Review: Discovery VR app takes you to every corner of the world

By Charline Jao

Pros: Free, Diverse content, good quality

Cons: More cute animals (you can never have enough cute animals)

Virtual reality is so often advertised as an escape from the world and a window into limitless possibilities, something that Discovery VR exemplifies in the many adventures it offers. On the app, you can view everything from the Puppy Bowl to a haunted house visit to the most extreme of nature excursions. It's available on the App Store, Google Play, Gear VR, Oculus Rift, Daydream, and the HTC Vive, and the quality of each video is mesmerizing.

Do you like sending your friends cute animal pictures? Up your game with a 360 video of puppies from "Pup's Eye View," truly the best use of this technology the world has ever seen. The Puppy Bowl videos are short and sweet, about two minutes long. "Pup's Eye View" give you a seat in the house that no audience seat or normal camera could ever properly capture. It's like all the joy of a dog park with none of the smell.

Several clips are also from Discovery channel shows, like Fear Thy Neighbor, a documentary series that invests feuds between neighbors. Even scarier than shark videos, the Investigation show takes you into social battles that sometimes escalate.

Have you ever wanted to stare a panda in the face up close? Of course you have, they're adorable. What about scaling Everest or getting up close and personal with a tiger? Maybe less so, but Discovery VR takes you to these spaces without the added risk of death and exhaustion that accompanies the physical journey. These different adventures were great with Google Cardboard, so I can only imagine how sublime they look on a more expensive headset. There's also a fair amount of motion in some of these installments, however, so anyone who's more sensitive to nausea might want to be more selective about which videos they choose to watch.

In addition to the cuteness and mountain heights, the collection also includes videos like the United Nation's "Nothing But Nets" which provides a look into the Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in Tanzania. The kind of curiously that VR can foster—curiosity about different people, animals, and the earth—is an important step to empathy and real life action. I don't think it's a huge jump to say falling in love with our planet is an important part of then working to preserve it, something I hope Discovery VR helps us with.

-Charline Jao last reviewed the AR app, Night Terrors for GearBrain.