Jaunt lets you watch VR movies on the PlayStation VR

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Jaunt has built a library of cinematic virtual reality films, and now you’ll be able to watch them in your living room on the PlayStation VR headset.

The Jaunt VR App is debuting today on the PSVR, which went on sale in October. The movie-like content on Jaunt puts you in the middle of a film so that you can feel more immersed in a place as you watch the action unfold in any direction that you gaze. The 360-experience is one kind of non-game content that is proving popular with VR fans.

The PSVR will sell an estimated 750,000 units in 2016, according to market researcher SuperData Research. Hardcore gamers will be the primary buyers on the PlayStation 4, which has sold more than 50 million units to date. But if the PSVR is to reach wider audiences, the non-gaming content will become a lot more important. And that’s where Jaunt comes in.

Jaunt has more than 150 high-quality, award winning, immersive VR experiences that span travel, sports, music, film, horror, and more. You can download them on a PS4 now.

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For users with high-bandwidth internet connections, Jaunt for PSVR offers the same detailed video resolution and smooth low-latency head-tracking as Jaunt for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The user-friendly design of the PS VR headset, combined with the highly regarded cinematic content of Jaunt, provides consumers with a comfortable experience that enables immersion and engagement for longer periods of time.

Jaunt has lots of VR movies and 360-degree experiences available to watch via VR headsets.

Above: Jaunt has lots of VR movies and 360-degree experiences available to watch via VR headsets.

“We’re thrilled to introduce our dynamic list of immersive VR experiences to users on a platform that is quickly evolving to be more than a gaming console,” said George Kliavkoff, president and CEO of Jaunt, in a statement. “We’re committed to entertaining our users, wherever they may be. And the Jaunt VR App for PS VR not only brings hours of cinematic VR content to viewers worldwide, but also ensures that Jaunt continues to be available on every major consumer VR platform available.”

The Jaunt VR App, including all content released to date, is available on PSVR, iOS, Android, Gear VR, Google Daydream, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and major desktop browsers.

Jaunt’s investors include The Walt Disney Company, Evolution Media Partners, China Media Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Google Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Axel Springer, ProSiebenSat.1 SE, The Madison Square Garden Company, Peter Gotcher, Blake Krikorian, and Sky (corporate.sky.com).

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Verizon buys Jaunt's AR and VR technology

Verizon has reportedly bought "all" of jaunt's tech, but not the company itself..

With two of its co-founders out of the picture, one-time VR content startup Jaunt is selling many of its assets. On Monday, the company announced a sale to Verizon (Engadget's parent company). While financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed, Jaunt says the carrier is acquiring its software and technology . In a statement to The Verge , a spokesperson for Jaunt clarified that the company had sold "all" of its tech to Verizon, but didn't note whether the startup would continue to operate as a separate entity. We've reached out for additional information.

Prior to when it moved to focus on augmented reality tech in 2018 , Jaunt had been one of the more visible independent companies working in virtual reality. It collaborated with a variety of consumer brands to help them create virtual reality content -- meaning you've likely tried one of the company's VR experiences, even if you not familiar with the name. It also had its own app on Oculus, Vive, PlayStation VR , as well as both iOS and Android.

Today's deal caps off a period of uncertainty for Jaunt. Between 2015 and 2016, the company raised $65 million from Disney and saw then CEO Jens Christensen leave to "move on to his next adventure." This past December, Christensen's replacement, co-founder Arthur van Hoff, also left the startup. In April, he turned up at Apple as a senior architect on an unnamed team.

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jaunt vr

After raising $100 million, virtual reality content startup Jaunt has been in a precarious position for a few years now. It seems like the saga has finally come to a close as the startup announced that Verizon has purchased the company’s technology.

The studio rode the wave of VR hype following Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, but after years of trying to find a business in immersive entertainment, spanning software and camera hardware, the company has spent its past year trying to sell off its VR assets while pursuing a business focused on augmented reality and what it calls the “distribution of volumetric video of humans.”

A deal with Spinview Global to purchase the company’s VR tech that was reported last year never happened, a spokesperson tells TechCrunch. Verizon is walking away with Jaunt’s technology assets here, which is inclusive of their VR tech and their newer AR efforts. It doesn’t sound like any employees are coming onboard as part of the transition, but there will be some Jaunt folks helping to bring the tech onboard for a brief period.

The company’s spokesperson opted not to comment when asked whether the startup was winding down following the deal.

Why does Verizon want these assets? Verizon Media (of which TechCrunch is apart of) already has some assets in the VR space, including the virtual reality content studio RYOT, which has been playing around with 360 content and general AR/VR content. The company’s Envrnmnt arm is basically focusing on making AR and VR apps run more efficiently on mobile, which is something Jaunt has had to be mindful of as they’ve tried to focus on broadcasters that need to deal with bandwidth strains.

We don’t have a price tag on the deal, but the startup raised $100 million from investors, including GV and Disney. In October of last year, the company laid off a “significant portion of its employees” and by the end of the year they were auctioning off office furniture.

Disney-backed Jaunt lays off ‘significant’ number of employees as it moves away from VR

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Apple Has Hired Jaunt VR’s Founder Arthur van Hoff

By Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers

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Jaunt VR's Founding CTO Arthur van Hoff Just Started at Apple

Apple just made a significant hire in the virtual reality (VR) space: The iPhone maker has hired serial entrepreneur Arthur van Hoff, a founding executive of the Disney-backed VR startup Jaunt . Van Hoff started at Apple in a senior architect position this month, according to his Linkedin profile.

There’s no word on whether he will work on Apple’s still-unannounced augmented reality (AR) headset, or on other projects, but chances are he might be working with some of his old colleagues: Apple has hired a number of former Jaunt engineers over the past few years to work on AR, computer vision, camera systems and other projects. Van Hoff and Apple didn’t immediately respond to Variety’s requests for comment.

Van Hoff founded Jaunt in 2013, and served as its CTO until late 2018. He also briefly stepped into the CEO role in 2016. Jaunt had been one of the pioneering drivers of cinematic virtual reality; the company developed its own high-end camera for VR capture, and also a distribution platform for VR content. In 2015, it raised some $65 million in funding from Disney and others.

However, the company struggled to reconcile its aggressive plans, and the funding it had raised to support them, with the realities of a lagging VR market. In October, it laid off a significant portion of its staff, and refocused on mixed reality capture.

Before founding Jaunt, van Hoff had served as CTO at Flipboard, software and services CTO at Dell and principal engineer at Tivo during various stages of his career. More recently, he had been advising a number of startups, including VR camera maker Lucid and internet of things startup Ayla Networks. However, he ended those roles in March before starting at Apple, according to his Linkedin profile.

Apple has been working on an augmented reality headset with VR capabilities for some time. The company still hasn’t officially revealed its plans for this space, but a recent report suggested that it may start to manufacture the device as early as Q4 of this year .

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Who will be the George Lucas of VR? Film schools just started teaching it

Keith Nelson Jr.

Special effects pioneer Dennis Muren proclaimed the 1980 classic  Star Wars:   The Empire Strikes Back  the hardest film he ever worked on, because “we had to train people to do work that we barely knew how to do.”

That’s a conundrum creative types face: How do you do what’s never been done? Star Wars  creator George Lucas and the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) team Muren worked with on the film ended up making their own machines and their own programming. Along the way they wrote the rules of special effects — rules that have been the DNA of almost every blockbuster film over the last forty years.

That’s why VR companies like Jaunt and Oculus are taking virtual reality to New York University and the University of Southern California, starting Master Classes and creating workshops: to write the rules of this new revolution in filmmaking.

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“The concept of a VR lab started last summer, as we began planning on how we could work together,” Jaunt Studios President Cliff Plumer told me in an exclusive interview with Digital Trends. The Jaunt Cinematic Virtual Reality Lab , which will launch later this year, is the product of a rich history between USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), Lucasfilm , and its founder, alumni George Lucas. “A number of us at Jaunt who came from Lucasfilm have worked with Dean Daley and the USC Cinema School for many years,” Plumer said. The lab will be a three-year incubator at SCA where students can learn how to film for virtual reality, and try it out for themselves.

  • 1. Jaunt Studios President Cliff Plumer
  • 2. Yelena_Rachitsky, Creative Producer Head of Education at Oculus Story Studio
  • 3. Jonathan Weinstein, professor at the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & Television Institute at NYU

Oculus too will reach out to students, recently announcing plans to host a number of workshops including a Master Class event at NYU. According to Jonathan Weinstein, Professor at the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film & Television at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the partnership began when Oculus approached Tisch Chairman Joe Pichirallo in November about “setting something up so they can expose our filmmakers to their technology.” The class will be made up of 60 undergraduate students: 30 from the game design program and 30 from the film department. Oculus is also in talks to begin a similar Master Class at SCA, said Yelena Rachitsky, Creative Producer/Head of Education at Oculus Story Studio . The Oculus workshops at NYU and SCA will kick off February 13, with masterclasses to begin in April.

Digital Trends spoke with Plumer, Rachitsky, and Weinstein about the challenges of teaching a completely foreign format and why it’s imperative to begin early. The paths they followed may have been different, but both VR companies share the same motivation: to expand virtual reality’s reach by teaching it. That’s easier said than filmed.

Class is in session

If you’re envisioning rows of students strapped into VR headsets like a Morpheus-taught class in The Matrix , then the reality of teaching virtual reality may seem somewhat mundane. As part of the NYU and Oculus Master Classes, Oculus will bring in guest speakers to explain to the budding filmmakers how they made their own VR films. The company will set up four Oculus Rift headsets in the space as well, so students can experiment with the tech. Weinstein, instrumental in forming the class, offered this general rundown of class time:

“The structure of it will explore the technology in terms of viewership but also explore how to film, shoot, and light for a virtual story.”

The Jaunt Cinematic Virtual Reality Lab sounds more collaborative. It will be a three-year incubator at SCA where the company plans to “collaborate with the staff on introducing Jaunt technology and production techniques to the students.” The goal is to develop techniques, rules, and best practices that the film industry at large can adopt. Jaunt did not reveal the names of guest speakers, but Plumer did imply it would involve members of the University of Southern California faculty that Jaunt has worked with in the past on feature films.

Mike Woods, founder of White Rabbit VR (his LinkedIn profile reads “Game changing shizzle, coming soon”), and Christine Cattano, producer at creative studio Framestore , are possible guest speakers at Oculus’s NYU class, Weinstein said. Cattano worked on the  Game of Thrones  Ascend the Wall  VR experience, in which people climb a 700-foot tall virtual wall from the HBO hit series.

The hardware

The team at ILM learned quickly that they would have to create new machines to achieve some lofty ideas. A visual computer came from that realization that could mix computer-generated images with live action sequences. That computer sprouted a production company that bore the same name: Pixar.

Oculus came to a similar creative block on the company’s third film, the surrealistic  Dear Angelica .  Instead of illustrator Wesley Allsbrook drawing the film flat on a computer screen, Oculus created Quill, an “internal drawing tool, so [Allsbrook] can actually create the set in VR that is native to that space,” Rachitsky said. She did not specify whether NYU students would be able to use Quill, but Oculus’s guest speakers will likely shed light on one of its most revolutionary VR filmmaking tools. “There’s currently not a ‘right way’ to do things, and there are so many different kinds of projects,” says Rachitsky. “There’s so many different approaches [that] there’s not yet one way to do it.”

Meanwhile, Jaunt calls its Jaunt ONE camera “the first professional-grade stereographic cinematic VR camera built from the ground up” on the company’s official website . So loaning a number of these one-of-a-kind cameras to film students should be like dropping a kid in a Willy Wonka chocolate factory.

The future of VR

At this point in embryonic phase of virtual reality filmmaking’s life, the greatest success could be  simply if people are interested in using it. Weinstein said he measures success in experimental programs by student interest. “If we have a student population interested in learning the technology and wants to dive into it, I think we respond to that and give them access to that.”

It took 32 minutes for the 60 seats in the class to fill, he said.

Plumer did not specify what Jaunt or SCA would need to see from the partnership in order to continue it past its designated three years. But Plumer attests that USC is just the first foray into education for the virtual reality company. “Jaunt will continue to look for additional centers of education” to help promote virtual reality filmmaking, he told me.

Virtual reality filmmaking is even starting to interest the elite filmmakers in Hollywood. On a panel at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival titled “ Power of Story: The Art of Film ,” Christopher Nolan stated that he’s open to filming in virtual reality. He even compared VR’s relationship with traditional filmmaking to video games. “It’ll be its own medium. I never get asked anymore, ‘do you think video games will kill movies?’ 10 years ago I was asked that all the time. They’re two different mediums.”

Weinstein agrees with the Academy Award-winning director, claiming virtual reality could be “similar to the way 3D coexists or how some movies are released in multiple formats.” But practical integration of virtual reality with traditional theater-going? That’s what the students of virtual reality need to figure out. “We all could be experiencing those headsets as a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses that have a reflective inner screen, and they’re not cumbersome.”

With the home of LucasFilm entering the virtual reality realm, it may only be a matter of time before the George Lucas of virtual reality graduates.

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  • Virtual Reality

Keith Nelson Jr.

One of the biggest hurdles of using VR regularly is the setup time. Every time I wanted to use my VR headset, I would have to go through some infuriating setup steps, which included clearing playing space in my office, covering the glass cabinet to avoid Lighthouse tracker reflections, starting up SteamVR, and running any necessary updates for the game I wanted to play. Of course, when I was finished, I had to put it all away again. It became a chore, and resulted in me diving into the virtual worlds of SteamVR less than I wanted.

In an effort to change that, I went on a campaign of streamlining my VR setup to make it easier to get into and faster to get out of. The idea was to make virtual reality as easy to use as flopping down in my gaming chair for standard desktop gaming. After a few weeks of upgrades and adjustments, I'm happy to report that I've almost managed it.

An ergonomics expert specializing in XR has been working for years to create an entirely new SteamVR controller that is both modular and repairable, in an effort to solve multiple problems with current VR headsets and controllers made by Valve, HTC, and others.

A modular controller would make it possible to upgrade components over time or add accessories at a more affordable price than the cost of a completely separate controller. It's a clever idea to design for upgrades rather than try to fit components around an unforgiving, single-purpose device.

Including more variety of movement is important for everyone, but this is particularly critical for people like me, a tech worker that tends to spend a large amount of time behind a computer or fixed in place, interacting with the latest app on my phone.

VR is already good at inviting more movement, particularly when playing fast-action games. Having experienced this with games like Beat Saber and Until You Fall, which involve a large amount of arm movement, I was intrigued by the prospect of exercising with an app specifically designed for fitness, like Supernatural.

  • Virtual Reality /

Former VR film company Jaunt is giving up on VR to focus on augmented reality

By Adi Robertson , a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR, online platforms, and free expression. Adi has covered video games, biohacking, and more for The Verge since 2011.

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jaunt vr

Virtual reality video company Jaunt — which helped spur the early growth of VR video — is shifting its focus to augmented reality, winding down “a number” of its VR-related services, and laying off a “significant portion” of its staff.

In a Medium post entitled “The Future of Jaunt is AR,” Jaunt wrote that it would focus on developing technologies that could create augmented reality content at a large scale. “We will be winding down a number of VR products and content services in the coming weeks,” reads the post. “This unfortunately means that some of our valued and highly talented colleagues will be moving on ... These highly skilled individuals have contributed to our position as a leader in the immersive industry, and the decision to let them go was incredibly difficult.”

Jaunt told Variety in a statement that it was “restructuring the company, resulting in letting go of a significant portion of our staff.” The company declined to offer more details about how many staff members were laid off, or which VR products and services would be going dark. (Jaunt does say it will work with its existing clients to manage the transition and deliver on its responsibilities.)

Today’s news follows a couple of major changes at Jaunt. The company recently changed CEOs, promoting former business development VP Mitzi Reaugh in place of previous head George Kliavkoff, who moved to MGM Resorts International. Its September press release described Reaugh as a driving force behind the Jaunt XR Platform , a VR and AR distribution system. Jaunt also recently acquired Personify’s Teleport system, a software platform that captures and streams 3D augmented reality footage of objects or people.

Jaunt, which was founded in 2013, was behind many of the earliest 360-degree video productions, including one released by The Verge in 2016. It released a professional VR camera called the Jaunt One , as well as an app with an extensive library of VR videos, and it dabbled in major projects like Invisible , a VR miniseries directed by Doug Liman. Today, it makes sense for Jaunt to focus on augmented reality, a field that Facebook, Apple, Google, and others are all promoting. There’s also a fair amount of overlap between the fields — sometimes captured with the term “mixed reality” or “XR,” as the Jaunt service’s name suggests. But it also means that one of the original cinematic VR producers is apparently moving away from VR.

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The Wild Camera Rig That Could Finally Crack VR Filmmaking

The Neo Jaunt VR039s forthcoming camera for capturing 360degree 3D video.

For all the furor surrounding virtual reality, there are some fundamental elements still very much up in the air. Foremost among those is video: specifically how, exactly, we're going to be creating 360-degree, 3D video content that's immersive enough to rival the perfectly rendered CG environments we'll be seeing in gaming---and what technology will emerge for filmmakers to use to do it. The past few years have seen a pitched race to create the perfect video-capture solution, from taped-together GoPros to arrays of linked ultra-HD Red Dragon cameras.

Now, one of early frontrunners in VR video is offering its own solution to filmmakers. (Well, some filmmakers.)

This morning, Jaunt VR officially announced Neo, which it's calling "a series of professional-grade camera systems specifically designed for capturing fully-immersive, 360-degree cinematic VR experiences." Similar to other announced systems like Samsung's Project Beyond , the Neo is a rig of multiple high-resolution cameras inside a unified housing.

Jaunt's been working on the system since its inception in 2013, and producing content since last year; the Neo represents the fifth iteration of what they now consider a workable solution. (Disclosure: Conde Nast Publications, which owns WIRED, is one of Jaunt's content partners.) While its componentry has improved, and a new centralized monitoring system helps diagnose shot-scrapping failures, Jaunt co-founder and CTO Arthur van Hoff credits two very specific things for the Neo's market-readiness: large sensors and global shutter synchronization.

The former is due to VR's need for natural lighting (it's nearly impossible to capture 360 degrees of indoor space without exposing traditional lighting apparatus); the latter is to defeat one of VR video's bugaboos. "If the camera moves, or there's fast action as with sports," says van Hoff, "and the cameras aren't perfectly in sync, you'll have motion artifacts." Global shutter allows filmmakers to ensure that the footage they gather is optimally aligned, which helps prevent visible stitching in the resulting panoramic image.

The official announcement is unsurprisingly light on performance specs, though van Hoff claims that each of the more than 16 lenses (they're not yet saying exactly how many) is capable of delivering 8K resolution per eye---not that that matters in the forthcoming first crop of consumer VR devices, the displays of which won't feature resolution much higher than 2.5K.

The Neo range will consist of two models: one for indoor events like sports, then other for very-high-resolution outdoor shoots. They'll become available to Jaunt's content partners in August. As for pricing? According to van Hoff, it's "irrelevant"---it likely won't be available to consumers, and Jaunt will be leasing or renting the systems. Beyond that, there's a bit of professional secrecy; "we don't really want to reveal how much it costs us to build," van Hoff says, beyond the fact that it's less than an array of RED cameras.

For all his hedging, however, van Hoff does readily cop to one thing. "This is not the last camera that we're building," he says. "I'm absolutely sure of that."

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How does Jaunt VR work?

– With the Jaunt app, your Iphone becomes your personal VR portal. – All videos are available for free. – New experiences are frequently added, make sure to check back often. – Watch over WiFi.

Tips to watching VR: – Make sure you are on WiFi connection. – Select any available experience. Videos start playing automatically. – For best viewing make sure you have a headset for your phone. Need a headset, go to http://www.jauntvr.com/content/ to find out more. – Have a pair of headphones handy. – Tap the screen to play and pause a video. – Pinch the screen to switch modes. – Sit back, relax, and don’t forget to look around!

About Jaunt: Jaunt is the leading developer of immersive cinematic VR experiences. Employing 360 degree stereoscopic 3-D imagery with directional audio, Jaunt provides audiences with unparalleled access to premiere experiences in ways otherwise impossible. Whether ringside, courtside, in the front row or on stage, audiences are given a sense of ‘presence’ a feeling as if they are there in the flesh.

For more information go to http://jauntvr.com

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Stranger Things VR review: A beautiful but hollow trip

Stranger things vr has cool vibes but shallow gameplay, and it's not accessible unless you're a big fan of the show already..

Stranger Things VR promotional image showing Vecna and Eleven

Android Central Verdict

Stranger Things VR delivers exactly what it promises: It offers a new perspective on the beloved Netflix thriller for fans of the show, while leaving outsiders behind. It's a gorgeous, short spin on the show with some absurdly satisfying sound design.

Gorgeous visuals and environments

Spectacular sound design

Fun MR mode

Well-directed cutscenes

One-note gameplay

Unapproachable for newcomers

Why you can trust Android Central Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test .

Boasting some of the coolest graphics I've seen in a standalone VR game, Stranger Things VR delivers on the demonic, trippy experience you'd want from a horror-tinged experience set in the world of Stranger Things. Even as someone who's not a fan, there's a lot to love about this short jaunt into another world.

Being a sci-fi-loving member of Gen Z — the generation that inherited nostalgia for the 8-bit-laden, mall-going, synthy, Spielbergesque facsimile of the 80s that's been sold to Gen Z ever since our parents showed us Galaga, E.T., and Madonna despite not even being able to remember the turn of the millennia — it's surprising that I never got into Stranger Things. Netflix's blockbuster sci-fi drama was targeted at people my age when it first came out, but it came around just a bit too late. I was working my first job, learning to drive, and (most importantly) falling head-over-heels in love with video games. I had bigger fish to fry.

I wasn't sure if Stranger Things' jump into VR would hold up as a standalone game but it looked cool enough that I wanted to at least give it a shot, even just to see if it stands on its own merits. 

What I found was that its visuals and sound design enhance the otherwise simple mechanics to make this brief stint as a super-powered demon-child worthwhile. But it may still be a mixed bag for those who haven't watched an episode of the show.

What we liked...

You start in a lab, strapped to a chair. A big, blinding light obscures a mysterious man in a lab coat, who asks you to look within your mind and dive down the rabbit hole of your subconscious. The lab quickly fades as you start playing around with Henry's telekinetic abilities and get accustomed to Stranger Things VR's approachable controls.

This is where Stranger Things VR really wowed me; even simple stuff like pushing and pulling objects with telekinesis looks and feels so damn cool, thanks to the lighting and sound effects used to transmit the feeling of telekinesis that plenty of VR games ignore.

Instead of pursuing a realistic look, objects and environments in Stranger Things VR are all cel-shaded, allowing for more room for developer Tender Claws to play with what's satisfying in a game, rather than what's true to the show. 

Holding an object in front of you with your mind just to hear the low thrum that your powers manifest before crushing it with a quick, simple turn of the wrist feels so cool. That's all thanks to this game's top-notch presentation.

Both visual and audio effects do a lot of heavy lifting to spice up Stranger Things VR's largely uninventive mechanics and make even the most rote gameplay sequences more engaging. The cel-shaded style allows for much more experimentation with reality-bending effects and spectacularly realized environments that look good because they don't rely on high pixel density and high-resolution textures as much as they do on cool lighting effects, allowing for tight corridors to ooze spooky atmosphere. 

They also made the game's default, stick-based movement much more comfortable than usual, which is highly important because Stranger Things VR has you moving through a lot of tight, twisting corridors and smaller environments.

As you run around Henry's hellish mind palace, you fight handfuls of Demogorgon by using your telekinetic abilities to hurl anything and everything you can to kill them. After defeating the denizens of this alternate reality, you'll jump into their minds to experience something that pushes the story forward or references something from the show. These transitions and their environments are really cool. One minute, you're with your typical nuclear family; the next you're in a rotting living room riddled with sludgy tentacles. The whole thing's very trippy in the best possible way, even if what's happening isn't always super clear.

What we didn't like...

Stranger Things VR isn't very compelling from a mechanical standpoint. While its sound design and art style may enhance the feeling of pushing and pulling objects with your mind, it's nothing very new to a VR game. At a basic level, it executes these mechanics better than most VR games I've played thanks to the aforementioned polish, but there isn't enough variance or depth to how those mechanics are used like there is in other games.

It's also often very difficult to follow as a non-Stranger Things fan. Sure, there are plenty of individual scenes with cool direction and good writing and acting, but in not knowing the character and the lore, I lost the connective thread pulling each vignette together.

What we're mixed on...

Stranger Things VR also ships with a short mixed-reality mode as a bonus. Because most of it's set in the real world, it doesn't have the same visual draw as the base game. However, it does see you opening portals into Hawkins, Indiana in your living room which is a fun trick, even if it's nothing very new in the grand scheme of things. As soon as the novelty of seeing a diner through a hole in your wall wears thin, there's not much to see here beyond a few creatures flying around your living room.

You will eventually leave your four corners behind, but it doesn't result in anything especially interesting, especially compared to the main game. That said, its story doesn't seem as hinged on knowing what happens in the show and feels much more approachable as a newcomer. A detached character delivers brief, comical narration through a tape recorder, which adds a little flair that makes this especially short 30-ish minute experience worth checking out on its own, especially if you haven't tried out MR in other games yet.

Did it get me to check out the show?

Not really. As much as I wish I better understood what was happening here, there isn't enough happening outside of its story and presentation to bring me back in. No shade to all the Stranger Things fans out there, but based on what I could glean from the game's story (and a quick skim of the Fandom wiki), I'd need to watch all four seasons of this show to fully understand the context, which is a bit too big of an ask for me right now.

Should you buy it?

Maybe! At the end of the day, if you haven't watched Stranger Things, this game probably isn't for you. But if you like wandering cool environments and shutting your brain off to chuck around apples and suitcases as you fight off DnD-inspired enemies, you should definitely check this game out. 

That said, if you're already a fan of the show, there's no reason not to give it a shot. No, it's not one of the best games on Meta Quest , but while I can't speak to the quality of this game's story as compared to the show, I can say that its cutscenes are generally pretty fun at the very least. I just wish I had a better understanding of what's going on.

Image

Stranger Things VR

Stranger Things VR is one of the best-looking games I've played on my Meta Quest 2. It looks and sounds incredible and is sure to give any fan of the show a fun, short experience that's worth the price of admission.

Buy it on: Meta Quest

Charlie Wacholz

Charlie's a freelance contributor at Android Central from Milwaukee, WI.

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    Jaunt VR - Experience Cinematic Virtual Reality - Dear Valued Jaunt VR Customer, For over 2 years, Jaunt has published the Jaunt VR application for HTC Vive head mounted displays and many other immersive platforms / devices. An issue causing the app to crash on HTC Vive and Vive Pro devices has been reported to us and reproduced by our team. At this time, we have made the difficult decision to ...

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    Jaunt ONE (formerly known under code name 'NEO') is a professional-grade 360 camera system created by Jaunt VR, a cinematic VR company that has recently partnered with Google to become a ...

  7. Jaunt

    Jaunt is the leading XR solutions provider, helping partners produce and distribute the full spectrum of immersive content (virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality). Through its full ...

  8. Jaunt VR

    Jaunt VR - The Home of Immersive Content on Oculus Rift | Rift VR Games. Experience the widest array of premium cinematic virtual reality experiences with Jaunt's re-imagined fully immersive app.

  9. Jaunt's CEO on its $65M funding and the humanity ...

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  10. Jaunt VR on Oculus Rift

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  13. First Look: Jaunt's VR Camera Codenamed NEO

    Jaunt has announced the launch of a new professional grade VR camera series codenamed "NEO" that will enable the next generation of filmmakers to produce the highest quality VR experiences. NEO was built from the ground up and is Jaunt's 5th generation of camera systems. With advancements in key components from previous hardware designs, Jaunt states that they have elevated not only the ...

  14. Through You

    Subscribe to Jaunt for the latest immersive content: http://bit.ly/2fcNEX7Watch in VR on the Jaunt platform: http://bit.ly/2yNQf1zFilmmakers Lily Baldwin and...

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  23. Jaunt VR

    It delivers the best VR experience anywhere, anytime. How does Jaunt VR work? - With the Jaunt app, your Iphone becomes your personal VR portal. - All videos are available for free. - New experiences are frequently added, make sure to check back often. - Watch over WiFi. Tips to watching VR: - Make sure you are on WiFi connection.

  24. Stranger Things VR review: A beautiful but hollow trip

    Stranger Things VR also ships with a short mixed-reality mode as a bonus. Because most of it's set in the real world, it doesn't have the same visual draw as the base game.