Virtual Reality Spaceship Games
Millions have dreamed of going to space, and now virtual reality can make it possible. With standalone headsets like the Oculus Quest more affordable than ever, there’s never been a better time to blast off.
For the Meta Rift and Oculus Rift S, Emmy-nominated Mission: ISS puts you in orbit aboard the International Space Station for a realistic experience. Learn how astronauts maneuver in zero gravity, dock a ship, and fulfill countless other mission-critical tasks.
Experience Zero-G
While virtual reality isn’t as immersive as a spaceship, it can still provide some incredible experiences. For instance, the Zero-G Experience flies you in a commercial airliner on a series of ballistic trajectories that give you the sensation of weightlessness for half a minute at a time. It’s VR Spaceship a one-of-a-kind experience that costs a lot of money, but it’s a great way to get a taste of what astronauts go through in space.
While games are an important aspect of VR, there’s also a wealth of smaller “experiences” that let you do things that are impossible or impractical in real life. One of the best is Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, which lets you board the International Space Station for an up close look at life in space. It was filmed over two years and while it’s not interactive, it offers an astonishing view into the ISS that you can’t find anywhere else.
Another good choice is Weightless, a free game invented by Marta Rutkowska and brothers Wiktor and Fryderyk Rott from the WUST University in Krakow, Poland. It’s not as advanced as some of the other experiences here, but it gives you a feel for the motion of spaceships in virtual reality by letting you walk around their interiors and move by looking at pink way points to follow a path or escape a black hole.
Navigate a Realistic Milky Way Galaxy
As VR headsets become more affordable (and space-minded people continue to jump on the bandwagon), virtual reality experiences are allowing the public to see and experience the stars as never before. While a real space voyage is still the realm of a select few (based on skill sets, celebrity status, and bank balances), these experiences allow everyone to take flight and explore the cosmos from the comfort of their living rooms.
The app Discovering Space 2 is a great example of this trend of creating immersive space experiences that are accessible to the general population. This game allows you to navigate around the Solar System in a sci-fi ship with the help of a series of neon directives and your head movements. It’s a fun, easy-to-use experience that would be improved by the use of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (S.L.A.M), which allows the user’s headset to capture and display their physical environment using feature points.
Another immersive space experience is PULSAR: Lost Colony, which lets you play the role of an astronaut on board the International Space Station. While it follows the same formula as Artemis and Star Trek: Bridge Crew, PULSAR is unique in that its players can walk around the ship. This VR Motorcycle makes the experience more like the submarine game HMS Marulken than Artemis or Star Trek: Bridge Crew, which only allow you to stay seated in your bridge station.
Feel the Weight of Spaceships
The feeling of weightlessness is an important part of space travel, and VR games that replicate the experience are a great way to get there. While most of us won’t ever get the opportunity to step on board a real spaceship (it’s reserved for a select few based on skill sets, celebrity status and bank balances), virtual reality can at least give you a taste of what it’s like to blast off into the stars.
One of the best VR experiences to date is Space Explorers: The ISS Experience, available for Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S. This documentary series filmed on the ISS over the course of two years gives you an amazing insight into life in outer space. Although not interactive, you can jump back and forth through each of the half-an-hour episodes to get an inside look at everything that goes on.
You can also get a more hands-on feel of what it’s like to be aboard a spaceship by playing Mission: ISS, which is an in-app purchase for Oculus Rift 2 and Oculus Quest 2. The game allows you to use handholds on the wall of the International Space Station to fling yourself down hallways or through modules. While the interactivity is fairly limited, it’s a lot of fun. The app even has a brief section where you can take a spacewalk, which doesn’t feel quite as authentic as in other apps like Artemis or Star Trek: Bridge Crew but is still a good look at what it’s actually like to spend time on the ISS.
Enjoy the Classic Spaceship Arcade Game
Asteroids is a fun twist on the classic arcade game that takes advantage of VR to add an extra dimension to the experience. Players will be able to fly their spaceship around the cosmos and destroy asteroids, just like they would in real life. The game also features a unique gameplay style, which will force players to use both agility and logical thinking.
Another interesting take on the virtual reality space experience is Mission: ISS. This app is actually more of an educational tool than a game, but it looks really cool and allows you to experience the ISS in great detail. You can explore the entire station and even fling yourself down its hallways and modules. It’s a really cool experience and it is available on the Oculus Store.
If you want something more interactive, there’s PULSAR: Lost Colony. This game is similar to Artemis in that you are a crew member on a ship. However, unlike Artemis and Star Trek: Bridge Crew, PULSAR lets you walk around your ship and extend it into the galaxy.
Lastly, there’s Sketchfab, which isn’t really an actual app but a way to access scanned models in a headset. It’s a little bit like flickr for VR and it contains a huge variety of models, including several space-related ones. Among those is a model of the Apollo 11 command module and the space shuttle Discovery.