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Review: Discovery VR app takes you to every corner of the world
Discovery VR is full of intense nature adventures you can take without ever leaving your home.
By Charline Jao
Pros: Free, Diverse content, good quality
Cons: More cute animals (you can never have enough cute animals)
Virtual reality is so often advertised as an escape from the world and a window into limitless possibilities, something that Discovery VR exemplifies in the many adventures it offers. On the app, you can view everything from the Puppy Bowl to a haunted house visit to the most extreme of nature excursions. It's available on the App Store, Google Play, Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Daydream, and the HTC Vive, and the quality of each video is mesmerizing.
Discovery VR app takes you anywhere you can imagine seeing on the globe, and even beyond.
Do you like sending your friends cute animal pictures? Up your game with a 360 video of puppies from "Pup's Eye View," truly the best use of this technology the world has ever seen. The Puppy Bowl videos are short and sweet, about two minutes long. "Pup's Eye View" give you a seat in the house that no audience seat or normal camera could ever properly capture. It's like all the joy of a dog park with none of the smell.
Several clips are also from Discovery channel shows, like Fear Thy Neighbor, a documentary series that invests feuds between neighbors. Even scarier than shark videos, the Investigation show takes you into social battles that sometimes escalate.
You can watch cute pandas as well as puppies on Discovery VR app.
Have you ever wanted to stare a panda in the face up close? Of course you have, they're adorable. What about scaling Everest or getting up close and personal with a tiger? Maybe less so, but Discovery VR takes you to these spaces without the added risk of death and exhaustion that accompanies the physical journey. These different adventures were great with Google Cardboard, so I can only imagine how sublime they look on a more expensive headset. There's also a fair amount of motion in some of these installments, however, so anyone who's more sensitive to nausea might want to be more selective about which videos they choose to watch.
Pandas in the wild in China on the Discovery VR app? of course.
In addition to the cuteness and mountain heights, the collection also includes videos like the United Nation's "Nothing But Nets" which provides a look into the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in Tanzania. The kind of curiously that VR can foster—curiosity about different people, animals, and the earth—is an important step to empathy and real life action. I don't think it's a huge jump to say falling in love with our planet is an important part of then working to preserve it, something I hope Discovery VR helps us with.
Discovery VR has dozens of nature shows and shorts you can watch on your smartphone.
-Charline Jao last reviewed the AR app, Night Terrors for GearBrain.
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