Patent published on June 25, 2018

The Best VR Apps for Travel: Explore the World from Your Home

As VR is evolving, companies are using this technology for different purposes and one of them is: giving you a way to explore the world from home.

Nowadays, there are 360-degree contents which give a better visualization of a place than a normal photograph or video. The 360-degree photos and videos give you an introduction of a place from all directions. You can find 360-degree content on Facebook or Instagram, experiencing them as close as if you’re there in real life.

But if you compare, 360-degree contents are nowhere near to VR. Remember Mark Zuckerberg’s tone-deaf VR tour to devastated hurricane-struck Puerto Rico.

There are new, improved VR applications where you can get the experience more real, closer and clearer. These applications give you a virtual experience where you can “travel” around the world, visit the places that you would like to go, all that from your home.

The only thing you need to have is one good VR headset and an app. There are plenty of VR headsets on the market, from headsets that require PC or mobile phone to ones that don’t need it such as Oculus Go, and the best choice depends on what you like and what you are looking for.

Here is a list of the top 5 VR travel apps:

5. Boulevard – This application allows you to go anywhere, zoom in and out, type an address where you would like to go, etc. But despite just looking around and having a nice walk, you can also get a piece of textual information about the famous places you are looking at, expanding your knowledge about them, the same as if you had a tour with a guide.

4. Gala VR 360 – With this application, you have the opportunity to see the 3D photos of events and festivals that had happened around the world. Also, you can “visit” many museums via photos taken from professional photographers. Some of the content has an audio material that explains what you are looking at and gives you some interesting information or facts.

3. Tokyo in 360 degrees: #TRAVELCOMPAS | Lufthansa – If you go and visit the YouTube channel of Lufthansa, you can find many 360 degree videos from Tokyo, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Beijing. For these places, there is no better way of virtual travel than through this channel.

2. Google Earth VR – The famous Google app can travel you not only through the world, but also through space. You can start your journey from a small city to the endless space. You can go from the Colosseum in Rome to the Eiffel Tower, from top to bottom. The best part about this application is that you can make your visit in daytime or nighttime. Just point to the sky and you can manage the time. You can zoom in and out; see every detail that you like. Also, there are some recommended tours to the most attractive places in the world and you can “go” there in just a few seconds.

1. NASA – The cherry on the top. We all must agree that this is the most wonderful and interesting application because we all would like to go to space and travel that far, but the harsh reality is that almost none of us will go on such journey in our lifetime. So, NASA gives you the opportunity to go and visit Mars. You can find tons of 360-degree images and videos and see how walking on that planet would look like.

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