-like motion can cause. 

There are plenty of modern VR experiences that have these options, so it’s certainly worth checking before you decide to invest in a headset. 

If you happen to have friends or family that have the headsets, we would definitely recommend trying them on if you have the chance. While the headsets are all fairly similar in form factor, some like the Oculus Quest 2, are much lighter than something that requires cables.

This can factor into a person’s experience of motion sickness as being grounded by a cable can reduce the physical motion from the player, lessening the strain on the player’s perception. Light, wireless headsets like the Oculus Quest 2 may make the player move around more freely, and thus induce the symptoms of motion sickness more easily. Trying out different headsets and finding the one that is right for you is a crucial part of this process, so we really recommend finding somewhere, such as a shop or a VR café that will allow you to take them for a spin.

VR is one of, if not the most immersive forms of technology out there. While it’s mainly been used by gamers to take the medium into a new dimension, and by several industries in order to revolutionize the way they do things, it’s sure to be a big part of our or lives for years to come.

HTC led the charge with the modern wave of interest in virtual reality hardware. Its top-tier HTC Vive Pro 2 VR headset carries on the impressive lineage of PC-powered virtual reality devices first introduced by the original HTC Vive.

With an incredible display and well-balanced ergonomics, the HTC Vive Pro 2 is an immersive and comfortable virtual reality device. It really goes the extra mile to make digital worlds look as realistic and clearly presented as possible.

However, in pursuit of visual perfection, HTC has missed a beat with its overall VR experience, with its own-brand controllers particularly showing their age.

Some aspects of the spec sheet here are unbeaten by the competition, which is why its one of the best VR headsets, and there’s a lot to love here. Yet, to get the most out of the HTC Vive Pro 2, you’ll have to mix-and-match it with some rival manufacturer hardware, too.

HTC Vive Pro 2: Set up & usability

We have conflicting feelings when it comes to the setup process for the HTC Vive Pro 2.

On one hand, once you’ve got everything in place, ideally in a space where it can be left to live without disruption, its systems work in tandem incredibly well to ensure your movements in VR are always well tracked (even if you’re waving your arms behind you), and that you’re safely aware of the limits of your real-world surroundings.

On the other hand, it can be a real pain to initially set up. It requires multiple cables, a large play space, and some finicky positioning of external accessories.

Though both seated and standing set-ups are supported, the free-roaming ‘room scale’ experience is likely what most people think of when imagining playing in virtual reality. The HTC Vive Pro 2 requires a minimum of 2 x 1.5 m of unobstructed space, which may be difficult to pull off in some smaller rooms. Once that space has been found, you’ll then need to place the two Base Station units in opposite corners of the designated area – ideally slightly above head height, pointing down towards the middle of the area. 

Keep in mind that each of these units requires its own wall socket power supply, so that limits where you can put them (thankfully they come with long enough cables to allow for some flexibility). For ease of use, you’ll ideally want all this within the same room that your PC is in.

The headset comes with a 5 m cable connected to it, which plugs into a separate breakaway “Vive Link” box (this also requires its own additional power supply). This box then hooks up to your PC over USB 3.0 and DisplayPort connections. If you then want to charge the two controllers simultaneously, you’re looking at five wall sockets in use at once, and that’s before taking into consideration your PC and your monitor, too.

Setup then moves to Valve’s Steam VR software platform – the bridge between your VR hardware and your PC. It will run you through a series of steps to pair the Base Stations with your headset, ‘paint’ the obstacle free play space, measure your real-world height, and set up a grid-like ‘Chaperone’ boundary that magically appears if you’re about to step beyond the realms of your safe play area and, say, into that rather pointy coffee table.

All this takes a while to do – if you’re lucky and everything is recognized without issue and the tracking goes off without a hitch, you can do it in about 30 minutes. If you’ve got to start moving furniture, or the Base Stations (sometimes inexplicably) fail to recognize your space, it could take much longer. So, once you’re set up, you’re going to feel inclined to leave the HTC Vive Pro 2 set up for good.

While the HTC Vive Pro 2 is more accurate, its setup is also far more demanding than the portable fun of the Meta Quest 2 (once known as the Oculus Quest 2), which includes all its tracking systems in the headset itself and can be set up in an all-new play space, without the need for a computer, in a matter of minutes. 

The HTC Vive Pro 2 is not alone with these limitations – the otherwise excellent Valve Index suffers from the same rigid requirements – and it’s an as-yet unavoidable by-product of the sheer power needed to run VR applications at such high levels of quality.

HTC Vive Pro 2 review: Design & display

The HTC Vive Pro 2 combines screens, cameras, motion tracking sensors, and speakers into a design that’s constructed to sit in front of your eyes. A ski-goggle-like element is placed on the front of your head, over your eyes, and then secured to your head with a series of straps and tightening dials. It’s a little weighty, but this has been well distributed and balanced over your head. Padding and ventilation has been smartly placed to make wearing the Vive Pro 2 comfortable enough for hours-long play sessions without too much issue.

The front facial gasket is large enough to just about accommodate glasses wearers, while there’s also a physical Interpupillary Distance (IPD) slider onboard which makes sure the inner displays are perfectly aligned with the center point of your pupils, ensuring depth and detail is perceived properly. This is a welcome and increasingly rare feature of virtual reality headsets.

Inside that front casing element sits the HTC Vive Pro 2’s secret weapon and best feature – its super high-resolution displays. Targeting a 5K resolution (4896 x 2448, which works out to roughly 2.5K pixels per eye), they’re capable of displaying virtual reality scenes with supreme clarity and with exceptionally smooth motion thanks to their 120 Hz refresh rate (meaning they update with a fresh frame of imagery 120 times per second). High quality panels combined with a wide 120-degree field of view result in some of the most natural feeling optics you’ll currently find in the realm of VR hardware. It’s genuinely incredible.

Despite its forward-thinking design in many places, the HTC Vive Pro 2 can’t escape the realities of needing a high-powered PC to run it, as well as the need for external motion tracking support systems. You’ll have to factor in the need for cables to power the experience, tethering you physically to your PC, unless you invest in one of HTC’s sold-separately wireless adapters. And, even if you invest in a wireless add-on, that then means you sacrifice the highest resolution and refresh rates the HTC Vive Pro 2 is capable of, essentially negating the point of buying the Vive Pro 2 in the first place.

The complete Vive Pro 2 package is finished off with a pair of cube-like motion-tracking Base Stations (each requiring a power socket of their own) and a pair of Vive motion controllers.

The controllers themselves are large, wand-like instruments complete with a laptop-like trackpad. These feel very bulky when compared to the svelte, lightweight finger-tracking alternatives offered up by Valve and other rivals. Thankfully, if you can track down the highly sought-after Valve ‘Knuckle’ controllers, the HTC Vive Pro 2 will support them.

As well as the wireless add-on previously mentioned, the HTC Vive Pro 2 is also compatible with all other existing HTC Vive accessories, including facial movement and limb trackers. They can enhance the experience, but are sold separately and not vital to proceedings.

HTC Vive Pro 2 review: Features, games, & apps

It’s worth persevering with the setup process though in order to enjoy the wide array of VR experiences that the Vive Pro 2 is compatible with. As the HTC Vive Pro 2 taps into Steam VR’s setup process, so too is it open to the Steam gaming platform’s ever-growing VR library. From flying an X-Wing in Star Wars: Squadrons to exploring the sci-fi dystopian of jaw-dropping Half-Life: Alyx, the Vive Pro 2 can access pretty much every VR title available to PC players.

If you download and run the third-party Revive software, with a bit of tinkering you can also open up the headset to the otherwise-exclusive games that are designed to run on the Meta headsets through the Oculus game store. Try out creative tools like Tilt Brush to social apps like Rec Room, to fitness applications, meditation experiences, and travel-oriented VR adventures. Whatever you go for, the HTC Vive Pro 2 lets you step into digital worlds with an unparalleled level of clarity.

If you want to dip in and out of many VR experiences without hitting your wallet too hard, it’s worth signing up for HTC’s Viveport platform. It’s a bit like an all-you-can eat, Netflix-style service for VR gaming, with a catalog of a few hundred titles. There are different tiers to the subscription service, with different perks based on how much you’re willing to pay each month for access, and it’s a great way to find your VR legs, so to speak.

HTC Vive Pro 2 review: Performance

Once the somewhat tedious set up process is completed, it’s hard not to love what the HTC Vive Pro 2 delivers in terms of performance. And yes, although the setup is frustrating, once properly calibrated it’s a reliable and accurate tracking system that does a good job of anchoring you and the movement of your limbs to the virtual world.

The field of view of the headset’s lenses, combined with their resolution and refresh rate, genuinely make it feel like you’re peering into another world. Even if you’re a veteran VR user, you’ll find yourself gawping at the undeniable clarity presented by this headset. Again, however, it’s worth stressing that you’ll need a high-end PC to push the headset to its pixel-rich limits.

However, the quality of those displays is a double-edged sword – it takes such effort to drive them that they can feel palpably hot at times. It’s nothing dangerous, but you will feel the heat rising over an extended play session, which can leave you with a sweaty brow and foggy screens – a good reminder why it's important to clean your VR headset and lenses often. And as for the controllers, though still capable, they just can’t match the intuitive action smaller controllers like those the Meta Quest 2 provide, let alone the impressive, naturalistic finger tracking of the class-leading Valve ‘Knuckles.’

Often, built-in headphones tend to be a little weak, but the HTC Vive Pro 2 also includes a built-in speaker system worthy of praise. HTC’s solution here is great, as rather than having in or over ear headphones, it has a pair of small adjustable speakers that sit just in front of your ears. 

They offer warm and detailed sound, while also allowing for some situational awareness of exterior sounds from the real world. It not only helps you stay safe from bumping into people and free to hear a call from elsewhere in the house, but also helps alleviate any sense of claustrophobia that wearing a headset like this can sometimes result in. It manages all this while still retaining sonic clarity and a good sense of bass too – great for when you’re in the middle of a booming VR action scene. For those that really can’t live without their go-to buds or cans, there’s a headphone jack for plugging them in, too.

HTC Vive Pro 2: Recommended PC specs

Recommended PC specs to run the HTC Vive Pro 2

Minimum:
Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350 (equivalent or better)
Memory: 8GB RAM (or more)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX1060 or AMD Radeon RX480 (equivalent or better)
OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1 or Windows 10
Video out: DisplayPort 1.2 (or newer)
USB ports: 1x USB 3.0 (or newer)

Recommended:
Processor: Intel Core i5-4590 or AMD FX 8350 (equivalent or better)
Memory: 8GB RAM (or more)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 (equivalent or better)
OS: Microsoft Windows 10
Video out: DisplayPort 1.4 (or newer)
USB ports: 1x USB 3.0 (or newer)

HTC Vive Pro 2 review: Price

The HTC Vive Pro 2 is available now, in two package options. The first, more expensive option, bundles together everything you need to get started with PC VR – aside from the PC itself. For $1,399/£1,299, you get the Vive Pro 2 headset, two Base Station 2.0 tracking stations, a pair of Vive controllers, and all necessary leads and chargers.

HTC also offers a money-saving alternative. As the Vive Pro 2 works with legacy accessories, you can save cash by using the Base Stations and controllers from an earlier Vive product and just purchase the new headset for $799/£719.

Whichever way you cut it, it’s a premium-costing VR package, similar in price to the PC VR Valve Index kit. Note, however, that the bundled Vive controllers are showing their age. Seeing as the far more capable Valve Index ‘Knuckle’ controllers are compatible with the Vive kit, consider picking them up with the solo headset option.

Keep in mind too that if you haven’t already got a decent-spec PC to power the headset, you’re going to need one. This could quite easily double the overall investment needed.

Should you get the HTC Vive Pro 2?

Beyond impossibly expensive commercial VR headsets or research devices, the HTC Vive Pro 2 is currently the last word in virtual reality quality. Its high-resolution screens and fast refresh rates make for one of, if not the most natural-feeling and impressive-looking virtual reality experience that can be had in your home. Though the device can get hot, it’s still comfortable thanks to its ergonomic design, with multiple fitting options and immersive audio.

But just as HTC is ahead of the competition in its headset’s display elements, it’s falling behind the pack with its accessories. Separate Base Stations and the set-up process involved is feeling increasingly outmoded versus inside-out camera tracking systems found in standalone headsets. Plus, the HTC Vive controllers are in serious need of an upgrade.

As it stands, the HTC Vive Pro 2 remains a seriously impressive piece of VR kit. We’d just recommend investing in the supported Valve' Knuckle' controllers to go with it and cordoning off some dedicated play space to leave it ready and waiting – and hope that future Vive hardware finds a way to alleviate the strain its current setup process can cause.

If this isn’t for you

The Meta Quest 2 is not only an affordable alternative, but a standalone one, too – it delivers impressive VR experiences and games from its onboard processor and internal battery power supply. It won’t reach the heights of visual fidelity that the Vive Pro 2 manages, but is far more streamlined in terms of setup and very portable as well.

If the in-the-box Vive controllers sound a little clunky to you, you should also consider the Valve Index VR package. In many respects it’s the best (premium) VR headset out there – and that’s mostly down to its so-called ‘Knuckle’ controllers. While its screen is a step behind what’s on offer from HTC here, the PC-only headset is our tethered option of choice thanks to the way its controllers track your individual fingers, allowing for intuitive, natural interaction in virtual worlds.

Finally, if you’re looking for the most cost-effective entry into VR, and are already a PS4 or PS5 games console owner, then check out PlayStation VR. Its screen is low resolution by today’s standards, and its wand-like Move controllers have similar limitations to what we see with the HTC Vive Pro 2’s alternatives. However, it can take advantage of the Sony hardware you may well already have under your TV, and has a superb library of exclusive VR games made by Sony’s top game developers.

Ever wanted to walk aboard an intergalactic starship? Explore the rubbled ruins of a futuristic city after an alien invasion? Step onto the surface of a distant planet? Through a VR headset you can experience all these things – and the Valve Index is the best device to do it with.

Thanks to its advanced screen technology, finger-tracking controllers, and accurate motion tracking stations, the Valve Index is the most comprehensive VR package you can currently have in your home. It’s expensive, requires some patience during set up, and needs a high-end PC to take full advantage of the most advanced applications it can access, but with those hurdles jumped invites you into an immersive VR experience like no other.

If you’ve got the money and the space to take full advantage of the Valve Index, it’s the best VR headset that money can (currently, at least) buy. Read on to find out why.

Valve Index review: Price and release date

Released on June 28, 2019, the Valve Index costs $999/£919. It’s an expensive package, but it’s an extensive one too, with the set containing not only a headset, but advanced controllers and motion tracking ‘Base Stations.’ Some elements can be bought separately, but at the time of writing (and for many months prior), all except the bundle options have been out of stock.

Despite being a few years old, the Valve Index has more or less retained its value (initially thanks to the relative scarcity of stock). So, those waiting for a sale on the device may be waiting some time. Having said that, rumors of a follow up device may eventually change this, while fresh competition from the upcoming PlayStation VR2 and in development hardware from Meta (aka Facebook) could drive the price down.

The Valve Index requires a PC to run. To get the most out of the headset, this must be relatively high-spec’d. The ‘Are you ready for Valve Index?’ tool can help you to figure out if your existing computer is capable of running the Valve Index, or what upgrades will be required. If you’re starting from scratch, expect to pay several hundred dollars or pounds, perhaps even entering into the thousands, to really see the Valve Index running in its optimum state.

If you’re interested in something cheaper, the standalone Meta Quest 2 (née Oculus Quest 2) usually sells for around $299/£299 and is an excellent wireless entry point into the realm of virtual reality – even if its screen and controllers pale in comparison to the Valve Index. For now, the Valve Index remains worth its higher asking price, but for how long remains to be seen.

Valve Index review: Set up

The Valve Index is a wired headset, meaning you’re going to need to plug it into the back of your PC in order for it to work, as well as having a few external accessories running in order to track play. Two cameras sit on the front of the Valve Index, which are used in tandem with a small pair of (included) cube-shaped Base Stations. These will help track and orient you in the real world and then process that information into movement through the virtual world on your computer.

As such, set up can be a mess of wires – you have three cables running from the headset itself (power, USB 3.0, and a DisplayPort cord) into your computer, while the two Base Stations (which need to be placed in opposite corners of your play space, slightly angled towards the ground) each need power supplies too.

While standing and seated play options are available, it’s the free-roaming ‘Room Scale’ style that is most appealing, letting you freely wander around VR worlds within the confines of your home. Valve Index’s Room Scale space requirements are quite demanding, needing at least 2m x 1.5m (6.5ft x 5ft) in order to work properly. Any less than that and tracking may become flaky.

The set-up process, once all cables are connected and Base Stations placed down, is quite intuitive. You’ll need to download the SteamVR application on your PC, but once installed it does a great job of walking you through setting up the boundaries of your play space, setting your height, and orienting you through how VR works with a tutorial themed around Valve’s popular Portal game series. Your play space is also identified through a ‘Chaperone’ system, which throws up a grid of virtual walls as you approach the boundaries of your space – handy for preventing you from walking into real-world walls or putting your hand through your TV screen.

But the set-up process is time consuming, even if things work correctly the first time. The more space you have, the better, and we’d encourage anyone setting up the Valve Index to consider a dedicated play space for the VR headset – you won’t want to go through that rigmarole all over again.

Valve Index review: Design & display

The general look of the Valve Index will be familiar to you if you’ve seen a VR headset before. With a screen module that’s placed in front of your eyes, it’s held in place with an overhead strap that connects to a rear band that tightens the unit into position with a dial at the back of your head.

Despite the relative bulk of the headset, Valve has done a good job distributing the weight of the device so that it sits comfortably for long play sessions. Also, while glasses remain a squeeze into that front gasket, they can be accommodated without too much discomfort.

What’s packed into the headset is what makes it special though. Behind the glossy front screen plate you’ll find dual LCD displays at a 1440 x 1600 resolution per eye. While it’s no longer the sharpest display out there, that’s still crisp enough to appreciate fine detail in VR worlds.

More impressive is its refresh rate – at 120Hz (and capable of boosting up to 144Hz) it allows for smooth movement in games and experiences, which help to avoid the dreaded motion sickness VR can sometimes cause. Even better is the field of view which, at 130 degrees, gives a great impression of the virtual world’s presence around you. With two additional sliders, one to set the distance between each individual eye to match your pupils, and another to move the screens closer or further away from your eyes, the Valve Index lets you find a sweet spot that makes its viewport feel very natural.

Audio is provided by two puck-like speakers that hover from the bands of the headset in front of your ears. They are fantastic – with more boom and bass than in-ears can offer, and without the claustrophobic feeling of being completely encased by over-ears, you get the benefit of rich, directional audio while not completely losing situational awareness in the real world. It’s a great compromise.

Perhaps the Valve Index’s finest innovation though is in its controllers, colloquially known as the ‘Knuckles.’ Stepping away from the wand-like controllers of the PSVR, or the trigger grips of the Oculus, the Valve Index controllers are tightened around your hands with a strap, leaving your individual fingers free to be tracked by sensors in the controllers. Combined with a traditional pair of thumbsticks, trackpads, and face buttons which rest where your thumbs naturally sit, the Knuckles allow you the most naturalistic finger tracking experience in VR so far. They let you interact with virtual worlds using grips, points, prods, pushes – and practically any other form of interaction your hands can achieve. It’s a million times more advanced than what the competition’s controllers offer, and while Oculus is making great strides in controller-free, hands-only gesture tracking, the Knuckles remain the most accurate input method in VR to date.

Valve Index review: Features, games, & apps

As mentioned, the SteamVR application guides you through the set-up process, but also acts as your portal to the experiences and games that the Valve Index headset has to offer. Valve’s Steam platform is already the premier destination for PC gamers, and SteamVR is an excellent virtual reality-focused accompaniment to that.

There’s a giant catalogue of games available to Valve Index players through the store. You can fly an X-Wing in Star Wars: Squadrons, man the command deck of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Bridge Crew, explore and colonize a near-infinite universe in No Man’s Sky, or slice and dance your way through the arcade action of Beat Saber. Popular franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Doom have been converted into VR, while there are literally thousands of games built from the ground up for VR too.

By being a PC-based headset, the Valve Index is also open to all sorts of third-party applications and games. Whether you’re tweaking the visual output of the display or adding mods to games you’ve bought, by working in tandem with a PC, you can eke additional functionality out of the Valve Index in a way that standalone headsets like the Oculus Quest 2 cannot. And though you’ll have to do a little research on how to get it working, the Valve Index can also tap into the rival Oculus/Meta VR games storefront using the Revive application, opening up the otherwise exclusive games there, too.

It’s worth noting that every purchase of the Valve Index also comes with a free copy of what’s undeniably the best VR game so far – Half-Life: Alyx, a continuation of the mega-popular first-person shooter series on PC, also developed by Valve. Built from the ground-up with the Valve Index in mind, it takes full advantage of the Knuckles, and delivers a gripping, immersive sci-fi world to explore. It’s quite unlike anything else you’ll have ever experienced in gaming and should not be missed whether you’re a fan of the series or not.

If gaming isn't your bag, then there are still plenty of other cool experiences you can check out on the Valve Index, including fitness and meditation apps, along with educational experiences that explore science, nature, and more. If you're not going to be gaming with the Index though, it might be overkill in terms of power and cost.

Valve Index review: Performance

The Valve Index in action is a remarkable sight, and one that is difficult to convey in words. Popping the headset over your eyes is a transformative feeling, letting you truly inhabit the virtual worlds game developers and experience makers have created for the platform.

One of the things that stands out most about the Valve Index compared to the majority of its competition is just how wide its field of view is. Where some headsets give you tunnel vision, forcing your view into narrow cones, the Valve Index’s lenses are both tall and wide. While focusing still relies upon you turning your gaze rather than moving your eyes, this additional wraparound feeling is incredibly immersive.

This natural interaction with the digital world is furthered by just how intuitive the Knuckle controllers are. It’s best realized in Half-Life: Alyx, where you almost forget you aren’t using your real hands. Even fine movements, like using an in-game Sharpie pen on a window to leave a note, feels delicately accurate. It’s hard to go back to other VR input methods after having used the Knuckles.

Our high-end computer used in testing, which includes an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and Intel i7 GPU, meant that the Valve Index could run at high frame rates with applications and games running at their most demanding visual settings. You don't necessarily need a machine quite as powerful to get the most out of the Valve Index, but be aware that performance will, to a degree, scale with your PC’s components and that a low-end machine may struggle to deliver smooth VR performance.

Note that the Valve Index can get a little hot while in use, particularly around where its screens run. It’s not uncomfortable though, and there’s enough ventilation to prevent you – and the device – from overheating in play.

Should you buy a Valve Index?

If you’re willing to spare no expense for your virtual reality adventures, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better VR setup than that which is offered by the Valve Index. From the ergonomics of the headset to the intuitiveness of the controllers, the Valve Index is the most immersive VR experience you can put into your home right now.

There are a few drawbacks to note – it’s expensive, the set-up process can be potentially laborious, and it’s very much a wired device. Given the advancing age of the Valve Index and the rumors of a successor waiting in the wings, there may be some hesitation in picking up the Index in case an Index 2 rears its head. But that could well be hoping for a dream as Valve’s hardware concerns have now turned away from VR and to its Steam Deck handheld games console.

And so, for now, the Valve Index remains the most premium VR package that you can put in your home. If you’re ready to fully invest in the promise of virtual reality, the Valve Index is that promise realized.

If the Valve Index isn’t for you

There’s a lot of fussing involved with the Valve Index, which may turn you off. For starters, you may not have a high-powered PC to begin with, pushing that cost of entry even higher. If that’s the case, we recommend you take a look at the standalone headset the Meta/Oculus Quest 2. It’s totally wire-free and self-contained, letting you access a great library of games and VR experiences at a fraction of the cost of the Valve Index. And while its controllers and display aren’t as advanced as the Index, it too can be optionally cabled up to a PC to take advantage of all the PC VR games out there – including Half-Life: Alyx, with a bit of tinkering.

If you’ve got a PlayStation 4 or PS5 sitting under your TV, you’ve also got the PlayStation VR kit as an alternative. It’s about to be superseded by the PlayStation VR 2, and while the original kit is showing its age with a low-resolution screen and clunky wand-like controllers, it still has an enviable catalogue of VR games that are exclusive to PlayStation owners.

Finally, if screen resolution is your highest priority, you’ve got the cash to spare, and a high-end PC to go with it, it’s worth considering HTC’s Vive Pro 2. It has the best screen of any commercial VR headset we’ve tried thus far – though it’s packed-in controllers aren’t as good as Valve’s Knuckles (which can be configured to work with the Pro 2, if you can find them for sale separately), nor is the headset as comfortable overall.

VR headsets allow us to insert ourselves into incredible experiences and games, but that does come at the cost. Aside from the occasional nausea, there’s also sweat, hair, and dust that can get trapped in the headset during usage… and that’s without even factoring in the current pandemic, so you’ll definitely want to know how to clean your VR headset thoroughly.

Since it's something you'll be in close contact with your extended periods of time, it's incredibly important to keep the VR headset, and any controllers you’re using, clean and sanitary. The best VR headsets are expensive, so it's worth looking after them to increase their longevity too. Still, with so many expensive components, some high-quality lenses, and plenty of buttons, it can be tricky to work out how to give your VR setup a clean safely.

Here’s a breakdown of how to clean a VR headset properly, including tips on what equipment you'll need, what techniques you should use, and how to clean your lenses safely too. 

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only, and is not meant to offer medical advice. If you're concerned that you are ill or contagious, do not invite your friends over to use your VR headset. No, not even to show them Half Life: Alyx.

Why is cleaning your VR headset important?

As with anything that comes into close contact with you, or more specifically your face, VR headsets can build up a variety of germs and bacteria. While you’re unlikely to hand your shiny Oculus or HTC headset to a random passer-by on the street, it’s worth taking precautions to prevent transmitting such unpleasantness between members of your household, or just friends that want to have a go at taking on your Beat Saber high score.

With the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the one that leads to COVID-19) being detectable “in aerosols for up to three hours”, according to the National Institutes of Health, you really can never be too careful about what you’re passing on to other users of your VR headset, which is why knowing how to clean a VR headset is crucial.

Most importantly, if you think you might be infected with coronavirus, don't invite friends over to use your VR headset.

What you’ll need to clean your VR headset and controllers

• Disinfectant wipes
• Microfiber cloth
• Can of compressed air

There are a huge number of cleaning products out there, but you’ll want to be picky and keep an eye out for certain ingredients – or lack thereof – when tackling how to clean a VR headset.

Normally, we’d advise using alcohol-free products that have antibacterial qualities, particularly wipes. This is because with cleaning gels, the cleaning product can actually get into the cracks of your device’s outer shell, potentially seeping through to the components inside. The downside is that antibacterial wipes won't destroy coronaviruses like COVID-19, since it's a virus, not a bacteria. if you're worried about COVID (and who isn't), then you can also consider alcohol-based wipes, but we'd avoid sprays and gels altogether.

Your lenses will require a more delicate touch, so we’d suggest a microfiber cloth with a spot of water on. This is because even alcohol-free products can cause some issues with the glass.

Finally, a can of compressed air is your best friend when used correctly, and a nightmare when used too much. Keeping the can a few inches away, fire the air in short bursts to help push dust and dirt out of those hard-to-reach spots, being careful not to push it further into inside the device if you can avoid it.

As you can probably tell, you don’t want to blast compressed air anywhere near the lenses, either, lest you end up powering sharp pieces of goodness-knows-what into them at speed.

What to do before cleaning your VR headset

All headsets should be powered down before you start cleaning. If your headset is wired, be sure to unplug it first. If your headset comes with a glasses “spacer,” such as the Oculus Quest 2, be sure to remove that and clean it, too.

You’ll also want to check the manufacturer’s guidance for cleaning. Some will recommend using more specific methods on certain parts, whereas this guide is more of a general overview. Use the two in conjunction, just to be safe.

Finally, we’d also recommend washing your hands before you start cleaning and do the same once you’re done. In fact, this is a good practice to get into when using your headset in any case. Nitrile gloves are also handy when cleaning, but they’re not a must.

How to clean your VR headset exterior

Use your alcohol-free wipes to wipe around the headset, paying close attention to the parts that come into contact with your face during use. That includes all around the “eye” portion, with a focus on the nose part, too.

With external cameras on VR headsets, use the microfiber cloth approach to ensure no smearing of the sensors.

We’d also recommend focusing on the front of the headset, particularly the top and the bottom of the outer shell. This is because it’s here that you’ll likely put your hands on the headset to put it on or remove it.

If your headset has a fabric head strap, you can still use your alcohol-free antibacterial wipes on those, but you’ll need to leave the fabric to dry out completely before using again. We’d advise against leaving the VR headset to dry outside, since direct sunlight can wreak havoc on the lenses.

How to clean VR lenses

• Use Microfiber cloth with circular motions
• Only use cleaning fluids made specifically for optical lenses

Speaking of the lenses, don’t forget to use the microfiber cloth we recommended earlier. Using this will help minimize friction on the lens, while still picking up anything that may be there. It doesn't matter what brand of headset you're using, the cleaning process is the same whether you're looking to clean Oculus lenses or your Valve Index's lenses.

Use circular motions rather than up and down strokes, starting at the center of the lens and gently working your way outwards. If your lens has dirt or marks that requires a bit of assistance to remove, you can also look at camera lens cleaning fluids, though these can be a little pricey.

It’s also worth remembering that whether you have a fancy stand for your VR gear, or you’re just setting it on a table, it’ll collect germs from those surfaces, too. With that in mind, be sure to give those areas a clean regularly.

If you don’t use your VR headset all that often, consider a carry case, or even the original box as a place to store it away from bacteria. In fact, this will also help keep it out of direct sunlight, helping ensure the sensors and lenses last longer.

VR headsets have come a long way from the clunky, blurry and oversized technology we saw in the 2010s. With new high-spec headsets launching on a regular basis, each with their unique features, finding the best VR headset for you has never been easier. 

While the current wave of virtual reality has created a bold new avenue for gaming, that is not the only reason to explore this technological phenomenon. There’s a whole world of immersive VR experiences available that can revolutionize everything from your workflow to how you relax or even the way you break a sweat when working out. 

To help you make the right choice, we've put these headsets through their paces to test how good they are for gaming, fitness, work, mindfulness & relaxation, and more. We looked at the hardware and the software on offer so whatever you're looking at VR for, you can make the right choice.

With more headsets in the works, we’ll keep updating this list, so be sure to check in for all the updates on what’s new in the VR space. And, if you’re looking to grab a bargain on the way, check out our best VR headset deals. 

Best overall

The Meta Quest 2 has been around in some way, shape, or form since 2020 – and it’s barely changed at all. Sure, it went from being called the Oculus Quest 2 to its new moniker when Facebook changed its branding, and it got new storage options (it now starts at 128GB instead of 64GB), but that’s about it.

And yet, it remains the easiest headset to recommend. That’s partially down to price – Meta raised the headset cost by $100, but it’s still cheaper than many of the best VR headsets out there, and includes everything you need in the box.

The other big plus, and one that we’re surprised Meta doesn’t talk about more often, is the ability to plug the Quest 2 into your snazzy gaming PC and have it essentially pass the complex VR stuff onto your rig. The outcome? Playing highly-rated PC VR titles through your Meta Quest 2 without shelling out for a headset twice the price.

If you’re curious about VR, the Meta Quest 2 is the place to start, with a wealth of excellent games and apps within the headset’s own storefront and no need to plug it into a PC – but a lot more flexibility if you do further down the line.

Best premium

The Valve Index hasn’t got the highest resolution screen on this list, but in almost every other aspect (price allowing), it’s the premium PC-connected VR headset experience to beat.

With a supersmooth 144Hz refresh rate and wide 130 degree field of view, the Valve Index offers truly immersive virtual reality. Though bulky, its headset is comfortable for long play sessions, its tracking capabilities are spot on (even if its set up process is a bit more involved than we’d like it to be) and its controllers are simply sublime. The so-called ‘Knuckles’ not only feature buttons and motion tracking, but are designed in such a way as to leave your fingers free, with finger-tracking elements allowing you to use your hands as you would naturally interact within a digital world. It’s marvellous.

It has a couple of issues we’d like to see ironed out for a successor. Firstly, we’d be happy to lose a little motion tracking accuracy in favour of an inside-out tracking system that would let us do away with the finicky external base stations. We’d also be keen to see Valve offer some form of wireless play, too, as the Index requires many cables to run.

But once you’ve got those Knuckles on and have your free, bundled-in copy of Half Life: Alyx (the very best VR game) running, all those grumbles fade away. If you can afford it, and have the PC to pair it with, the Valve Index is the most impressive VR hardware you can enjoy today.

Best for high-resolution

If you’re after the last word in virtual reality screen quality – without resorting to spending literal thousands on niche research or commercial devices – the HTC Vive Pro 2 is the VR headset for you. Offering a gigantic 5K combined resolution for its screens, and throwing in a fast refresh rate and wide viewing angle to boot, if this list was based solely on headset quality, it’d be the winner. We’re talking about a screen so good sometimes to be close to just looking through a window to the real world outside – and all within a comfortable, if bulky, headset too, one that can accommodate glasses wearers and includes a physical IPD slider.

But it’s not the complete package. The HTC-branded controllers it works with are terribly aged at this point, being large, heavy, wand-like things (if you can find the Valve Knuckles sold separately anywhere they will be compatible as well, however), and it suffers from the same tethered limitations that the Valve Index shares with its cables and base stations. It can also get quite hot near the screen which, considering the resolution it's running at and the power required to get it ticking along smoothly, is somewhat inevitable.

Factor in a truly eye-watering price for the complete bundle package, and the overall components don’t quite match what Valve is offering. If, however, you can get the headset by itself at a more bargainous price, mixing and matching with Valve’s controllers would make this very close to the ultimate PC VR experience. Shop around…

Best value

Pop the HP Reverb G2 over your head and you’ll be immediately dazzled by its super-sharp display. While not a cheap headset, it’s relatively affordable, given just how clear its display is, even if its refresh rate isn’t quite as smooth as some of the competition.

That affordability however does ignore the fact that controllers for the HP Reverb G2 are sold separately, and that you’ll need a capable PC in order to power that screen to its highest capabilities. 

It’s a mixed bag then. On one hand you’ve got a physical IPD slider to ensure the most comfortable position for the lenses in front of your eyes, but it’s also another restrictively tethered headset, connecting to a computer over cabling. It’s open nature to PC VR platforms means there’s a great array of applications open to it, but its tracking isn’t quite as reliable as some of the other options on the list.

The HP Reverb G2 then stands as a great option if you can’t quite afford the HTC Vive Pro 2, but it’s a little behind the pack in a few too many areas to top this list.

Best for customization

The next step down the list of HTC VR gear, the Cosmos Elite is a capable – if uninspiring – virtual reality headset.

It’s very similar to the original HTC Cosmos, but the Elite favors the more accurate base station tracking solution than the Quest-like inside-out camera tracking of the original Cosmos. It’s quite a heavy headset at about 2lbs in weight, but HTC does well to make it feel comfortable with plenty of ergonomic fit adjustment points and a flip-up front display for quickly getting a view again into the real world.

However, similar problems found with the HTC Vive Pro 2 rear their heads here, but without the benefit of the super screen of the Vive Pro 2 to soften the blow. It’s still quite an expensive headset, its controllers are showing their age, and the many-cabled set up is both finicky and restrictive. The Cosmos Elite can still wow, but it’s best only approached if you find it at a bargain price.

Best console VR

The PSVR2 is a hefty update to Sony’s original foray into virtual reality. The addition of stunning hardware updates paired with an easy-to-use interface makes the PSVR2 an excellent option for VR Veterans or first-time virtual reality users. 

The headset is packed with plenty of comfort features like soft pads to help with weight distribution and multiple dials and buttons that can be tweaked to find your perfect fit. A small fan in the headset also keeps things cool, which is great for workouts and high-intensity gaming. And, getting lost in the action is easier than ever, thanks to haptic feedback in the controllers and PSVR2’s headset rumble system. 

If you’re looking for professional apps, it’s important to note that the PSVR2’s library is smaller than others on the market and is currently geared more towards games than productivity apps. If you're looking for something with access to productivity right away, other PC VR headsets may be a better choice.

• Read our full PlayStation VR 2 review.

Best for professionals

While Meta Quest 2 is easy to recommend for just about anyone, we have to admit it’s harder to find a use case for the Meta Quest Pro.

That’s not to say it’s a bad headset, but the starting price of $1500 is a tough pill to swallow for such a relatively new ecosystem (you could buy a few Meta Quest 2 headsets for that).

It’s a little more focused on the professional VR user, and if you need to ask what one of those is then there’s a good chance it’s not for you.

The Meta Quest Pro offers resizable displays and is vastly more comfortable than its cheaper brother. It also looks very sleek in black, with a charging dock included in the box so it’s always ready to go. 

As Meta (the company) continues to work towards the goal of making the Metaverse more accessible, it feels like the Meta Quest Pro will be the place where we see plenty of experimentation. If that sounds good, jump in to be on the cutting edge of VR tech. If not, it’s hard to look past the Meta Quest 2.

Best for comfort

They say good things come in small packages, and that’s certainly true of the HTC Vive XR Elite. This powerhouse fits a lot into its small and nimble frame, meaning you can take it anywhere and not feel like you’re compromising on specs.

Built with freedom in mind, the headset is completely standalone with no cables or plugs to worry about, something that’s complemented by its pass-through camera, which is perfect for when you need to interact with the real world in the middle of a VR experience. Although it succeeds as a portable headset, its compact design and middling range of comfort options may cause issues for some users. Hence, it’s worth checking the technical measurements against yourself before jumping in. 

The Vive XR Elite includes an audio solution in the form of two speakers built into the band  which delivers a clean, clear sound when used across its sizable library of PCVR games and apps. If you’re after a VR headset that’s grab and go, the Vive XR Elite is a great option; however, if you’re looking for a more static, holistic setup for home, other premium headsets on the market may offer more for the price. 

Best travel VR headset

An attempt to take a bite out of the Meta / Oculus Quest pie, the Vive Flow is an intriguing, if flawed VR device.

It’s supremely portable, weighing just 6.7 ounces, but it manages that by making some considerable compromises – to get more than five minutes battery life out of the headset you’re going to need to hook it up to an external battery pack, for instance. There aren’t even controllers or hand tracking available to the device either – you’ll need to use a paired (Android-only) smartphone with the Vive Flow to browse its store and control its experiences.

Despite a high-resolution screen (at a low refresh rate, however), HTC isn’t billing this as an Oculus or Index killer though – rather, it’s hoping its portability will let owners take advantage of it on trips away to watch videos and take part in mindfulness and wellness activities, rather than high end gaming sessions.

That’d be a reasonable idea were it not for the price. What the Vive Flow offers in portability, it can’t justify its limited use cases against its comparatively high asking price. Thumbs up for its forward-thinking lightweight design, but look elsewhere for pretty much everything else.

A new virtual-reality experience brings to life the wreck of a WWII Japanese submarine that almost met its demise twice; after the Allies sank it in 1942, the sub was then bombed with explosives 30 years later by an angry salvager who wanted its scrap metal. The VR video is based on a recent survey of the site. 

The wreck of the I-124 submarine, on the seafloor about 50 nautical miles (90 kilometers) northwest of the Australian city of Darwin, is protected as a war grave — roughly 80 crewmen were on board when it was sunk by Allied forces in 1942.

That designation means that most divers are forbidden from visiting the wreck, with such access being strictly controlled; so the new VR experience is a rare chance for people to see what the wreck now looks like, maritime archaeologist John McCarthy of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, said in a statement. 

Related: Photos: WWI-era German submarine wreck discovered off Scotland coast

Versions of the new video are available on YouTube in English and Japanese, as historical interest in the wreck is especially strong in Australia and Japan, according to the statement. Both recordings can be viewed with VR headsets, or as "immersive video" on flatscreen devices, such as computer monitors and smartphones.

"Drawing on our data, and historic ship plans and photographs, we've created a virtual dive experience in which the video takes the viewer through the data gathering process, and then takes you down into the deep, to experience the wreck firsthand," McCarthy said.

Battle at sea

I-124 was built in the late 1920s for the Imperial Japanese Navy. It was one of a new class of submarines based on a German Type UB III U-boat that had been given to Japan as part of reparations after WWI. 

During WWII, I-124 was active off the coast of Darwin, laying mines and raiding enemy ships. But Allied code breakers intercepted its radio signals back to Japan, leading Australian warships to track it down on Jan. 20, 1942 — almost exactly 80 years ago.

Related: What is the oldest-known archaeological site in the world?

A fierce battle ensued, including a near-miss of an Australian minesweeper, His Majesty's Australian Ship (HMAS) Deloraine, by one of the sub's torpedoes. But I-124 was badly damaged by depth-charges from the warships and an aerial bomb from an Australian warplane. The submarine then sank to the bottom with all its crew on board.

But the story doesn't end there. According to a 1990 historical report at the Western Australian Maritime Museum, salvagers from the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) discovered the wreck of I-124 in 1972 after a six-week search. 

Although the Japanese government considered the wreck a war grave, the salvagers hoped to sell anything they recovered from the wreck, reportedly for up to 2.5 million Australian dollars — about $10 million in today's money. 

In 1977, after it had become clear that Japan didn't want the wreck disturbed, one of the salvagers bombed it with explosives in an attempt to force a negotiation, severely damaging its conning tower, according to the report. 

Protected wreck

Later that year, the wreck of I-124 was secured by the Australian Navy and the site was protected as a war grave under Australian law — the first wreck so designated.

Maritime archaeologists have monitored the wreck since then, and the new VR is based on a remote sonar survey conducted at the site in October 2021 by a team including McCarthy, other scientists and the crew of the Australian Institute of Marine Science research ship Solander, according to the statement. 

"The archaeological survey shows that the wreck is in good condition, but with some signs of degradation of the outer hull that require further investigation," McCarthy said. 

Diving to the wreck is difficult at the best of times. According to the VR, it lies on the seafloor in an area with poor visibility and strong tides. It sits at a depth of about 150 feet (45 meters), so divers using regular breathing gases can stay there only for a few minutes at a time.

As a result, the Heritage branch of Australia's Northern Territory regional government is planning a technical dive to the wreck, using advanced breathing gases to let divers stay there much longer, in order to conduct an in-depth visual and photographic survey, the narration of the VR reported. 

Originally published on Live Science.

The tomb of an ancient Egyptian called "the Doctor," hidden beneath a pyramid and inscribed with mystical spells invoking gods and demonic guardians, comes to life in a new immersive virtual reality experience. 

By just popping on some VR goggles, you could be the Egyptologist who enters the tomb to explore its depths. 

Egyptology experts at the University of California Berkeley have created "The Book of the Dead in 3D," which uses VR to offer a rare first-person glimpse of an Egyptian burial site. Its 3D environments and reconstructions of artifacts present an up-close perspective on traditions surrounding the deities, demons, and magic spells of death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt, University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) representatives said in a statement.

Related: In photos: A look inside an Egyptian mummy 

"You can have the experience of entering a tomb, walking around a coffin and interacting with these beautiful funerary texts and images," said project lead Rita Lucarelli, an associate professor of Near Eastern Studies and faculty curator of Egyptology at the Hearst Museum at UC Berkeley. 

"In Egyptology, printed books are still more valued than digital projects," Lucarelli said. "But I think this trend is slowly changing, as we use new tools to document these ancient treasures."

When a user of the interactive dons the VR headset, they are transported to Saqqara, site of a vast necropolis and pyramid field in Memphis, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Cairo. There, they enter the tomb of a court physician called Psamtik — nicknamed "the Doctor" — whose sarcophagus dates to Egypt's 26th Dynasty, around 664 B.C. to 525 B.C. Carvings on the stone include numerous spells invoking the protection of more than a dozen gods, against attacks from foes in the afterlife.

William Randolph Hearst purchased the heavy stone lid of Psamtik's sarcophagus, which weighs about 7,600 lbs. (3,447 kilograms), during a trip to Egypt in 1900. Three years later, Hearst donated the lid to the collection of what is now called UC Berkeley's Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, according to the website for The Book of the Dead in 3D. Psamtik served as the pharaoh's head physician as well as "chief of the Libyans" — a type of overseer of foreign mercenaries, according to the Hearst Museum. 

But the Doctor was never laid to rest in his sarcophagus, which was empty when the tomb was discovered (though a coffin in a nearby chamber held a woman thought to be Psamtik's wife). To this day, why Psamtik's mummy wasn't found there remains a mystery, the Hearst Museum says.

In addition to Psamtik's sarcophagus lid, Lucarelli and her colleagues have scanned, digitized and 3D-modeled Egyptian artifacts from the Hearst Museum and other collections in California since 2015. Their goal is to preserve ephemeral objects in a digital format, and to ensure that objects will remain available for academic study and research even after repatriation to their countries of origin, according to the statement.

Using VR video-game technology adds fun and excitement to the tours, "but my main aim is for this project to be strong academically and useful for scholars," Lucarelli said in the statement.

"The Book of the Dead in 3D" immersive interactive will launch in 2021 at the Hearst Museum, according to the statement. 

Originally published on Live Science.

This year, you can give your kids the gift of science with fully immersive VR experiments from the scientist generations have grown up with — Bill Nye. 

Bill Nye's Virtual Reality Science Kit ($59.99) includes VR goggles and a free mobile app that can be used on any smartphone to make kids feel like they're hanging out with Bill in his lab or are exploring rocky caves, volcanoes, or waterfalls. 

Bill Nye (the Science Guy)'s kit includes an 80-page book that can be brought to life through the VR goggles, which teaches 30 step-by-step science projects.

Kids will learn chemistry, biology, and physics through experiments that help them "tattoo" an egg, create a lemon battery, or make their own speakers. They'll learn about scientific principles like density, oxidation, and chemical reactions and be able to follow along with Bill Nye as he walks them through all 30 experiments (with all the materials they'll need included in the 50 piece set). 

In addition to the hands-on experiments, kids will get to watch 185 VR and AR experiences, not only in Bill Nye's lab but also in volcanoes, waterfalls, icy rocks, and caves. 

If you’re looking for a VR gift specific for space lovers, we also recommend Professor Maxwell's VR Universe ($49.99). Like the Bill Nye kit, this VR science kit also includes hands-on experiments and play. The 21 piece set includes materials kids will need for 31 projects, including space-related games, experiments, and crafts like creating moon dough and building a compass to explore magnetic fields and a sun dial to learn about the sun's rotation. 

The VR goggles in Professor Maxwell's kit bring pictures from the 80-page activity book to life, letting kids get a 360-degree view of the sun, for example. The goggles also allow kids to feel as if they're astronauts in space, exploring Earth, our solar system, our galaxy, and other parts of the universe. They'll get to drive a rover on Mars, see eclipses, and hold the Earth in their hands. 

A new virtual reality experience may help save an ancient Egyptian tomb built for Queen Nefertari whose paintings are so beautiful that it has been compared to Italy's Sistine Chapel.

Built around 3,250 years ago for the favorite wife of pharaoh Ramesses II (who reigned from 1279 B.C. to 1213 B.C.), the Tomb of Nefertari is located in the Valley of the Queens, near Luxor. The tomb is open to just small groups of visitors, because the increase in humidity that comes when people enter can damage its paintings.

At present small groups of tourists are allowed into the tomb, each tourist paying an entrance fee of 1000 Egyptian pounds (about $56) said Zahi Hawass, an archaeologist and former Minister of State for Antiquities. [In Photos: The Mummy of Queen Nefertari of Egypt]

Between 1986 and 1992 the Getty Institute, working with Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, restored the tomb, which has suffered damage from salt incrustations, bacteria and fungi. Rising humidity can lead to increases in bacteria and fungi, researchers have found. "When I started the project with the Getty, we all agreed that we cannot open the tomb to the public. But we can open it to groups who would pay a high fee," Hawass told Live Science, adding that each person pays 1,000 Egyptian pounds (about $56) to enter.

"A virtual tour will save the tomb," Hawass said.

Capturing the tomb

To create the virtual reality experience, Experius VR teamed up with Curiosity Stream, a streaming service for documentaries.  

Three people from Experius VR spent two days in the Nefertari tomb, 3D-scanning it and taking thousands of overlapping high-resolution images, said Elliott Mizroch, the CEO and co-founder of ExperiusVR. The team then spent two months in post-production, turning the 3D scan and photographs into a virtual reality experience.

The finished tour can now be downloaded for free on Steam and on Viveport and Curiosity Stream VR although currently you need the Vive headset to view it, said Emma Tiernon, a spokesperson for Curiosity Stream, adding that the team hopes to configure the tour so that it can be viewed on other headsets.

In this VR tour, the viewer moves around the tomb by wearing the 3D headset and using controls. If the viewer wants more information on a work of art, for instance, they can virtually touch the painting and a narrator will provide information. 

Growing trend

Nefertari's tomb is one of a growing number of historical sites that are being saved in the virtual world. In April, Google announced it was partnering with a company called Cyark to scan historical monuments.

While the virtual reality tour of Nefertari's tomb shows the tomb as it appears today, some try to recreate a site as it looked thousands of years ago, such as a virtual tour of ancient Jerusalem released in 2017 by a company called Lithodomos VR.

While it still takes a lot of time to create a vivid virtual reality tour of an historical site — the tour of Nefertari's tomb took two months — the process is expected to become faster as virtual reality and holography technologies improve, Tiernon said, adding that Curiosity Stream plans to help create more virtual tours of historical sites. 

"As virtual reality continues to improve and become more readily available, these tools will have the power to transcend today's production capabilities and transport audiences to places that we once thought unimaginable," said Jorge Franzini, executive producer of Curiosity Stream.

Originally published on Live Science.

Virtual-reality devices can transport users to magical realms from the comfort of their own homes, but a new device built by British engineers takes users on a different kind of trip: It lets people experience the trippy visuals brought on by psychedelic drugs in a completely drug-free way.

But this "hallucination machine" isn't just for entertainment; it also opens new avenues into research on visual hallucinations, according to a new study.

The device combines a virtual-reality headset with Google's Deep Dream algorithm, which uses a so-called deep neural network to analyze and enhance images. Deep Dream works by spotting patterns in images and transforming them in a way that mimics a phenomenon called pareidolia, which occurs when people see faces or objects in random clusters of visually perceived patterns. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens]

To develop the VR device, the researchers fed the algorithm panoramic videos of natural scenes instead of static images, to re-create the lifelike hallucination experience.

To understand how the algorithm works, consider an instance in which a pattern of dots can appear to be a more complex image. "Sometimes, you can find a face with just three dots on a wall," said lead study author Keisuke Suzuki, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex in the U.K. "You see [one thing], but your mind changes it into something different."

The Deep Dream algorithm works in a similar way, Suzuki told Live Science. It enhances the patterns that it finds in a way that distorts the original video imagery into an immersive psychedelic film that completely surrounds the person.

In the new study, which was published Nov. 9 in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers tested the hallucination machine on a group of volunteers and asked them to describe the experience in a questionnaire. The volunteers' responses indicated that what they experienced while wearing the device was quite similar to the effects of psilocybin, a chemical compound responsible for the hallucinogenic effects of "magic mushrooms."

However, the tests showed that the device didn't cause the people to experience a distortion of time, which is a common side effect of taking psychedelic drugs.

The researchers included only healthy individuals in the study, Suzuki noted. "But it would be interesting to compare the experience between the simulated artificial hallucinations and drug-induced hallucinations," he said.

But because psychedelic drugs not only affect visual perception but can cause other changes in the brain and body that are most likely harmful, it's difficult to study such altered states of consciousness.

In addition to helping them learn more about drug-induced hallucinations, the researchers hope that the machine could lead to the development of new techniques for studying the experiences of people who have hallucinations due to psychiatric conditions.

"Normally, it is kind of difficult for [patients with hallucinations] to report what they are actually experiencing in [the] visual hallucinations," Suzuki said. But with the new device, researchers can show patients similar hallucinations that have been generated by a computer. "Because all these artificial hallucinations are generated by a computer model, we can manipulate the parameters to simulate what the person actually experienced," he said.

The technology could also help improve scientists' understanding of the mechanisms behind hallucinations, he added.

Studying these hallucination processes could help further scientists' understanding of how conscious perception works, the researchers wrote in the study. The machine offers an opportunity to study these processes without the chemical effects and changes that happen in the brain of someone who uses drugs or has a psychiatric condition.

Originally published on Live Science.

A new online, virtual-reality experience will bring you face to face with one of the most famous shipwreck-diving sites in the world: the British freighter SS Thistlegorm. German bombers sunk the ship in 1941 near the mouth of the Gulf of Suez at the northern end of the Red Sea.

At the time, the WWII merchant ship was carrying hundreds of tons of Allied war supplies — including tanks, train engines, trucks and motorcycles — to the Egyptian city of Alexandria.  

Since the 1990s, the Thistlegorm, with its spectacular sunken cargo, has become one of the most famous wreck-diving sites in the world, said Jon Henderson, a marine archaeologist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. Hundreds of people dive on the site each day, he said. [Dive Through the WWII-Era Shipwreck with 3D Virtual Reality Images]

Henderson is the coordinator of the Thistlegorm Project, a virtual reality tour of the wreck that was released online Oct. 6, exactly 76 years to the day after German bombers sunk the ship.

The online experience combines a highly detailed 3D model of the sunken ship, based on thousands of photographs, with 360-degree underwater video of divers exploring key sections of the wreck.

Henderson told Live Science that only divers would be able to directly see most of the world's underwater heritage sites. But with virtual reality technology, the wider public can now experience the shipwreck.

"There are something like 6 million divers in the world, so less than 0.1 percent of the world's population ever gets access to these sites," he said. "But we're now at the point where we've got technology where we can reconstruct them in photo-realistic detail, and we can now create models that people can explore and interact with on their mobile phones or in their homes."

Sunken treasures

A team of divers and archaeologists from the University of Nottingham and Egypt's Alexandria University spent five days moored above the Thistlegorm wreck, west of the tip of the Sinai Peninsula and about 18 miles (30 kilometers) by sea from the Egyptian dive resort of Sharm El Sheikh.

The team's photogrammetry specialist, Simon Brown, made 12 dives to the Thistlegorm wreck in that time, totaling more than 13 hours underwater, Henderson said. In those dives, Brown gathered thousands of photographs using a conventional Nikon camera fitted with a 6mm fish-eye lens. The camera and two strobe lights were mounted on an underwater scooter, so Brown could cover more ground during his dives.

Brown later processed and combined images of the shipwreck with photogrammetric software, which can extract 3D data from sets of 2D photographs.

The result was the highly detailed 3D model of the giant wreck, based on 24,307 photographic images — the largest photogrammetric survey yet made of a shipwreck, covering an area of about 7 acres (28,300 square meters), Henderson said.

While Brown shot the photographs for the 3D model, Henderson focused on recording 360-degree video of key points on the wreck.  

Henderson said he had been inspired to apply the technology to a wreck after seeing 360-degree underwater video of a coral reef at a conference earlier this year. "I just thought, 'This would be amazing on a shipwreck,' because the 360-degree video, for me, is the closest you can come to actually diving," he said.

The researchers secured a grant from the Newton Fund in the United Kingdom for a knowledge-sharing program involving the University of Nottingham, Alexandria University and Ain Shams University in Cairo, which houses a virtual-reality laboratory. Next, the researchers chose the Thistlegorm wreck for a public-outreach project because of its well-deserved fame as a dive site, Henderson said.

"It's an absolutely amazing wreck to dive," he said. "There's the cargo — Bedford trucks, armored vehicles, motorcycles, Bren guns, ammunition, aircraft parts … and the massive steam locomotives on the decks themselves. Every time you dive on it, you find something else."

Popular wonder

The popularity of the wreck has come at a cost. Since the development of nearby Sharm El Sheikh as a diving center in the 1990s, the Thistlegorm has suffered damage from dive boats mooring directly onto the wreck and from souveniring done by some insensitive divers, Henderson said. [In Photos: WWII-Era Shipwrecks Illegally Plundered in Java Sea]

Although Egypt joined the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Heritage in September, that convention protects only shipwrecks that are more than 100 years old. So, many World War I and all World War II wrecks in the Red Sea are not covered, Henderson said.

"What we hope this website will do is help to monitor what is going on," he said. "One of the basic things for finding out how sites have been damaged is to carry out a baseline survey such as this, and then we can start to chart changes over time."

Showing the wonders of the Thistlegorm to a wider audience would also benefit other wrecks and submerged archaeological sites in the region, he said.

"The Red Sea is an amazing resource, but we don't know what's actually in there — there has never been an official survey carried out," Henderson said. "I think once people know about this heritage, then hopefully they will start to care about it, and that will increase the level of protection, particularly for wrecks like the Thistlegorm.”

Original article on Live Science.

SS Thistlegorm

A famous shipwreck and diving site in the Red Sea has been recreated on the web in virtual reality by a team of marine archaeologists and imaging specialists.

The Thistlegorm Project, which went online this month, includes a highly-detailed three-dimensional model of the British freighter SS Thistlegorm, which was carrying a cargo of Allied war supplies to the Egyptian city of Alexandria when it was sunk by German bombers in 1941.

The project website also features 360-degree video clips of several key locations around the wreck. [Read more about the SS Thistlegorm project]

Filming the wreck

Simon Brown, a photogrammetric consultant with the Thistlegorm Project, made 12 dives totaling more than 13 hours underwater to shoot photographs of the giant shipwreck.

 Tens of thousands of photographs were needed to image the entire wreck, which covers an area of more than 28,000 square meters (301,000 square feet).

3D data

Brown then analyzed his photographs of the wreck using photogrammetric software, which can extract 3D data from sets of calibrated photographs.

 The vast amounts of 3D data from the photographs was then used to create an accurate 3D model of the wreck of the Thistlegorm where it now lies on the seafloor near the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, at a depth of around 30 meters (90 feet).

3D model

The finished 3D model of the Thistlegorm wreck, presented on the project website, is based on data from more than 24,000 underwater photographs.

 It is the largest photogrammetric survey of an underwater wreck yet undertaken. [Read more about the SS Thistlegorm project]

Shipping freighter

The SS Thistlegorm was built in Sunderland in north-east England for the Albyn Line shipping company, and launched in 1940.

 As an armed freighter partly financed by the British government for wartime service, the Thistlegorm was equipped with an anti-aircraft gun and a heavy machine gun.

War supplies

When the SS Thistlegorm was spotted by German bombers near the entrance to the Gulf of Suez on the night of October 6, 1941, it was carrying a full hold of Allied war supplies to the Egyptian city of Alexandria.

 The entire ship and its cargo – including trucks, tanks, aircraft parts, ammunition and steam locomotives – was sent to the bottom when the Thistlegorm was hit by two bombs dropped by a Heinkel bomber.

Sunken cargo

The wreck of the SS Thistlegorm was rediscovered in the 1950s by the pioneering French diver Jacques Cousteau.

 Since the development of the nearby Egyptian town of Sharm El Sheikh as a dive resort in the 1990s, the Thistlegorm with its spectacular sunken cargo has become one of the world's most popular wreck diving sites.

Joint effort

The Thistlegorm Project is a joint effort by archaeologists and imaging specialists from the University of Nottingham in the UK, Egypt's Alexandria University, and Ain Shams University in Cairo.

Video clips

As well as the detailed 3D model based on the photogrammetric survey of the wreck, visitors to the Thistlegorm Project website can experience some of the sensations of diving at key locations on the wreck through several 360-degree video clips.

Raising awareness

The project members hope that making the wonders of the Thistlegorm wreck accessible to an online audience will help to protect such sites by raising awareness of the underwater heritage of the region. [Read more about the SS Thistlegorm project]

A spot in England where thousands of Viking warriors and their families spent their winter months was bigger than most contemporary English towns.

The camp, positioned near Torksey along the River Trent in Lincolnshire, was a major base for Viking raiders in the late ninth century. Archaeologists first found hints of the camp in the 1970s, but recently published for the first time a detailed description of the site's boundaries and artifacts in The Antiquaries Journal. Now, the researchers are unveiling a new virtual reality experience designed to put modern-day people inside a re-creation of the Torksey winter camp. The VR experience opened on May 19 at the Yorkshire Museum. [7 Secrets of Viking Seamen]

"These extraordinary images offer a fascinating snapshot of life at a time of great upheaval in Britain," University of York archaeologist Julian Richards said in a statement.

Winter with the Vikings

Up until the late 800s, Vikings frequently raided monasteries along the English coast in the warmer months and headed back to Scandinavia in the winter, Richards said. In 865, the Vikings sent their largest force ever to England — and decided to stay. Over the next decade, the Vikings switched their strategy from lightning raids to permanent takeovers of land and resources, Richards and his colleagues reported in The Antiquaries Journal in December 2016.

Historical sources reported that the Vikings made camp at Torksey between 872 and 873. Excavations there done between the 1970s and 1990s revealed a deep ditch that would have been part of this camp, but only since 2011 have archaeologists systematically excavated and discovered the camp's true size and scope. The site stretches 136 acres (55 hectares), and is bounded by wet, marshy land that would have provided a natural defense, Richards said. The camp was on elevated land, which also would have made it an appealing military location, Richards and his colleagues wrote.

Thousands of coins and other pieces of metal have been found at the campsite, including copper alloy made of lead, silver, gold and iron. More than 280 lead game pieces have been found, hinting at how the warriors passed the long, chilly off-season, the researchers said.

Winter's work

The overwintering Vikings also engaged in metalwork and the repair of ships, archaeologists have found. Researchers have discovered coins from as far away as the Middle East, transported along Viking trade routes. Archaeologists have also uncovered hundreds of pieces of hacked-up metals, which were probably awaiting their turn to be melted down, the researchers have said.

Needles, spindles and awls hint at textile work such as the repair of ship sails and tents, which made up the main shelter for the Viking horde. Women may have been the textile workers of the camp, the researchers wrote.

Archaeologists have found some human remains at the camp, but the bones are too fragmentary to identify more than two bodies definitively (both men under the age of 35), researchers said. A separate fragment of skull bears the marks of a sharp implement, suggesting a violent death.

Original article on Live Science. 

What happens when you walk into a wall in virtual reality? Nothing yet, but soon, your muscles could get shocked when you smack into a barrier, thanks to a new research project that aims to simulate walls and other objects in virtual reality.

This expansion on the virtual reality (VR) experience uses electrical muscle stimulation to give users the sensation of hitting a wall or lifting a heavy object. The effect is created via haptic feedback, a type of tactile communication that uses forces or vibrations to re-create the sense of touch. A team of researchers from the Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam in Germany created a wearable system that can shock different muscle groups throughout a person's body.

In addition to a VR headset and tracking gloves, the researchers outfitted users with backpacks containing electrical muscle stimulators and a series of electrode patches that attach to the wearers' skin and produce the shocks. [Beyond Gaming: 10 Other Fascinating Uses for Virtual-Reality Tech]

The researchers explained that the system can simulate interactions with different types of objects, including walls, shelves and projectiles.

"Our system stimulates up to four different muscle groups," the research team wrote about the project on the Hasso Plattner Institute website. "Through combinations of these muscle groups, our system simulates a range of effects. When pushing a button mounted to a vertical surface, for example, the system actuates biceps and wrist."

Their design uses brief pulses, about 200-300 miliseconds long, calibrated to the specific user's maximum intensity.

Haptics can also be used to simulate the feeling of lifting a virtual object, the researchers said. In one test, the user reaches out to lift a virtual cube. To give the user the feeling of resistance (in this case, a solid shape that has weight), the opposition muscle groups are shocked.

"When the user grabs the virtual cube, the user expects the cube's weight to create tension in the user's biceps and the cube's stiffness to create a tension in the user's pectoralis," the researchers wrote in a study published in the Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 6-11, 2017. "In order to create this sensation, the system actuates the respective opposition muscles. In order to put a load onto the user's biceps, it actuates the triceps, and in order to put a load onto the user's pectoralis, it actuates the user's shoulder muscle."

If the cube is heavier, then the system can apply more electrical stimulation, the researchers said.

So far, the system is limited to the upper body, but the researchers said that with additional research, it could be applied to a range of other muscles.

Original article on Live Science.

Want to climb the world's tallest mountain, but don't want to leave the comfort of your own home? Now you can, thanks to a new virtual-reality documentary series that allows you to experience the most notorious mountaineering journey in the world.

"Capturing Everest" is a new four-episode VR series that follows the journey of four climbers — including Garrett Madison, who summited Everest six times, and Brent Bishop, who summited Everest three times — as they ascend the giant peak. Sports Illustrated and Life VR (Time's virtual-reality platform) partnered with the digital media network Endemol Shine Beyond USA to produce the documentary. It was filmed over a two-month period last spring — the first time people were allowed on the mountain after two years of bad weather and safety concerns canceled the previous climbing seasons.

The VR series is billed as "the first-ever complete ascent of the world’s tallest mountain in virtual reality," and its premiere yesterday (May 3) also marks the first-ever augmented-reality issue from Sports Illustrated (SI). [In Photos: Mount Everest Expeditions, Then and Now]

"['Capturing Everest' is] yet another example of how SI is delivering the access and storytelling for which we've always been known in cutting-edge ways," the magazine's editors wrote in a letter introducing the VR documentary. "And it's the jumping-off point for a new idea of what a magazine can be."

Viewers will experience first-person views of climbing Mount Everest, thanks to a variety of 360-degree video cameras that captured footage along the way. This included cameras attached to zip lines and body cams on the climbers' harnesses. The VR documentary series can also be viewed via 360 video on the SI microsite dedicated to the project, along with related articles, photos and more.

The full "Capturing Everest" VR experience and other exclusive content can be watched via the Life VR app for iOS and Android. In the coming weeks, the magazine said the documentary series will be available on additional VR platforms.

Original article on Live Science.

You'll soon be able to take a hands-on tour of London's Natural History Museum with famed naturalist Sir David Attenborough, right from the comfort of your couch.

The new project combines interactive virtual-reality (VR) technology with a TV documentary, in which a hologram of Attenborough takes viewers "behind the glass" at the museum. The VR experience, named "Hold the World," allows users to do just that: have (virtual) hands-on access to fossils, bones and skulls.

According to Sky, the European entertainment company behind the VR experience, the interactive technology will allow users to hold, tilt and peer inside the museum's collection of objects. [6 Spectacular Species Named for David Attenborough]

Along with letting users virtually handle the museum collection, Attenborough's hologram will share facts about each specimen.

"I have enjoyed helping people to discover more about the natural world, and 'Hold the World' offers people a unique opportunity: to examine rare objects, some millions of years old, up close," Attenborough said in a statement. "It represents an extraordinary new step in how people can explore and experience nature, all from the comfort of their own homes, and I am delighted to be able to help users uncover some of the treasures the Natural History Museum has to offer in a thrilling new way."

With production set for later this year, "Hold the World" does not yet have a launch date. Once released, the VR experience will be accessible on Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR and the Oculus Rift, Ars Technica reported.

The museum tour will be the first fully interactive production from Sky. However, the entertainment company has announced plans for several other VR film projects and has already released two VR experiences on Formula One racing.

"Virtual reality is all about experiencing things you could only ever dream of in real life," Gary Davey, managing director for content at Sky, said in the statement. "So in this ground-breaking new experience from Sky, people can handle precious dinosaur fossils and delicate insects with a holographic Sir David Attenborough as their guide."

Original article on Live Science.

A new Google Earth Virtual Reality (VR) feature allows users to enter any address — whether it's grandma's house or a 19th-century castle in Germany — and fly over it in 3D with a VR headset.

When Google Earth VR debuted, people could virtually visit a number of popular tourist destinations, including the Hoover Dam in Nevada and the Matterhorn in Switzerland. They could even gaze at the nooks and crannies of the Colosseum in Rome, an archaeological marvel.

But now, people can choose their own destinations, as long as they know the address or name of the location. [25 Strangest Sights on Google Earth]

"People want to quickly find and revisit the places that mean the most to them, whether it's a childhood home or favorite vacation spot," Joanna Kim, a product manager at Google Earth VR, wrote in a blog post today (April 18). Now, users can type an address or the name of a location, and visit it in 3D with a 3D headset system, Kim wrote.

Sightseers can also visit 27 handpicked locations that are now available on Google Earth VR, including Neuschwanstein Castle (the inspiration for the castle in Disney's "Sleeping Beauty"), Table Mountain in South Africa and the Perito Moreno Glacier (Glaciar Perito Moreno) in Argentina.

Google Earth VR is now available for Oculus Rift users who have Oculus Touch controllers. The application is free at the Oculus Store and Steam.

Previous 3D maps created by Google Earth include street views of the Amazon rainforest; the 18,192-foot-high (5,545 meters) high Mount Everest base camp; and Rio de Janeiro, the city that hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Original article on Live Science.

A historic icon

Jerusalem's Western Wall is one of the most iconic cultural sites in the ancient city. The layers of stone blocks at the base of the wall were laid around 20 B.C., when Temple Mount and the Jewish Second Temple were rebuilt by the Roman "client-king" of Judea, Herod I.

A new app for smartphones and portable virtual-reality headsets, called Lithodomos VR, offers a view of the Western Wall and other historic sites in Jerusalem as they looked at the height of the city's splendor in the first century A.D.

A look back

The Lithodomos VR app uses three-dimensional, 360-degree virtual reality (VR) recreations of the architecture of Jerusalem as it looked 2,000 years ago, based on archaeological research about the city at that time.

At the Western Wall, visitors can use the app on a portable VR headset and smartphone to directly compare the ancient and modern views of the scene from the same location.

A good viewpoint

Because the modern plaza at the Western Wall is about 50 feet (15 meters) higher than the fist-century city streets, the virtual reality view in the Lithodomos app shows the scene from a point above the ancient houses, to keep the same perspective.

The boss

The virtual reconstructions of ancient Jerusalem in the Lithodomos app show the city as it appeared after the rebuilding program started by Herod I, a Jewish nobleman who was installed as the King of Judea by the Roman in 36 B.C. Herod I reigned until his death in 4 B.C.

In the opinion of many historians, Herod was an unpopular tyrant who secured his reign by assassinating many of his relatives and rivals.

Terribly tragedy

According to the Christian New Testament, Herod ordered the "Massacre of the Innocents" – the execution of every young male child born in Bethlehem – after learning about the birth of the infant Jesus from the visiting Magi – the "three kings" or "three wise men" of biblical tradition.

Historians have found no evidence for the massacre apart from the New Testament account, but historians note that it would have been entirely in keeping with what is known of Herod's character.

Making a mark

Herod left his mark on Jerusalem by enclosing the sacred precinct now known as Temple Mount with 65-feet-tall (20 meters) stone walls and rebuilding the Jewish Second Temple on the platform on its summit.

He also built a new palace for himself in the Upper City, which was linked by a private bridge to the courts of the temple.

The Western Wall in modern Jerusalem is the remaining part of the ancient wall nearest to where the temple stood, and is regarded as one of the holiest sites in Judaism.

Recovery

The Second Temple was built on the traditional site of the First Temple, or Solomon's Temple, by Jews returning to the city from exile after the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C.

According to Jewish tradition, the First Temple was built on the orders of the biblical King Solomon in 832 B.C. It was destroyed when the city was sacked and its inhabitants enslaved by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnessar in 587 B.C.

This image shows a reconstruction of Solomon's Temple based on descriptions in the Bible.

A bit of perspective

The Lithodomos VR app also features a virtual reality view of the city from a bridge leading from the streets near the Western Wall to one of the entrances to the sacred precinct on Temple Mount.

Massacre

In 70 A.D., after a rebellion in Jerusalem against Roman rule and the Herodian dynasty, Roman troops sacked the city and killed or enslaved many of its citizens.

The Jewish Second Temple rebuilt by Herod was plundered and burned, and many of its stones were cast down from Temple Mount.

Conquered

This frieze on the triumphal Arch of Titus in Rome shows Roman soldiers leading away slaves and spoils from the Jewish temple after the sack of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

A Roman temple to Jupiter was built on the former site of the temple.

Present-day view

Today, the summit platform of Temple Mount in Jerusalem is enclosed by the Haram esh-Sharif ("Noble Sanctuary"), one of Islam's holiest sites, which include the Al-Aqsa mosque and the shrine of the Dome of the Rock, built in the seventh century A.D.

The Western Wall is on the side of Temple Mount on the lower left of this image.

A holy site

As the remnant of the ancient walls nearest to the site of the Second Temple, Jerusalem's Western Wall is one of the holiest sites in Judaism, and a place of prayer and pilgrimage for visitors to the city from all over the world.

This story was updated at 12:29 a.m. ET on April 7.

Visitors to Jerusalem and virtual tourists alike can now see the city as it looked in ancient history, with a virtual-reality app based on archaeological reconstructions of the city at the height of its splendor under Roman rule in the first century.

The program, named "Lithodomos VR," is a paid android app for smartphones and portable virtual-reality headsets that was launched on Google Play in December 2016. The app sells for $1.99 on Google Play, and $2.99 in the Apple App Store. Developed by Simon Young, an archaeology doctoral student at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the app includes a 3D virtual view of the area around Jerusalem's Western Wall, where the ancient stone walls of the city's Temple Mount can still be seen.          

By using the app on a portable VR headset and smartphone, visitors to the Western Wall can compare the modern-day view with a 3D, 360-degree reconstruction of the ancient city from the same location, when the wall and the Jewish temple above it had been newly built on the orders of Herod I (74 B.C.- 4 B.C.), the Roman-backed king of Judea. [See Photos of the VR App and Ancient Jerusalem]

Young told Live Science that the reconstruction of the first-century scene was faithful to the latest archaeological research, and will be updated as new research becomes available.

"The VR content that we are deploying on the app is the result of carefully researched material from archaeological excavations, site plans, elevation drawings, photographs of textures and [geographic information system] mapping, as well as topographical data from NASA's ASTER digital elevation models," he said. "So all the content is linked in to the real world."

Romans go home

The VR scenes of Jerusalem in the Lithodomos VR app are based on the archaeology of the city years after Herod rebuilt the Temple Mount around 20 B.C., Young said, and before the destruction of the temple precinct by Roman troops in A.D 70, during the rebellion against Roman rule that became known as the Jewish Revolt.

In addition to the virtual view of the ancient Western Wall, the app includes a reconstruction of a market street in the city, where the virtual houses are based on real excavations. The featured objects, such as ceramics and street furniture, were modeled on data from first-century artifacts in Israeli museums, according to Young.

"We're really making sure that rather than just being haphazardly thrown together, what you're seeing really does correspond to the research," Young said.

"I see virtual reality as a really important way of communicating what is often a lifetime of work for many archaeologists," he added, "so there's a line I don’t cross."

Another virtual scene is an elevated view from a bridge to the entrance of the temple, the remains of which are known as Robinson's Arch. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]

"From there, you can see the slope of Mount Zion and the Roman-period settlements, as well as the back of a theater, and to the left you can see the Antonia Fortress [the barracks of the Roman garrison] and the Jewish settlement. So, you can see about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in every direction," Young said.

Rebuilding the past

Young's career as a software developer began as he studied for his Ph.D. in archaeology at the University of Melbourne. (His thesis on ancient cityscapes was submitted in September, and he's waiting to hear the results.)

Young explained that he taught himself 3D-modeling as part of his studies on the architecture of ancient cities, and began experimenting with virtual reality when the Oculus Rift headset became available.

"I thought, I can take my 3D models and put them into this machine," he said, "and then when I put the headset on, there I was, standing in one of my buildings."

Lithodomos has also released a second, free app on Google Play and for Oculus Rift,featuring VR reconstructions of the Odeon of Agrippa in Athens, the Temple of Venus in Rome and the Arena of Lutece in Paris. The arena is a city park where a Roman theater and an arena for gladiators stood in the first century A.D.

"The idea is that when you visit an ancient site, say the Odeon of Agrippa, you take out your headset, stand in the right spot, and look around — and what you will see is exactly a perfectly mapped reconstruction within a few centimeters to the real world," Young said.

In January, Young's company received investor funding of $900,000 Australian dollars ($679,000 U.S.) to develop the software and expand the range of archaeological sites that it covers, reported Venture Beat. Young plans to publish new VR scenes of famous archaeological sites every few weeks or months.

Future developments will include new software features, such as the ability to view the changes over time in VR scenes at each location, he said

"Our goal is to show the evolution of an important place through time, like the Roman forum — from the time it was a cow market, right up to the sack of Rome by the Goths [in 410 A.D.]," Young said. "But, as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day."

Editor's Note: This story was updated to correct the app developer's name. His name is Simon, not Sean.

Original article on Live Science.

Virtual reality can take you to some far-out places — mountaintops, distant cities and even fantastical game worlds. A team of artists and mathematicians is now adding to that list: universes where the usual rules of geometry and physics don't apply.

Vi Hart, who founded the research group eleVR, led a team that built a virtual landscape that looks like a set of endlessly repeating chambers. This virtual landscape follows the rules of a type of non-Euclidean geometry called hyperbolic geometry (also called H-space). It operates in a different way than the normal world, which abides by so-called Euclidean geometry. In this VR universe, the floor can fall away from your feet as you walk forward and distances aren't what they seem, all because lines and angles don't behave the way they do in the ordinary world.

"In H-space, when you move your head a little bit it's normal, but if you make larger movements it's different," Henry Segerman, a co-author of the studies and an assistant professor of mathematics at Oklahoma State University, told Live Science. That's because in H-space "a lot of it is very close to you," meaning that the amount of space between two points is less in certain directions than in Euclidean space, where a unit of distance is a consistent length. [5 Reasons We May Live in a Multiverse]

The results have applications in the academic realm as well as for the video-game industry. However, the impetus for the project was more art than science: "Mathematics and art are not so distant from each other," Hart said. "In both mathematics and art, we can talk about entirely fictional worlds." 

Following the rules

Most geometry used in everyday life is the geometry of flat spaces, or Euclidean geometry, so called because the Greek mathematician Euclid wrote down many of its principles. For example, Earthlings expect that parallel lines will never meet and that if you add up the internal angles of a triangle it will come out to 180 degrees. It also means that if you walk forward 10 feet, make a right, walk the same distance, and repeat the process three more times you'll come back to the same point.

Non-Euclidean geometry doesn't operate that way. A triangle inscribed on the surface of a sphere — a spherical geometric space — has more than 180 degrees in its internal angles, and one drawn on a saddle-shaped surface — a hyperbolic geometrical space —  can have fewer degrees. Spherical geometry gets used in navigation because the surface of the Earth is spherical. Hyperbolic geometries show up more in cosmology.

"A hyperbolic space is shaped rather like a Pringles chip," Segerman said.

The upshot is that exploring non-Euclidean worlds via virtual reality will be deeply weird. In order for the scientists to translate this weird realm to a VR space, they had to include at least a few Euclidean features, if only to make it less disorienting to users, Segerman said. [The 11 Most Beautiful Mathematical Equations]

The project isn't designed to have any immediate use. The resulting VR landscape could make for fun video-game worlds and even be used to teach students how to navigate in such spaces. In addition, some types of data with a lot of "branching trees" ― which are typically tricky to visualize ― could be visualized in these kinds of spaces.

It's could also be useful in mathematics. "Sometimes entering this [world] is a more direct thing than reading about it or calculating," Segerman said. Walking through a non-Euclidean space in person is easier for many people than trying to analyze it on paper, since one interacts via the senses just as one does in the ordinary world.  

Another researcher he cites in the paper, Jeff Weeks, has made flight simulators, for example, that work in these kinds of spaces.

"The 'real reason' (in my opinion, at least) is to let people get a gut-level understanding of various non-Euclidean geometries. In other words, rather than trying to understand non-Euclidean geometries via formulas and abstract mathematical models, we want people to experience them directly," Weeks, an independent researcher who has designed games to explore mathematical concepts, told Live Science in an email.

Teaching people how to navigate such odd spaces can have real-world benefits in physical science as well. The whole universe, for example, is actually a non-Euclidean space, on large cosmological scales.

"The conclusion here is that if we want to understand the natural world we live in, we need to let go of Euclidean preconceptions, and get comfortable with several other kinds of geometry." 

The research is detailed in two papers published on the preprint site arXiv.org.

Original article on Live Science.

Visitors to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (NHMLA) can now immerse themselves in spectacular ocean environments alongside a bevy of sea creatures with a new virtual-reality exhibit.

"TheBlu: An Underwater VR Experience" invites users to enter a special viewing gallery, where they don HTC Vive virtual-reality (VR) headsets to explore a series of marine ecosystems. Using handheld controllers, visitors can interact with migrating fish and turtles, vibrant anemones, glowing deep-sea anglerfish, and even an 80-foot-long (24 meters) blue whale.  

Curators and administrators at the NHMLA worked closely with designers from the VR firm Wevr to craft a three-episode encounter — the museum's first VR experience — within specially designed spaces. The collaboration not only mimics the feeling of being underwater as closely as possible, but also presents a series of narratives about the ocean's different environments and wildlife. [TheBlu: An Underwater VR Experience | Video]

Before embarking on the virtual tour, participants enter an area in the museum with real marine specimens on display, which provides a visual introduction to the underwater experience. A "dive master" assigned to each user helps to prepare those who are unfamiliar with VR technology, Lori Bettison-Varga, director of the NHMLA, told Live Science in an email.

In the first part of "TheBlu," users alight on the deck of a sunken ship, a relic that helps them visually adjust to the scale of the underwater world and prepare themselves for the first big encounter — a blue whale swimming by.

The next portion of the journey transports users to a peaceful coral reef — amid a migration of thousands of jellyfish.

Finally, in the third episode, participants descend to the darker depths of the ocean along with the remains of a dead whale, finding a dark abyss inhabited by strange creatures that glow when illuminated with a virtual flashlight. The beam of light also beckons the creatures closer to the participants.

"The concept of something that large falling to the bottom of the ocean floor and then becoming an ecosystem for the surrounding ocean life sounded like a unique space to explore," Jake Rowell, director of "TheBlu," told Live Science in an email.

Producing captivating VR content requires the artful combination of many elements, including visuals, audio, and interactivity on both large and small scales, enveloping the people holding the controllers and allowing them to feel "a sense of presence" within the world they inhabit in virtual space, Rowell explained.

Encountering a life-size blue whale is especially awe-inspiring in VR, he added.

"Coming face-to-face with an 80-foot blue whale is pretty special and unique," Rowell said. "You can only get the scale of a marine creature that large by either being next to it in the ocean or being in virtual reality."

The wonder inspired by glimpsing a realistic ocean habitat, including its marine life, in such close proximity in VR builds appreciation for the real-world animals and their lives in the sea, Bettison-Varga told Live Science.

"We are hoping this leads to questions about environmental stresses on the oceans that will generate a greater sense of responsibility for marine habitats," she said.

Future NHMLA forays into VR could incorporate research conducted at the museum, and could introduce visitors to more of the 10 million specimens in the marine collection, of which only a fraction are currently on display, Bettison-Varga said.

"TheBlu: An Underwater VR Experience" is on display at the NHMLA until April 28.

Original article on Live Science.

If the swoops and swerves of a regular roller coaster aren't exhilarating enough for you, Six Flags is giving one of its thrill rides a digital twist, offering theme park visitors a new "mixed-reality" experience.

The amusement park has renewed its partnership with Samsung to launch The New Revolution Galactic Attack, a virtual-reality (VR) roller-coaster experience during which riders don Samsung Gear VR headsets (powered by Oculus) for an immersive, "mixed- reality" ride.

The VR roller coasters are debuting this month at Six Flags Magic Mountain, near Los Angeles, and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, near San Francisco. [Beyond Gaming: 10 Other Fascinating Uses for Virtual-Reality Tech]

While on the ride, users battle an alien drone invasion, and the experience combines the physical ride with an interactive virtual world. Users are then scored based on their gameplay, according to Six Flags. 

"As riders drop at high speeds, the mixed reality view changes to a completely immersive, virtual reality environment and a fighter spaceship cockpit materializes and envelops the riders into a tunnel of light," Six Flags officials said in a statement. "After swinging through tight channels, narrowly dodging drones and artillery fire, riders are brought into one of three drone bays, each of which offer a completely different gaming experience and three different endings."

The Galactic Attack gameplay will be experienced via VR headsets on existing coasters at the Six Flags parks — The New Revolution at Magic Mountain and Kong at Discovery Kingdom.

Six Flags and Samsung first joined forces to bring virtual reality to 12 roller coasters in 2016. For these VR-enhanced coasters, riders experienced either a "Superman virtual reality" or a "New Revolution virtual reality." The new Galactic Attack VR is an evolution of the New Revolution experience first introduced last year, Six Flags officials said.

Original article on Live Science.

You can explore the Amazon rainforest's spectacular beauty and biodiversity right from the comfort of your home, thanks to a new 360-degree virtual-reality film from Conservation International.

The film, called "Under the Canopy," brings viewers into the depths of the Amazon, with the region's diverse environment on full display. But beyond the picturesque views, the film also shares a message with viewers: This incredible landscape is threatened and needs to be protected. The annual forest loss due to deforestation in the Amazonia region is more than 1.5 times the size of Yellowstone National Park, according to Conservation International, the nonprofit environmental organization that developed the virtual-reality experience.

The film begins at the top of a 200-foot-tall (60 meters) Ceiba tree. After descending to the rainforest floor, viewers set out on a journey with an indigenous guide named Kamanja Panashekung. Panashekung's family has lived in the region for generations, and he shows viewers how the rainforest supplies everything his people need to survive, according to Conservation International. [Beyond Gaming: 10 Other Fascinating Uses for Virtual-Reality Tech]

"Kamanja's community is one of over 350 indigenous communities throughout Amazonia that depend on the rainforest, as we all do, for the air we breathe and the water we drink," M. Sanjayan, Conservation International's executive vice president and senior scientist, said in a statement. "'Under the Canopy' gives those who may never visit the Amazon rainforest an opportunity … understand what is at risk. Sustaining the Amazon is not an option; it is a necessity."

However, the impact of deforestation is not limited to the 30 million people who call the Amazon home. Trees in the Amazon act as a carbon sink — absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, which helps lower greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

The Amazon region also supports more flora and fauna species than any other environment, playing an important role in global biodiversity, scientists have said. Throughout the film, viewers will encounter tropical birds, butterflies, sloths and more.

Using either a virtual-reality headset for an immersive experience or watching the 360-degree video, viewers will see firsthand what the people, plants and animals of Amazonia experience. The film addresses how deforestation and climate change impact their ecosystem, said Chris Holtz, director of conservation and sustainable development at the MacArthur Foundation, which supported the production of the film.

"Intact forests play a unique role in mitigating climate change and regulating the functioning of the planet. Yet, many are at risk," Holtz said in the statement. "The virtual reality experience of 'Under the Canopy' allows anyone to immerse themselves in the rainforests of Amazonia and walk alongside members of an indigenous community in Suriname who conserve these forests as part of their traditional lands and, importantly, for the benefit of all humanity."

Original article on Live Science.

Archaeologists have recreated an ancient burial site in virtual reality, to help them study hard-to-access locations at the so-called Plain of Jars site in Laos and the millennia-old relics it contains.

The researchers will also use virtual reality to study other archaeological sites at the Plain of Jars, many of them located where undetonated American bombs left over from the Vietnam War make it too dangerous to dig.

The virtual-reality project combines aerial video captured by a drone with geophysical data and records of archaeological excavations at "Site 1" on the Plain of Jars, near the town of Phonsavan in central Laos. It aims to create a virtual record of the unique landscape and its hundreds of carved stone jars, some of which measure up to 11 feet (3 meters) tall and weigh many tons, say the researchers. [In Photos: Exploring the Mysterious Plain of Jars Site]

The images and data have been integrated into a 3D video and data simulation at a room-sized, 360-degree virtual-reality facility at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Named Cave2, the facility is being developed for advanced "immersive visualization" applications in medicine, science and engineering.

Project co-leader Louise Shewan, an archaeologist at Monash University, said the main purpose of the virtual landscape is to preserve a step-by-step visual and scientific record of a major five-year archaeological investigation by Laos and Australian scientists at the Plain of Jars, which began with excavations at Site 1 in February 2016.

Shewan said the virtual landscape will also be used to explore other jar sites in rugged and forested territory, and in areas where many of the estimated 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos by American warplanes during the Vietnam War make traditional archaeology too dangerous. To date, only seven of more than 85 known jar sites in Laos have been cleared, and an estimated 80 million undetonated bombs are scattered across the country, according to the Laos government agency that oversees the clearance efforts.

"We certainly can't just go and put shovels into the ground," Shewan told Live Science. "[But] we can fly the drones through those sites, and put all that information and imagery into the Cave2 and make comparisons such as, is there a consistent placement between the jars, or between different types of burial markers?"

Giant jars

The excavations at Site 1 in 2016, led by Shewan and Dougald O'Reilly, an archaeologist at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, established for the first time that the giant stone jars were linked to an ancient burial practice. They discovered the remains of dozens of people buried in communal and individual graves around some of the largest jars.

The researchers think the carved stone jars at Site 1 are around 2,500 years old, and that they were used by an Iron Age civilization to expose their dead relatives to the elements for a period of time before the bones were cleaned and buried. [The 25 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth]

Shewan said the virtual landscape at the Cave2 facility will be updated with new data and the results of further excavations at the Plain of Jars site, so the researchers can revisit and review their archaeological fieldwork from more than 4,800 miles (7,700 kilometers) away in Melbourne.

"Long after we leave the field, we can continue researching, and we can actually be there with all our team members and go through the excavation again, and pick up on things that we've missed," she said. "It's also great for teaching, to be able to recreate the excavation … It really is virtual-reality archeology, because we've got the time sequence of the excavation, and you can speed that up and see the trench go down in 10-centimeter [4 inches] steps."

Mystery makers

The images and archaeological data recorded in the Cave2 simulation will also serve as a digital record of scholarship about the Plain of Jars in support of its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is an ongoing process, Shewan said. (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — or UNESCO — designates sites as World Heritage Sites if they meet certain criteria for representing natural, historical or cultural significance.)

The Laos government hopes the region's World Heritage status will stimulate tourism and spur further scientific research into the Plain of Jars and other archaeological sites.

For now, the virtual Plain of Jars can be viewed only at the Cave2 facility in Melbourne, but Shewan hopes that 360-degree aerial footage of the site will be made available to the public or be integrated into a museum exhibition.

She said the ongoing laboratory research on the samples from the latest excavations includes efforts by ANU geochemist Richard Armstrong to determine the geographic origin and accurate age of some of the jars at Site 1, by analyzing the radioactive decay of uranium into lead in traces of the mineral zircon in the rocks from which they were quarried.

Shewan's own skeletal-chemistry research will focus next on strontium isotopes in human teeth from the graves at Site 1, which could provide clues about the identity of the mysterious jar makers, of whom almost nothing is known except their unusual burial practices.

"We'll be able to work out where these people were living and what areas they were accessing their food from, based on the geological signature — and that will be a really useful piece of information, because at the moment, we don't have any habitation sites, and so we know nothing about these people at all," Shewan said.

Original article on Live Science.

A stroke patient stretches out a weak arm and grabs a hovering spaceship. A chronic pain sufferer uses her head to bat balls at cartoon bears. A veteran relives his battlefield experiences in a safe environment to help deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Therapeutic approaches that immerse patients in virtual environments abound. Until recently, though, the treatments were mostly limited to severe cases in clinical settings because the commercial hardware was expensive. High-end virtual reality setups require not just the headset, which can run several hundreds of dollars, but motion-tracking sensors as well as a dedicated game console or a fast-processing PC with a heavy-duty graphics card. The costs can start adding up into the thousands of dollars.

But thanks to a recent proliferation of VR hardware, including headsets that incorporate a user's smartphone, prices are falling faster than you can blast a bear. Samsung's Gear VR costs $99. Google's new soft Daydream View, which comes with a Bluetooth controller and limited motion-tracking controller, currently sells for $79. The Mi VR Play from Chinese tech giant Xiaomi is only $29. Mobile VR startup, VicoVR, which is developing an affordable full-body tracking system, is expected to ship their first units by the end of the year. A price hasn't been announced yet, but when the company launched their IndieGoGo funding campaign earlier this spring, the all-inclusive gaming bundle went for $219.

"Anytime anybody has written a paper about virtual reality they say, 'I found out this cool thing and someday when VR is in the home to help people with chronic pain or with physical therapy...' It was always something that was coming," said Andrea Stevenson Won, an assistant professor in the Communication Department at Cornell University who studies virtual embodiment.

Well, that someday has come, and for researchers and patients alike, this accessible tech could transform the way we treat physical and mental ailments. Here's how.

True Immersion

Because of the increasing affordable of virtual reality setups, medical professionals won't need sprawling setups to achieve full immersion. Sensors will be embedded in the hardware, in clothing and in other wearables. Alternate realities will be achieved with temperature-changing gloves, full-body suits that vibrate for physical sensations and devices that produce realistic smells and even virtual tastes.

RELATED: Google's Daydream VR Headset Is Unlike Any Other

"We're going to make these as immersive as possible — not just visually immersive but sensorially immersive," said Danielle Levac, an assistant professor in Northeastern University's Department of Physical Therapy, Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences as well as the director of the Rehabilitation Games & Virtual Reality Laboratory.

The technology could help speed the recovery of someone who's had a stroke, for example. In the aftermath, stroke victims suffer from physical and cognitive impairments that turn simple errands into incredible challenges. Grocery shopping involves mobility, planning, organization and decision-making, Levac explained.

With virtual reality, the patient could practice navigating a store, reaching for objects on a shelf, asking for assistance and checking out. And because gaming companies are working on algorithms that change virtual interactions in real time to match the patient's capabilities, therapists can set the VR program to a beginner level and then gradually scale up the difficulty until the person feels confident enough to visit an actual store.

It's almost like having your therapist inside the game, personalizing exactly how far you should extend an arm to grab a fake spaceship.

Brainpower

When a VR experience is truly interactive, that tricks the brain. Mind-numbing, repetitive movements for rehab can be transformed into magical quests, sci-fi adventures and daring feats. "Maybe your goal is to grab the spaceship as it goes across the screen and throw it at an alien ship or planet," Levac said. "There's a body of literature that says VR can get people to move in ways they might not know they're capable of in a real session."

WATCH VIDEO: This Body Suit Lets You Experience Virtual Touch

While at Stanford, Stevenson Won worked on VR pilot studies to treat a syndrome known as CRPS that causes intense concentrated body pain. Several CRPS patients donned headsets and put optical trackers on their ankles. Virtual balloons materialized in a random sequence. When the patient moved in a way so the avatar landed a kick, the balloon made a popping sound. The haptic floor also vibrated. Gone was the wincing and groaning that usually accompanied standard physical therapy sessions to move their affected limbs.

Layered Reality

Virtual reality doesn't work for everyone. Some people have a hard time and although simulation sickness isn't common, it can happen, Andrea Stevenson Won cautioned.

Augmented reality, where your surroundings get overlaid with holographic images, could come to the rescue.

"You're not placing this huge heavy thing over your eyes and that's all you're seeing," Levac said. "You're still present with the real world." Last summer we saw augmented reality in 2-D with Pokémon Go, but new wearable devices like Microsoft's forthcoming HoloLens and a display from the secretive startup Magic Leap promise to do the same in 3-D.

Levac said that augmented reality for rehab is still in the beginning stages, but pictures a proliferation of downloadable game apps. "I can really see that capitalizing on the motivating, engaging gaming aspect of VR but being more accessible and less intimidating," she said.

Measurable Results

"The good and bad of virtual reality is that it's fun," Stevenson Won said. "More people want to try it and we can leverage that fun for therapeutic purposes, but you want to figure out what the effects are."

Researchers and developers are beginning to bring a systematic, clinical approach to creating immersive therapies. Levac called this evidence-based game mechanics. "Instead of just putting chocolate over the broccoli — just gamifying everything — we're really starting to think, what do we know about what makes a good game, and reward, and interaction, and challenge?" she said.

When researchers studied children who were asked to do virtual reality rehabilitation every day for several weeks, they found that the novelty wore off. Levac envisions better ways to look at brain activity during tasks so researchers can quantitatively measure engagement. Once we understand how to keep boredom at bay over time, we can design stronger virtual reality treatments.

Stevenson Won expects that, in the future, more healthcare professionals will be able to see what virtual reality technology can do for their patients. "It's not a cure-all," she cautioned. "But it's just a great tool, especially when you compare it to more invasive treatments."

Originally published on Seeker.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

I vividly remember my first haunted house ride – it was at the local fairgrounds, just a temporary carnival truck, more façade than ride. I must have been about seven or eight, and I insisted on bringing along a flashlight. I was quite a fearful child; in this case I hoped the flashlight would break through the darkened illusion and I might sneak a look at the ride's inner workings. I failed miserably: As the ride spun and jolted my flashlight was always a second late. The monsters and spooks jumped out before I could anticipate them; the car hit walls of fake spiders. My light was of little use.

For most of the 20th century, dark rides – as these kinds of rides are called – offered thrills and surprises, and no small dose of fear, to riders bumping along in carts passing through animatronic scenes. But they are rapidly disappearing. In the decade of my professional life I have spent experiencing and documenting these rides around the world, I have seen many great haunted attractions and parks close. Of the thousands of rides created between 1900 and 1970, only 18 still exist.

The closure of Williams Grove, the flooding of Bushkill Park, the sale of Miracle Strip or the destruction of the Spookhouse by Hurricane Sandy have saddened the thousands of fans of these parks. But they have also laid waste to an important record of our popular culture history that should not be left in the dark.

These rides were the virtual reality experiences of their day. Far surpassing cinema, they had sound effects, atmospheric effects and 360-degree immersive space. To preserve them in a way that does these rides justice, my work, the Dark Ride Project, is capturing and archiving the experience of riding the last remaining ghost trains and haunted house rides using today's digital virtual reality technology.

Most recently, we've been visiting the Spook-A-Rama ride at Deno's Wonder Wheel Park in Coney Island, New York. Built in 1955, this classic ride was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and was painstakingly restored by the family that owns the park. On Halloween, we'll release new footage preserving the ride in VR, so it will never be under threat again.

A history of dark rides

The earliest dark rides were the "old mill" rides, which started showing up in the 1900s – there's still one at Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh. Participants floated down a tunnel on log rafts, the way logs used to be transported downriver to mills in the 19th century. The buildings were dark inside, mirroring the real-life mills that lay abandoned across the landscape.

These floating dark rides sent participants through a series of choreographed vignettes with electric lighting switching automatically on and off as each raft went by. The winding point of view coupled with the sequence of images from either side of the track created a complex narrative and spatial experience. This new way of telling a story involved all of the audience's senses, including the smells of the mechanics, the splashes of water and the touch of hanging props in the dark. In these experiences, viewers would engage intimately with animatronic characters and live actors, looking left and right in surprise.

It was truly an immersive mass medium. Back then, a blockbuster book was more likely to be adapted into a dark ride experience than made into a movie. In 1901, for example, Jules Verne's novel "From The Earth to the Moon" was made into a dark ride for the Buffalo World's Fair – a year before the legendary French cinematic version by George Melies. That ride, which was built by Frederick Thompson, would later go on to tour the country and eventually become the namesake of Coney Island's Luna Park.

In the 1920s, the Depression, the rise of the motor car and the advent of cinema meant that the traditional fairground had a less captive audience. Cities grew but the fairgrounds that were home to these dark rides struggled and began to fall into disrepair. The 1930s saw the rise of the dark ride that we know today, a pragmatic, inexpensive and often ad-hoc form of entertainment. Parks could buy ride carts and build their own sets and scenes. The Pretzel Amusement Ride Company was the most prolific of the time, producing more than 1,400 rides that found homes across America and the world.

The company got its name from the patented ride design that saw the track bend in on itself, like a pretzel. Pretzel rides were cheap to build and maximized the length of the ride – and thereby the experience – given a particular amount of space. The patent drawings show a scripted set of trigger points for sound effects and lighting and could easily be the level maps for a computer game.

Leon Cassidy and Marvin Rempfer started building Pretzel rides in 1928, but even with Cassidy's son making them until the late 1970s, there are now only four left in operation. My documentary journey began at Luna Park's Ghost Train, built by the Pretzel company in 1936, and where I tested the system throughout 2015-16 before taking it on the road.

Planning the preservation

Until now there has been no attempt to make a comprehensive archive of this enormous piece of American popular history. Doing so involves some difficult technical challenges, the solutions to which are evolving as the project goes on. The chief aim is ensuring that there is a clear record of what was in the ride and how it felt.

The Dark Ride Project records a VR experience by sending ultra-low-light cameras on multiple passes of the ride. Then we use computer software to stitch the resulting video into a seamless 360-degree video.

In this way, the rides are captured as they are to be experienced – the footage captures the bumps and shakes of the cart, and doesn't shy away from moments of total darkness.

Unlike my childhood attempt with the flashlight, we don't want to break the illusion, so we use a process called photogrammetry to create complex digital 3D models with the photo data. It allows us to record more about the physical space that lies behind the ride.

We capture these data in conjunction with accelerometer data, which gives us metric information on the speed, direction and location of the cart. This extra information helps build a true academic archive to support the two-dimensional media, recording more about what the ride is doing. The captured jolts and bumps can be recreated using Deakin University's universal motion simulator in conjunction with VR optics.

The result is an experience that is confusing and disorienting but uniquely accurate. It has brought tears to the eyes of nostalgic fans.

So far our work has documented six rides across five parks, from the standalone Haunted House in Oxford, Alabama, to the gravity-propelled classic at Camden Park, West Virginia. Visitors can see previews of all the parks online. We've just raised nearly US$14,000 to digitally preserve the remaining eight rides left in the U.S. – including Coney Island's Spook-A-Rama. We'll need more funding to capture other sites around the world.

Once that is achieved, we hope to expand our work beyond preserving and presenting the dynamic VR content. That includes studying and filming the parks that house these rides, the people who build and maintain them and the communities that love and cherish them.

Joel Zika, Lecturer In Visual Communication Design, Deakin University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The first computers cost millions of dollars and were locked inside rooms equipped with special electrical circuits and air conditioning. The only people who could use them had been trained to write programs in that specific computer's language. Today, gesture-based interactions, using multitouch pads and touchscreens, and exploration of virtual 3D spaces allow us to interact with digital devices in ways very similar to how we interact with physical objects.

This newly immersive world not only is open to more people to experience; it also allows almost anyone to exercise their own creativity and innovative tendencies. No longer are these capabilities dependent on being a math whiz or a coding expert: Mozilla's "A-Frame" is making the task of building complex virtual reality models much easier for programmers. And Google's "Tilt Brush" software allows people to build and edit 3D worlds without any programming skills at all.

My own research hopes to develop the next phase of human-computer interaction. We are monitoring people's brain activity in real time and recognizing specific thoughts (of "tree" versus "dog" or of a particular pizza topping). It will be yet another step in the historical progression that has brought technology to the masses – and will widen its use even more in the coming years.

Reducing the expertise needed

From those early computers dependent on machine-specific programming languages, the first major improvement allowing more people to use computers was the development of the Fortran programming language. It expanded the range of programmers to scientists and engineers who were comfortable with mathematical expressions. This was the era of punch cards, when programs were written by punching holes in cardstock, and output had no graphics – only keyboard characters.

By the late 1960s mechanical plotters let programmers draw simple pictures by telling a computer to raise or lower a pen, and move it a certain distance horizontally or vertically on a piece of paper. The commands and graphics were simple, but even drawing a basic curve required understanding trigonometry, to specify the very small intervals of horizontal and vertical lines that would look like a curve once finished.

The 1980s introduced what has become the familiar windows, icons and mouse interface. That gave nonprogrammers a much easier time creating images – so much so that many comic strip authors and artists stopped drawing in ink and began working with computer tablets. Animated films went digital, as programmers developed sophisticated proprietary tools for use by animators.

Simpler tools became commercially available for consumers. In the early 1990s the OpenGL library allowed programmers to build 2D and 3D digital models and add color, movement and interaction to these models.

In recent years, 3D displays have become much smaller and cheaper than the multi-million-dollar CAVE and similar immersive systems of the 1990s. They needed space 30 feet wide, 30 feet long and 20 feet high to fit their rear-projection systems. Now smartphone holders can provide a personal 3D display for less than US$100.

User interfaces have gotten similarly more powerful. Multitouch pads and touchscreens recognize movements of multiple fingers on a surface, while devices such as the Wii and Kinect recognize movements of arms and legs. A company called Fove has been working to develop a VR headset that will track users' eyes, and which will, among other capabilities, let people make eye contact with virtual characters.

Planning longer term

My own research is helping to move us toward what might be called "computing at the speed of thought." Low-cost open-source projects such as OpenBCI allow people to assemble their own neuroheadsets that capture brain activity noninvasively.

Ten to 15 years from now, hardware/software systems using those sorts of neuroheadsets could assist me by recognizing the nouns I've thought about in the past few minutes. If it replayed the topics of my recent thoughts, I could retrace my steps and remember what thought triggered my most recent thought.

With more sophistication, perhaps a writer could wear an inexpensive neuroheadset, imagine characters, an environment and their interactions. The computer could deliver the first draft of a short story, either as a text file or even as a video file showing the scenes and dialogue generated in the writer's mind.

Working toward the future

Once human thought can communicate directly with computers, a new world will open before us. One day, I would like to play games in a virtual world that incorporates social dynamics as in the experimental games "Prom Week" and "Façade" and in the commercial game "Blood & Laurels."

This type of experience would not be limited to game play. Software platforms such as an enhanced Versu could enable me to write those kinds of games, developing characters in the same virtual environments they'll inhabit.

Years ago, I envisioned an easily modifiable application that allows me to have stacks of virtual papers hovering around me that I can easily grab and rifle through to find a reference I need for a project. I would love that. I would also really enjoy playing "Quidditch" with other people while we all experience the sensation of flying via head-mounted displays and control our brooms by tilting and twisting our bodies.

Once low-cost motion capture becomes available, I envision new forms of digital story-telling. Imagine a group of friends acting out a story, then matching their bodies and their captured movements to 3D avatars to reenact the tale in a synthetic world. They could use multiple virtual cameras to "film" the action from multiple perspectives, and then construct a video.

This sort of creativity could lead to much more complex projects, all conceived in creators' minds and made into virtual experiences. Amateur historians without programming skills may one day be able to construct augmented reality systems in which they can superimpose onto views of the real world selected images from historic photos or digital models of buildings that no longer exist. Eventually they could add avatars with whom users can converse. As technology continues to progress and become easier to use, the dioramas built of cardboard, modeling clay and twigs by children 50 years ago could one day become explorable, life-sized virtual spaces.

Frances Van Scoy, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Armchair adventurers, rejoice! A new virtual-reality documentary series will let you join a team of mountaineers as they tackle a perilous climb up Mount Everest.

The VR series, called "Capturing Everest," will chronicle the journey of four climbers — including Garrett Madison, who summited Everest six times, and Brent Bishop, who summited Everest three times — as they attempt to ascend the giant peak.

Sports Illustrated is partnering with Endemol Shine Beyond USA, a digital media network, to produce the series, which they call the "first complete Mount Everest climb in virtual reality." [In Photos: Mount Everest Expeditions Then and Now]

Set to debut in early 2017, the documentary was shot over the span of two months, according to Sports Illustrated. The footage was captured using cameras on zip lines and body cams attached to climbers' harnesses, and the multipart documentary will enable viewers to experience the climb from a first-person perspective.

"Attacking the world's highest summit seemed like the perfect place to go with our new VR initiative," Mia Tramz, managing editor of LIFE VR, said in an article on Sports Illustrated. "We can't wait to bring viewers along for this once-in-a-lifetime journey. This is exactly the type of experience LIFE VR was created for."

LIFE VR is a part of the Time Inc. family, which includes Sports Illustrated. The virtual-reality project is described as an extension of Time's LIFE magazine brand, and Time says it tells a story through 360-degree videos and interactive virtual-reality experiences.

Sports Illustrated first used the immersive medium for its famed swimsuit issue, released in February. As a companion to the print issue, Sports Illustrated released an app featuring virtual-reality clips.

Similarly, the release of "Capturing Everest" will be accompanied by coverage of the climb across Sports Illustrated's print and digital properties, Variety reported. According to the trade publication, the viewer experience begins in Kathmandu, Nepal, and follows the climbers to Everest Base Camp and then through each pass, crevasse and ice wall to the summit.

"Capturing an ascent in VR makes the unattainable seem attainable while, at the same time, reinforcing the mythology of Everest," Chris Stone, Time Inc. Sports Illustrated Group editorial director, said in the Sports Illustrated article. "This production is both extraordinarily real and unreal all at once. We are thrilled to bring the viewer along for the odyssey."

Original article on Live Science.

Google debuted its first smartphone this week, dubbed "Pixel," signaling the company's move into an industry long dominated by the likes of Apple and Samsung. And considering Google is already the developer of the Android mobile operating system, what will make the Pixel different from other smartphones already on the market?

Google unveiled the Pixel Oct. 4, saying it will provide the best experience "by bringing hardware and software design together under one roof."

This isn't Google's first foray into the smartphone industry: The company's Android operating system is available on smartphones from a number of companies, including Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Previous smartphone releases from Google were part of the Nexus program, in partnership with other smartphone providers. But Pixel is all Google's — the first smartphone built entirely by the company. [9 Odd Ways Your Tech Devices May Injure You]

"With Pixel, we obsessed over every detail, from the industrial design to the user experience," Brian Rakowski, vice president of product management at Google, wrote in a blog post to introduce the new phone.

With its curved edges, sleek design and two size options, the Pixel is reminiscent of Apple's iPhone. The 5-inch Pixel has a 1080p screen — 1440 x 2160 on the 5.5-inch Pixel XL — 4GB of RAM and either 32GB or 128GB of storage. The new iPhone 7 has similar specs: the screen resolution is 1334 x 750, with 2GB of RAM and storage options of 32GB, 128GB or 256GB.

Google has highlighted that Pixel users also will have unlimited photo and video cloud storage, which may quell some smartphone users' fears of reaching their storage capacity.

Pixel also has what Google is touting as the "best smartphone camera ever." The 12.3-megapixel rear camera received top marks from DxOMark, which measures camera image quality through rigorous testing. With an overall score of 89, the Pixel's camera surpassed every other smartphone camera currently on the market, reported Tom's Guide.

"Pixel puts cutting-edge computational photography in an ultra-fast and easy-to-use camera," Rakowski wrote in the blog post. "Our team of photography gurus and image-processing experts have spent the last year designing and tirelessly optimizing our entire camera stack. Pixel's camera lets you take stunning photos in low light, bright light or any light."

Another feature touted by Google is the Pixel's battery and charge time. According to the company, 15 minutes of charge will yield 7 hours of use. Pixel is also the first phone with the company's virtual "smart" service, known as Google Assistant, built in, allowing users to have "a natural conversation with Google" to search or complete tasks.

Pixel phones will start at $649 (equivalent to the price of the new iPhone 7) for the smaller versions and $769 for the "XL" model. The phone comes in three colors: "really blue," "very silver" and "quite black." In addition to being available for preorder from Google directly, Pixel can be bought at all Verizon retail outlets, including Best Buy stores.

At the Google event earlier this week, the search-engine company also announced the launch of a new virtual reality headset and a home assistant to rival Amazon's Alexa.

Original article on Live Science.

Virtual-reality headsets are likely to be at the top of many kids' wish lists this holiday season, but with many VR devices coming with age restrictions, is the technology safe for youngsters?

The Oculus Rift and Samsung's Gear VR headsets are recommended for ages 13+, while Sony's recommendation for its PlayStation VR is ages 12 and up. HTC's Vive is not designed for children, according to the company, and HTC said young children shouldn't be allowed to use the headset at all. And Google said its relatively low-tech Cardboard headset should be used by kids only under adult supervision.

Companies have offered little explanation for these age recommendations. So what does the science say? According to Marientina Gotsis, director of the Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, not a lot. [Photos: Virtual Reality Puts Adults in a Child's World]

"We do not have enough data on the safety of current VR technology for children," she told Live Science. "So, the sparsity of research data and what we know about neuroplasticity [the brain's ability to reorganize itself] and children does not make me comfortable to recommend what is available now as is."

Brain development

In a 2014 study in rats, researchers at the University of California found that the neurons in a brain region associated with spatial learning behaved completely differently in virtual environments compared to in real ones, with more than half of the neurons shutting down while in VR. What this means for humans is unclear, but the scientists said it highlighted the need for more research on the long-term effects of VR.

Gotsis said VR could have an even bigger impact on the developing brains of children. Her center uses entertainment technology, including VR, for mental and behavioral health research. She has worked on VR applications for children, but only in highly controlled situations.

"The brain is very plastic in young ages, and prolonged exposure with improperly fitted devices could incur damage," she said. "Children also may not understand how to communicate eyestrain and may lack reflexes to remove the devices if they find them uncomfortable."

Still, this does not necessarily mean that VR is unsafe for children and never can be, she said, adding that VR's safety varies according to the device, type of content and time spent using it, as well as on the individual child using it. [11 Facts Every Parent Should Know About Their Baby's Brain]

VR and vision

One of the biggest concerns is the impact VR tech could have on kids' eyes. Parents have long told children that staring at a screen will make their eyes go square, but the American Academy of Ophthalmology says there is no evidence that long exposure to screens can cause permanent damage.

But another issue with VR is the so-called vergence-accommodation conflict. When you view the world normally, your eye first points the eyeballs — vergence — and then focuses the lenses — accommodation — on an object, and then these two processes are coupled to create a coherent picture.

Modern VR headsets achieve the illusion of depth by presenting each eye with a slightly different image on a flat screen. This means that, no matter how far away an object appears, the eyes remain focused on a fixed point, but they converge on something in the virtual distance.

"Some scientists believe this is the reason some people experience symptoms when viewing 3D stimuli — TV and cinema, as well as headsets," said Peter Howarth, an optometrist and senior lecturer in visual ergonomics at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.

However, Howarth said there is good evidence to suggest that only those with already weak eye movement and control are likely to experience adverse effects such as headaches and eyestrain. For children, these symptoms are good indicators that these kids need to get their eyes checked, so VR headsets may actually help catch existing problems, he added.

Howarth said that, as far as he knows, no academic studies have been done to investigate the effects of VR on children's eyes, though it's possible that VR headset manufacturers have done research in this area. "My guess is that they're simply covering their backs so that if a child develops a squint, they will not be held responsible," he told Live Science.

Lack of research

Michael Madary, a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Mainz in Germany, who in February co-authored the first code of ethics on the use of VR, said the dearth of research on VR's effects on children is unlikely to improve.

"For obvious ethical reasons, it's very difficult to do research using children as subjects," he told Live Science. Madary studies the ethics of emerging technologies, incorporating results from psychology and neuroscience, and he thinks the biggest concern with VR is its effect on children's psychological development.

"Children, at a young age, have difficulty distinguishing reality from fiction or fantasy," Madary said. "You could imagine putting them in VR — that inability to distinguish could be exaggerated."

For instance, content that could be traumatic when seen in the cinema is likely to have an even bigger impact in VR. And the negative effects of advertising and unsavory role models on TV could be exacerbated considerably by VR, Madary added.

"In VR, you have an entire environment designed by someone who may want to manipulate you, whether it's for advertising, for political reasons, for religious reasons," he said. "If you have a child spending a long time immersed in a VR environment where manipulation is going on, it could be seen as a threat to their autonomy and what kind of adult they become."

And though VR holds great potential, including for educational and therapeutic uses, Madary said manufacturers need to team up with scientists to investigate the long-term implications of the technology. Until then, he recommends erring on the side of caution.

"I suspect that if parents are doing a good job as parents, that's pretty much the most important factor," he said. "It's just exercising extreme caution and knowing that the experiments have not been done, so you're experimenting on your kids."

Editor's Note: Our sister-site, Tom's Hardware, has a great primer on how virtual reality has evolved since the 1950s. And if you're in the market for VR, check out Tom's Guide's virtual reality headset recommendations.

Original article on Live Science.

Several patients who had been paralyzed in their lower limbs for years have now regained some feeling and movement in their limbs, after learning to control a robotic exoskeleton with their brain, a new study says.

The findings were unexpected — researchers had been training the patients to use so-called brain-machine interfaces, including the robotic exoskeleton, with the hope that the patients could one day use the machines to help them walk again.

But the training appears to have had additional benefits: After a year, the patients experienced improvements in their ability to perceive sensations of touch below their spinal cord injury, and regained some control over muscles in their lower limbs, the study found.

In fact, out of the eight patients in the study, four experienced changes in their muscle control that were significant enough to upgrade their diagnosis from "complete paralysis" (when people have no control over the muscles below their spinal injury) to "partial paralysis" (when people have some control over these affected muscles.)

"We couldn't have predicted this surprising clinical outcome when we began the project," said Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University who conducted the study as part of the Walk Again Project in São Paulo, Brazil. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]

The patient with the biggest improvements was a 32-year old woman who had been paralyzed for 13 years. At the start of the study, she was not able to stand using braces at the start of the study, but by the end of the study, she could move her legs on her own while her body weight was supported with a harness.

The findings are the first to suggest that the long-term use of brain-machine interfaces could lead to partial neurological recovery, even in patients with complete paralysis, the researchers said.

In the study, the patients who had been paralyzed for five to 13 years learned how to use brain-machine interfaces, which are systems that translate brain signals into commands, and move a device such as a prosthesis. The patients started out by learning to control an avatar in a virtual reality environment. Later, they moved on to more challenging equipment, including walking devices that used a harness to support patients' weight as they developed strength and the proper gait.

Eventually, after months of training, the patients were able to use the mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton. This is the same exoskeleton that a paralyzed man used to kick the first ball of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

The patients also wore a sleeve that delivered feedback, in the form of vibrations to their forearm that were in sync with the rolling of the robotic feet on the ground. This was done to enhance their experience of walking, making their brains feel more like they were really walking by themselves, the researchers said.

The researchers said they think the brain-machine interface training, along with the sensory feedback helped the patients to re-engage the spinal cord nerves that survived their trauma. Previous studies have shown that patients with complete paralysis may still have some spinal nerves intact, Nicolelis said.

"Over time, training with the brain-machine interface could have rekindled these nerves," Nicolelis said. "It may be a small number of fibers that remain, but this may be enough to convey signals from the motor cortical area of the brain to the spinal cord."

The researchers plan to continue their evaluation of the patients in the study and to start a new study of patients with more recent spinal cord injuries to see if this second group of patients can respond more quickly.

The study is published today (Aug. 11) in the journal Scientific Reports.

Original article on Live Science.

If you're not traveling to Brazil for the Summer Olympics, you can still explore the geography and culture of Rio de Janeiro, courtesy of Google.

Rio: Beyond the Map, released to the public July 29, deftly blends archival materials with stunning video, interactive media and profiles of artistic Cariocas, as natives of Rio de Janeiro are called.

The project's title alludes to Rio's favelas, the poorly mapped neighborhoods where 1.4 million people, or 20 percent of the city's population, live without addresses, according to Google's blog post about the project. Mapping these regions is part of another Google initiative, the "On the Map" project. [14 Strangest Sights on Google Earth]

The experience begins with a 360-degree video of a motorcycle taxi ride up a hillside through the narrow, twisting streets of the São Carlos favela. The interactive landscape then allows users to learn more about landmarks, or watch short segments about artists from the favelas.

Beyond the Map is presented by Google Arts and Culture alongside thousands of images and video curated in partnership with local institutions. Each online exhibits focuses on different art forms and areas of the city, with interactive slideshows that showcase artwork and photography from Rio's rich past and present.

Google has also combined their familiar Street View technology with narration in virtual tours of more than 20 famous locations in Rio, such as the statue of Christ the Redeemer, with its panoramic views, or the white sand beach at Ipanema. The tours are also viewable as virtual reality experiences with a VR headset, such as Google Cardboard, and the Google Arts and Culture app on iOS or Android.

Rio de Janeiro will host the 2016 Olympic Games from Aug. 5 to 21. The Rio 2016 Paralympics will subsequently be held from Sept. 7 to 18.

Original article on Live Science.

An event combining virtual reality and live musical performance aims to bring together a 20-piece orchestra, a 100-person choir and breathtaking views of the cosmos captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

And it's going to be available to the public for free.

"The Hubble Cantata"will premiere in Brooklyn, New York, on Aug. 6 at the Prospect Park Bandshell, as part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. Up to 6,000 people will be able to experience an installation featuring 360-degree sound delivered by live musicians and vocalists, including two opera soloists. [Spaced Out! 101 Astronomy Images That Will Blow Your Mind]

And accompanying the musical presentation will be a unique visual event that will transport listeners into a sight that is literally out of this world.

Immersive animations

As audience members don cardboard headsets and activate a free app, immersive VR animations created from actual Hubble photos will transform Prospect Park into a display of celestial objects. The 5-minute-long VR film, titled "Fistful of Stars," will offer viewers the perspective of actually traveling through space.

A concentric array of eight speakers surrounding the audience will enable the concert audio to travel around and through them in 3D space, according to the event's acoustics researcher and designer, Terence Caulkins.

The installation represents a collaboration among artists, engineers and scientists, developed at the New Museum in New York City as part of its art incubation program, New Inc.

The musical commission originated with the concept of accompanying Hubble imagery and collaborating with Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who worked with Hubble for 24 years, "Hubble Cantata" composer Paola Prestini told Live Science in an email.

Since Hubble launched on April 24, 1990 — the first optical telescope deployed in space — it has made more than 1 million observations while orbiting Earth at approximately 17,000 mph (27,359 km/h), capturing distant supernovas, unprecedented views of objects within our solar system, and galaxies that are at least 13 billion years old, to name just a few.

The brightest spot in Orion's sword

But some of Hubble's most awe-inspiring photos are of nebulas — ancient clouds of dust and gas — that can be the remains of a dead, exploded star, or nurseries where new stars are born. An estimated 10,000 nebulas lurk in the Milky Way, and they represent a wide range of sizes and shapes. Many carry names inspired by those shapes, such as the Eagle Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, the Ring Nebula and Thor's Helmet Nebula. [See some of the Hubble Space Telescope's most iconic photos]

The Orion Nebula, located 15,000 light-years from Earth and the brightest point in the Orion constellation, is the main attraction in "Fistful of Stars."

Filmmaker and VR director Eliza McNitt told Live Science in an email that she selected the Orion Nebula for the VR experience "because it is a nursery for star birth and reflected the themes of 'The Hubble Cantata,' which tells the story of the birth, life and death of stars and the human connection to the cosmos."

As the cantata unfolds, Orion emerges as a character, one that was "intimately connected to the narrative," McNitt said.

But at the end of the day, "Hubble Cantata" is about people, Prestini told Live Science, calling the installation "less a story about space and more a human story." McNitt agreed, adding that the installation represents our connection to the cosmos, and that the VR experience "explores the parallels between human life on Earth and stars in the heavens."

A Kickstarter campaign for "Hubble Cantata" launched on July 13, to help raise money to take the production on tour throughout the country. Following its debut on Aug. 6, the VR film "Fistful of Stars" will be available to download and view for free on the creators' dedicated app, "giving anyone the opportunity to experience the cosmos," according to the project's Kickstarter statement.

Original article on Live Science.

Haptics are a happening area in virtual reality these days. The term refers to devices and technologies that produce tactile sensations to go along with all those immersive visuals and sounds.

The makers of the Oculus Rift, along with parent company Facebook, are working on a potential haptic add-on to their virtual reality headset. It's called HapticWave, and it's kind of like a omnidirectional virtual reality glove, without the glove. I swear — write about this stuff long enough and everything starts to sound like a Zen koan.

RELATED: Flight Simulator Offers Bird's Eye View

According to an interesting report over at MIT Technology Review, the HapticWave device consists of a circular metal plate set atop a ring of electromagnet actuators. Put your hand in the center of the disc and the device transmits vibrations that are synced up with what you're seeing and hearing through the Oculus Rift headset.

Unlike existing haptic gloves or other tactile tech strategies, the electromagnetic actuator approach can simulate vibrations coming in from specific directions. So, for instance, you could feel the approach of a bouncing ball coming toward you on a tabletop.

Additional sensors in the disc detect the placement and movement of your hand, then send that info back to the actuators for further adjustment. The frequency of the vibrations can be shifted to suggest heavier or lighter virtual objects interacting in virtual space.

RELATED: Get Handsy with Haptic Tech

It might seem like there's little practical use for such a device, aside from ping-pong spectator simulators. But the designers are noodling around with game design concepts in which your hand become a kind of tactile stand-in for the rest of your body. Let's say a post-apocalyptic super mutant is sneaking up from behind. You could actually feel the footfalls at the base of your palm.

From a certain perspective, it's actually an interesting way to flip the script on input devices. Instead of using our hands to send input to the machine, via a controller, the machine sends input to us, via our hands. Trippy. Let the Singularity begin.

Demos of the HapticWave system will be rolled out at the upcoming Siggraph conference in California later this month.

Originally published on Discovery News.

On the cult sci-fi TV show "Star Trek," crewmembers aboard the USS Enterprise could explore simulated environments or participate in interactive virtual experiences — anything from walking around lush forests to trying to solve a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery — as a way to mentally escape the confines of the starship or take a break from daily activities.

While the fictional Holodeck from the hit series was mainly used by the "Star Trek" characters for recreational purposes, could such an immersive virtual-reality (VR) environment help people tackle global problems like climate change or drug policy? Researchers at New York University (NYU) think so, and they are designing their own version of the technology to create a cyberlearning environment of the future.

Winslow Burleson, the project's leader and an associate professor focusing on educational technology at NYU, thinks a network of internet-connected Holodecks could allow people to crowdsource solutions to intractable societal problems. [Science Fact of Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts]

The technology could enable people across the globe to create and participate in detailed simulations for research and collaborative learning, even allowing them to explore virtual scenarios to help find better ways of tackling communal challenges, he said.

"The future is moving from today's approach of trying to teach you who we think you should become, to a capacity for you to explore as a learner throughout your life who you are and who you want to be," Burleson told Live Science.

"I see that happening both at the individual level and at a societal level," he said. "If we can envisage the kinds of worlds that we want to explore and potentially live in, we can then use these Holodecks as collaborative sense-making tools to understand our interactions and impacts and use that to evolve our societies."

'Star Trek'-inspired tech

The NYU Experiential Super Computer, nicknamed the Holodeck, will combine VR technology and touch-based controls and feedback with computers that can simulate in real-time everything from environments to social situations, or even visualizations of scientific problems, the researchers said.

The system will be able to track users' movements and even their mental states via physiological cues like sweating or the pitch of their voices, Burleson said. This will help personalize their experiences, he added.

And as people use the Holodeck, they will be guided through their learning by robotic and virtual learning assistants, according to the researchers. The system will even feature 3D printing technology so that people can rapidly create physical prototypes of things they're working on, they said.

This kind of immersive virtual experience is now possible, thanks to the rapid advances currently being made in VR technology, largely fueled by the gaming industry. Burleson said his group has already made significant progress with several of the component technologies. [Beyond Gaming: 10 Other Fascinating Uses for Virtual-Reality Tech]

For example, the scientists have already demonstrated that HD camera arrays can capture the positioning of all users and physical objects in a prototype Holodeck and use this to position them in a virtual scene shown through VR goggles in real time. The NYU researchers have also created a 3D sound system that can record and recreate accurate simulations of acoustic spaces, Burleson said.

Members of the team have worked with NASA and the Exploratorium, the San Francisco-based cyberlearning museum, to design robotic and virtual assistants for both cyberlearning and remote planetary exploration.

The researchers have also partnered with a Boston-based startup called Humanyze, which creates high-tech badges packed with sensors that can track people's movement, social interactions and even speech dynamics.

Fact vs. fiction

But the researchers still have a ways to go before they can create a working prototype, Burleson said. They are currently focused on setting up an infrastructure that will enable them to combine these various parts into a coherent whole and make it easy for users to share information or even contribute to the project with new tools and features, he added.

"The work we're doing now is to fuse these components into one overarching architecture," Burleson said. "It's the difference between an individual knife for a specialized task and a Swiss army knife."

The use of virtual worlds to tackle real-world problems is already an active domain of research that even has its own peer-reviewed academic publication — the Journal of Virtual Worlds Research.

Games like "World of Warcraft" and "Second Life" have been used by researchers to investigate everything from  psychology to the governance of virtual universes. But the more complex and customizable virtual worlds that would be enabled by the Holodeck should make it possible to tackle larger and more complex problems, Burleson said.

"It enables a process of understanding how we want to live, what the trade-offs are, what the possibilities are, as individuals and as a society," he said. "That lets you make more informed decisions and more agile decisions."

Original article on Live Science.

A good movie can transport audiences, taking them to other worlds and briefly immersing people in characters' lives. And with virtual-reality technology, movie writers and directors have more tools at their disposal than ever before to create immersive experiences.

Danish filmmakers Johan Knattrup Jensen and Mads Damsbo and their production company Makropol are using virtual-reality (VR) technology to explore the boundaries of movie narratives, building on traditional visual storytelling and introducing new opportunities for audiences to interact with plotlines and characters — and with one another.

Their short film "Ewa: Out of Body," premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and enabled viewers to see the world through the eyes of Ewa, the main character. The short is a brief introduction to Ewa's life. A planned feature-length film will allow audiences to share her experiences from infancy through adulthood, centering on a significant conflict with her mother. [Beyond Gaming: 10 Other Fascinating Uses for Virtual-Reality Tech]

Seeing and experiencing

The filmmakers say VR could inspire movie creators to approach visual narratives in an entirely new way.  

"VR opens up a different way of telling stories — one you haven't seen before," Jensen, the film's director, told Live Science. "Instead of simply trying to tell a story, I'm trying to convey an experience."

Jensen shot "Ewa" as a single take, which means that the camera's point of view — what the audience sees in the headset — travels uninterrupted from start to finish, mimicking the way that we experience the world. Making a film with no edits, Jensen explained, meant that all the movements of the actors and the camera had to be carefully choreographed and coordinated at every step, with movements linked to actions that would advance Ewa's story.

"How do we acknowledge the audience's presence in the film, and how do we use that for telling the story? This is something we're really interested in," Damsbo said. And with VR, filmmakers can begin to imagine an active, participatory role for audience members within their movies, Damsbo told Live Science.

VR gets social

It might seem that wearing VR headsets in a theater would isolate viewers from one another, and may reduce the shared enjoyment of a movie, but Jensen emphatically disagrees.

"If that were true, we'd say books were an anti-social medium," he said. "VR has the power that any good experience has — right after you have it, you want to share it."

Another Makropol VR film shown at Cannes, "The Doghouse," did exactly that. It offered a group of five viewers the chance to not only participate in a communal VR experience — a film about a family sharing a meal — but also to discuss it after the movie ended and see how their perceptions of the same story differed, depending on whose role they were playing.

SKAMMEKROGEN // THE DOGHOUSE - interview with the artists on Vimeo.

"We wanted to say, there isn't really one truth about a story — about this family dinner — there are five truths," Damsbo said. "And each one is just as true."

Talking about the film enabled participants to appreciate how VR allowed each of them to experience a very different narrative, he added. [Photos: Virtual Reality Puts Adults in a Child's World]

"A new language is being born"

Some established members of the Hollywood community are ready and willing to explore what VR technology can do. Michael Bay, director of the blockbuster "Transformers" movies, is embracing VR. He recently announced a partnership with the production company The Rogue Initiative to create VR experiences that include highly dynamic action sequences — a trademark of Bay's movies — within an immersive environment.

And at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, a roster of VR short films — live action and animated — which included Makropol's "Ewa" and "The Doghouse," were presented at a special pavilion. Festival officials even included a cardboard VR headset in the event's official "swag bag" giveaway.

However, certain moviemakers have expressed skepticism about VR's effectiveness for telling stories.

At Cannes, director Steven Spielberg suggested that VR might offer audiences too many choices, which could lead them to "forget the story" that the writer and director imagined.

But perhaps allowing a viewer to choose among several stories means that the director's role is more important than ever, Jensen suggested.

"I can still control my audience," Jensen told Live Science. "But now I have to make a game with them, where I try to persuade them to find the story — to find my story," he added.

"The medium is changing, aesthetics are changing and a new language is being born. We can only embrace the art of this new language," Jensen said.

(Looking for a VR headset? Our sister site Tom's Guide put together a great primer on the best ones on the market right now: The Best VR Headsets.)

Original article on Live Science.