EXPLORE A WORLD OF WONDERS AND CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES AROUND THE WORLD
Currently featuring close to 100 unique locations to experience – like you’re actually there, able to walk around and explore at you own pace. Expertly captured, meticulously produced, curated and created using the highest quality technology.
DOWNLOAD THE VIRTUAL REALITY APP HERE
Breathtaking! I love to travel and find this beautiful app the next best thing to being there in person. Thank you for creating an incredible app for those of us who love nature, love to travel and explore.
I want to say that even after all these years, I keep coming back to Blueplanet VR. Truly one of the greatest VR apps ever, thank you so much for making it.
Amazing. This is hang gliding over a glacier, walking through ruins, caves and seeing the most beautiful 4,700+ year old bristlecone pine tree. I loved this experience!
I especially loved being able to walk around the Grand Canyon in VR, it was the most realistic VR experience I’ve ever had.
As a fan of Native American rock art and Puebloan culture, this app blew my mind. I’m amazed every time I use it – being able to visit these fantastic locations at will is sheer magic!
EXPLORE A WORLD
OF WONDERS AND CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES AROUND THE WORLD
Currently featuring close to 100 unique locations to experience – like you’re actually there, able to walk around and explore at you own pace. Expertly captured, meticulously produced, curated and created using the highest quality technology.
Breathtaking! I love to travel and find this beautiful app the next best thing to being there in person. Thank you for creating an incredible app for those of us who love nature, love to travel and explore.
Amazing. This is hang gliding over a glacier, walking through ruins, caves and seeing the most beautiful 4,700+ year old bristlecone pine tree. I loved this experience!
AVAILABLE ON
MAJOR UPDATE
OUT NOW
40 NEW LOCATIONS
4 EXPANSION PACKS
IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE
The coming Blueplanet VR Explore 2.0 update is truly massive!
Two years in the making, it features 40 new experiences of incredible scope and variety – bringing the total number of locations to explore close to 100 – and use experience improvements across the board.
From incredible engineering feats, sacred temples in Indonesia, unique cultural heritage, to a fantastic array of astounding natural wonders from stunning locations found across the southwestern US, Blueplanet VR Explore enables you to explore as if you were actually there.
LOOT
EXHIBITION + IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
EXHIBITION +
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
BERLIN • THE HAGUE • RENNES
SEPTEMBER 14 - JANUARY 7
Guest curated and directed by Jongsma + O’Neill, Loot: 10 stories uses next-generation storytelling techniques to explore the topic of looted art and restitution in an innovative exhibition featuring original objects, physical and digital replicas, and film and virtual reality experiences, immersing visitors in the compelling stories of looted art from three periods in history: art looted in the colonial period, art looted by French in 1795 and art stolen from its Jewish owners by the Nazis. Blueplanet VR provided all central photogrammetry and digital set design for the VR experiences.
Ten case studies will explore the past and future of objects in the collections of the Mauritshuis, three Berlin museums (Ethnologisches Museum, Stadtmuseum and Gipsformerei), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Rennes, France). Loot opens at the Mauritshuis in den Haag in September 2023 before moving to the Humboldt Forum in Berlin in 2024.
Mountainfilm hosted a range of special events and featured artists for its 45th festival weekend, May 26-29. On Friday, May 26, Mountainfilm partnered with Telluride Arts for an intriguing and inspiring Art Walk from 4 to 7 p.m. at galleries around town.
In a collaboration with the Ah-Haa School for the Arts, artist Eric Hanson hosted the Blueplanet VR Immersive Experience with an interactive exhibition that immersed visitors in the largest historic research program in the 4 Corners Region - The ONWARD Project offered visitors a rare chance to explore a virtual retelling of the American West, recreating storylines from the historic Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition.
The project gives voice to the people impacted by the expedition, the communities culturally related to the land, and the original inhabitants of ancient Puebloan sites.
PREMIERE
THE MOGAO CAVES IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
The premiere of the immersive Mogao Caves film experience was screened in conjunction with famed composer Tan Dun’s performance of his work “Buddha Passion” at the Seattle Symphony’s Benroyal Hall in November 2023, a work inspired by the amazing Mogao Caves - a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A stunning success, the immersive multimedia experience was created using cutting-edge technology to transport the audience to a journey through the caves, featuring stunning visuals, soundscapes and narration bringing the ancient buddist art, culture and the caves to life.
By utilizing a mix of extremely high-resolution 16K imagery, 3D visualization, photogrammertry and sound to create large scale immersive environments, Mogao Caves – An Immersive Experience featured narration provided by world-renowned experts of Buddhist art and history.
PLACES FOR YOUR SOUL
LANDSCAPES FOR YOUR MIND
PLACES FOR YOUR SOUL
LANDSCAPES FOR YOUR MIND
SACRED WONDERS OF THE EARTH
THE WILD
THE UNREACHABLE
EXPERIENCE REMARKABLE LOCATIONS
NOW FEATURING CLOSE TO 100 UNIQUE LOCATIONS
Highlighting sacred and fragile locations of cultural heritage and natural beauty, Blueplanet VR Explore is continuously updated with curated content of the highest quality — places you will never see elsewhere.
FREEDOM TO MOVE AROUND AND EXPLORE
The virtual reality experiences in Blueplanet VR Explore are captured in volumetric 3D in great detail and accuracy, using advanced photogrammetric techniques.
The scenes in Blueplanet VR Explore look and feel like these places do in real life, and enables you to freely move around to enjoy and explore these remarkable, fragile, and priceless environments.
OUR MISSION
OUR MISSION
EXPERIENCE AND EXPLORE
Our mission is to enable people around the world to experience and explore the beauty of nature and of sacred sites of exceptional cultural heritage – often inaccessible or remote locations – by presenting them in high quality virtual reality, with full 6DOF (six degrees of freedom) of movement.
WE TAKE YOU THERE
BLUEPLANET VR was formed because we want to take you there – as if you were actually there – and share our deep commitment to honoring and preserving these magnificent, fragile locations, share the peace and tranquility they offer, and inspire people around the world to take action to save our beautiful, blue planet.
A DEEPER CONNECTION
Led by Blueplanet VR founder Eric Hanson (former leading VFX Technical Director at Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, Dream Quest Images and Walt Disney Feature Animation), we’re a multiple award-winning, cross-disciplinary team of Virtual Reality and VFX specialists and producers, world explorers, outdoors enthusiasts and historians, who share a goal to provide long-lasting, rewarding experiences which foster a deeper connection to the land and the Earth – providing both an emotional connection and an educational experience.
RESPECT AND PROTECT
We want to show you often fragile or unknown wonders of the world, inspire both awe and hope, and help engage people to recognize the need to respect and protect these treasures.
Concern for the environment often comes from direct experience – and being as close as we can get to experiencing a sense of actually being there, we believe that 6DOF VR can play a unique role.
Welcome to Blueplanet VR – enjoy your journeys, and let us know what you think!
SELECTED PRESS
DISCOVERING UNIQUE WORLD LOCATIONS
“BluePlanet VR uses RealityCapture to create over 50 photogrammetric experiences of unique and powerful scenic and cultural heritage locations worldwide. Walk around Borobudur Temple in Indonesia, admire the majestic Bears Ears National Monument, or have gliding flight experiences over spectacular terrains”.
Read Capturing Reality article here.
FULL FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
“With a high level of photogrammetry execution and art direction, BPVR offers the viewer a strong sense of presence and open exploration within these remarkable locations.
Real immersion lets me stand life-sized next to a wall or doorway, and even walk around an object and look at it from all sides. There are a number of experiences that immerse you in a given location, but few with as much variety as Blueplanet VR.”
Read VR Voyaging article here
Björk’s retrospective Exhibition “Black Lake“ at MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art in New York City was a international success and was featured in all major magazine, newpapers and Tv channels and radio as well as film festivals.
Learn more about the exhibition here
An artistic partnership with Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and Navajo artist Bert Benally resulted in the TIME project, Pull of the Moon, a biennial exhibition co-organized by New Mexico Arts and the Navajo Nation Museum.
Read Artnet News article here
DIGITAL EXPLORER CREATES IMMERSIVE CONTENT FROM THE WORLD’S MOST STUNNING LOCATIONS
Think of a remote, forbidding, awe-inspiring terrain. Iceland’s glaciers. The Himalayas. The Mojave Desert. Easter Island. Eric Hanson has been there.
Hanson, a faculty member in the John C. Hench Division of Animation and Digital Arts at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, travels to rugged, jaw-dropping destinations and captures them with cameras, laser scanners, camera drones and helicopters.
Read more here
HIGHLIGHTING SACRED AND FRAGILE LOCATIONS OF NATURAL BEAUTY AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
Blueplanet VR Explore is a collection of remarkable places across the world. The scenes look and feel like they do in real life, and enable you to freely move around to enjoy and explore these remarkable, fragile, and priceless environments.
Read TravelMag article here
PROTECTING OUR PLANET
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
We are dedicated to exploring, sharing, and finding ways to help protect our fragile Earth and unique cultural heritage.
We financially support a range of dedicated partners and organizations aimed at preserving important cultural heritage sites and contributing to the conservation of public lands.
PROTECTING OUR PLANET
AND CULTURAL HERITAGE
We are dedicated to exploring, sharing, and finding ways to help protect our fragile Earth and unique cultural heritage.
We financially support a range of dedicated partners and organizations aimed at preserving important cultural heritage sites and contributing to the conservation of public lands.
FRIENDS OF BLUEPLANET
Would you like to engage and learn more about Blueplanet VR activities, exhibitions, special events, lectures, advanced immersive media workshops, and guided tours to unique locations?
As a member you’ll be the first to know, and you’ll also get VIP invitations and special offers for limited edition art prints and exclusive excursions and events.
Join Friends of Blueplanet!
Do you have suggestions for places of special natural beauty or cultural significance that you would like see featured in Blue Planet VR Explore?
We’d love to hear from you.
FRIENDS OF BLUEPLANET
Would you like to engage and learn more about Blueplanet VR activities, exhibitions, special events, lectures, advanced immersive media workshops, and guided tours to unique locations?
As a member you’ll be the first to know, and you’ll also get VIP invitations and special offers for limited edition art prints and exclusive excursions and events.
Join Friends of Blueplanet!
Do you have suggestions for places of special natural beauty or cultural significance that you would like see featured in Blue Planet VR Explore?
We’d love to hear from you.
BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE APP FAQ
WHERE CAN I BUY BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE?
Blueplanet VR is available as a tethered VR app on Steam VR, and as a standalone app on the Meta Quest store. More platforms for distribution are planned.
WHICH HEADSETS CAN I USE TO EXPERIENCE BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE?
For tethered VR, we support the Vive and Index headsets using Steam VR. For standalone, we support the Meta Quest 1,2, and Pro models.
IS THERE A FREE VERSION OF BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE THAT I CAN TRY OUT BEFORE I BUY IT?
There is a free demo on Steam which contains 4 sample scenes, and on Meta Quest, we allow a 15 min trial for the entire app.
HOW MUCH FREE SPACE DO I NEED ON MY HEADSET OR COMPUTER TO BE ABLE TO USE BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE?
Photogrammetry consumes a fair amount of storage due to the extensive detail. As such, the app requires around 18 GB of storage, with additional space required for expansion packs.
HOW MUCH CONTENT DOES BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE COME WITH?
The current version offers 50 discrete locations among 40 destinations, with additional 40 experiences split acoss 4 expansion packs.
CAN I BUY ADDITIONAL CONTENT FOR BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE?
Yes. This year we have released 4 expansion packs, each featuring 10 additional scenes for a nominal cost – with moe content to follow.
IS BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE STILL BEING DEVELOPED AND SUPPORTED?
Yes, very much so. We have just released a major upgrade (2.0) almost doubling the content, and there are related experiential applications in development which will be announced at a future date.
HOW ARE THE SCENES IN BLUEPLANET VR EXPLORE MADE?
The locations in Blueplanet VR are constructed using photogrammetry, a computationally intensive process that relies on capturing hundreds or often thousands of still images, which are used to create a digital replica of the location by employing advanced algorithms. The geometry and surface features are precisely accurate to the real word, with no artistic liberties being taken of the location.
WHAT DOES 6DOF MEAN?
6DOF (six degrees of freedom) is the most robust and compelling form of VR at present, and simply means one can roam freely in the captured region of the space. Most importantly, it provides the strongest sense of presence to the view, far more than 360 degree panoramic films, where the viewer is confined to a single viewpoint, unable to move around.
I HAVE ANOTHER QUESTION, OR WANT TO PROVIDE FEEDBACK OR SUGGESTIONS. HOW DO I CONTACT BLUEPLANET VR?
Please feel free to contact us.
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