VR Austria Reviews

A collection of 360d videos captured at a number of locations. Each video is around 10 seconds long and plays in a loop. Interactivity consists in choosing which location to visit next. The developer has made changes (improvements) to the product since its release, these improvements include the addition of a map for choosing between locations. If this developer released a bunch of other similarly priced products - either of select places in Austria in depth, or of other countries/locations - then they would be instabuys for me. ----- I was happy to pay ~£2 (its full price in GBP) for this product and think it is a very fair price. I am slightly mystified (at the time of posting this) that the only other user reviews for this product are negative - what were you expecting for £2? The content of the product is clearly set out on the store page. There are no descriptions and/or lengthy narrative or written accounts of the areas being shown, which is understandable. If you are manufacturing a tourism product which is intended for consumption by a foreign audience, most of whom speak a different language, then good luck writing/speaking a ton of content (descriptions or whatever) then localising it into multiple languages (e.g. the member countries of the European Union alone have 24 different official languages). The video quality here is good and is of the same quality as any other production-level 360d videos. 360d video does not have the same level of fidelity as flat video in the same way that VR content does not have the same level of fidelity as flat content.

This experience is pretty neat for a short period of time. 4k is still too low of resolution for VR video. You need 12k for it to be any short of clear. Nevertheless, the locations around the city are so cool and full of life, even if for only 10 seconds each, that I don't feel bad about spending $3. It was fun.

I'm getting really sick of developers rushing to release VR content that is just not ready! This experience has so much potential as a nice little VR presence based experience but it falls short. They have so many bugs to fix and it is obviously just released well before it's ready as a attempt to sell you on the concept of what they were aiming for in order to get money. SPEND MORE TIME ON DEVELOPMENT! Even if it was slightly more expensive, I would happily pay for this if it was polished and a simple clean, fun experience. Things that are broken: Almost all the video loops have no audio which completely breaks my engagement. There is no controller support so you have this annoying red dot in the center of your vision which is very disengaging. The points you look at to transition between environments seem to have absolutely no rationality behind there placement in the space. They are just scattered around, no indication for why they are floating where they are. This makes no sense. They also have no labels so you have to really guess which ones you have or haven't been to already. I'm not sure I even managed to see all the locations available. You can hide these points either and in almost all of these they are really annoying and break my immersion. Features the developers should consider adding: Vive controller support so I don’t need that annoying dot. Attach a map or navigation function to the controller so I can CLEARLY navigate the different environments and know which ones I have already visited and which ones I haven’t. Get rid of those annoying icons used to transition between environments or atleast have a button to hide them. FIX THE AUDIO. As mentioned above, the audio doesn’t work with almost all the environments.

- 4K pack does not work properly. Only black screen with symbols is visible. - It does NOT use the HTC Vive motion controllers. You have to LOOK at the symbols to change location. - No narration, information or guide whatsoever. - No audio - Very blurry. Compression artifacts are visible all the time.