Getting kids excited about learning isn’t easy, especially when the little glowing rectangle in their pockets provides endless distractions. Enter Titanic VR, a new educational experience by Immersive VR Education that brings the sunken wreckage of the RMS Titanic to life once more.
Titanic VR was built from the ground-up for VR and was made using what the studio says were “comprehensive maps to create a realistic 3D model of the wreck site as well as motion capture, face-scanning technology and professional voice actors to immerse users in the story.” The studio worked with the BBC to obtain real life testimony from the survivors themselves, creating an even deeper opportunity for learning about the disaster.
For now, the experience features a storyline set in the near future that takes you to the wreckage as well as a sandbox mode for free exploration. There’s also bonus missions such as rescuing a lost Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), creating a photo mosaic, placing research equipment, and cleaning and preserving recovered artifacts. Since it’s currently in Early Access, there’s still more to come, including an animated 1912 experience being released later this year where players will witness historically accurate events through the eyes of a survivor.
Titanic VR was the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign created by studio founder David Whelan. Taking in over €57,000, the studio has built the educational experience for all major VR platforms including HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR. Support for Windows VR headsets is slated to come later this year.
“Increasingly, educators are realising that simulated learning can make a real difference in learning outcomes. With the improved availability of affordable hardware led by major internationals such as Apple, Samsung and Google, the VR/AR market will inevitably gain traction and eventually become an everyday technology,” said Whelan. “We are leading this revolution, utilising leading edge VR/AR technologies to enhance digital learning through our fully immersive social learning platform, Engage and our proprietary experiences.”
The team is also known for Apollo 11 VR, a similar dive into history not only lets you blast off with a Saturn V rocket and let you land and walk on the Moon, but also injects actual audio from the mission into the experience. According to Whelan, Apollo 11 VR has sold over 80,000 copies so far. Immersive VR Education hopes to replicate that success with the new Titanic VR experience.
You can download Titanic VR herePSN on Steam Early Access , which includes support for Vive and Rift. The PSVR version hasn’t appeared to hit yet, but we’ll update once it does.