There is nothing like VR Quest on the market today! This isn’t a marketing claim that a company might make to promote a new product that hasn’t fully been tested. VR Quest has the benefit of a decade and a half of development, improvement, testing, consumer feedback and technological advancement. The software has been written from the ground up specifically for its purpose - allowing students to create virtual worlds that correspond to the topics they are studying in the classroom.
The list of compatible hardware systems is growing. VR Quest is compatible with Windows Mixed Reality and has basic support for Oculus Quest via Side-Loading.
The features include an extensive list that makes it feel like you’re working with a mature, fully developed engine from a future time. The simplicity of the interface is deceptive in the strikingly beautiful and detailed VR Worlds you can create. And its quick! Within literally 10 minutes of creating a level, you can be walking around in a detailed virtual environment with characters and interactive objects. Yet this can be done by students in a classroom or at home with little training, freeing up the creator to use their imagination instead of having to constantly study programming techniques and testing code.
Here’s an abbreviated list of features…
- Social VR - After you create a level, invite your friends to experience your level with you. This allows collaborative creation and feedback by teams that may be spread over sites around the world.
- Over 4000 objects - One of the biggest problems of 3D engines is the limitation of selectable objects. VR Quest comes with a library of over 4000 objects which includes buildings, objects, effects, markers and animated characters.
- Pre-defined scripts - Adding a behaviour script function to an object or character is as easy as selecting the script from a drop-down menu. VR Quest automatically reconfigures itself based on the script and presents the user with new properties controls where adjustments can easily be made. There are many scripts that add interactivity to your VR world.
- Creating Characters - The Character Creator is a brilliant avatar generator that lets the user select from a number of variables, defining what the character looks like and what clothing/accessories he/she is wearing. The Character Creator covers a wide range of nationalities, eras and ages so it’s easy to generate a person from Roman times to a modern businessman or woman.
- Terrain and Environmental Generator - The new terrain creator is easy to use and allows the user to create mountains or rivers and streams. A full selection of plants can be added, along with the live painting of floor textures that enhance a scene. The environmental controls can change the world from a summer day to a frozen tundra in a click. The vegetation painter allows the user to quickly define an area where procedural vegetation can be placed. Once this is done, it can be adjusted by a variety of types, density and scale.
- Speech and Audio - The characters come with a built-in speech synthesizer. Just type in what you want them to say and they will say it! The characters will also lip-synch to the voice. You can also record your own voice and the character will speak it back to you with full lip synch. Audio and ambiance zones add easily incorporated sound effects, music and narration.
- Video and Pictures - Video and image zones allow the creator to place still pictures at locations the user might trigger, as well as video clips in the popular MP4 format.
- Effects - Great environmental effects, like snow and rain, add realism to the scene. There is also a general fog, vignette and many other effects that can be adjusted while in the virtual scene.
- Lighting - Spot and point lights are available with adjustable colors.
- Import and Export - 3D models in the popular .FBX and .X formats can be imported. Games can be saved as standalone EXE files for playback on Windows-based computer systems. The Oculus Quest platform can load levels using a sideloading option, saving the level to the cloud - then use your VR headset to access it.
VR Quest is changing and upgrading all the time! The latest version in schools is leaps and bounds above where it started, and it will continue to improve and offer more and more features.
Virtual Reality will change education; allowing students to create virtual worlds that correspond to the topics they were studying in the classroom and VR Quest is at the forefront of the technology to achieve this.