Virtual Reality

There are some amazing educational benefits

Our children’s primary school has been using Meta Quests for a couple of years now to allow students in year six to explore Anne Frank’s house. The app (Anne Frank House VR) is free on the Meta Horizon Store and allows users to wander the rooms and interact with objects while hearing quotes from the famous diary. It’s an emotional experience – and could be overwhelming for some pupils – but provides an invaluable history lesson.

Science is another topic where the Quest really helps children – and adults – understand our world and beyond. The sheer number of science apps available on the Meta Horizon Store is staggering, and VR can really help understand abstract concepts like chemical structure or how the body functions. Students can take an immersive 3D journey inside a molecule or through a respiratory system and actually see how nature and physics work. For high-quality lessons, you can’t beat Futuclass Education, which uses gamified STEM modules focused on chemistry and physics to actively build atoms, conduct experiments and get instant feedback. Co-developed with award-winning science teachers, Futuclass is used in classrooms and homes, and includes lesson-plans and teacher portals to track progress. While Futuclass is a subscription-based app, there is a free trial version too.

But the learning app we love most of all on our Quest 3S is Piano Vision. We’ve owned this app since the Quest 2, but the amazing, augmented reality capabilities on the Quest 3 and 3S bring this app to another level. We can sit in front of our piano, and the Quest overlays visuals onto it, while falling note cues scroll down toward the keys, showing the player which key or keys to press next. If it can turn me into a pianist, it can turn anyone into one. It’s amazing how, after playing the same song a few times in this way, your muscle memory can recreate large parts of a song even without the Quest. At £7.99 it’s the cheapest piano lesson you’ll ever take.

We’ve travelled the world

There are a bewildering number of apps that let you discover the world, and beyond, without ever leaving the comfort of your armchair in the Quest Store. Our kids love Brink Travel, which transports them to many of the world’s most iconic destinations and lets them walk around, interacting with the environment. They particularly enjoy going back to places they’ve been to in real life and learning more about the region using the virtual guide. It’s relaxing, educational and meticulously detailed.

13-year-old Harrison loves aviation and flying our drone or his RC plane, so he really enjoys Fly: A Google Earth Flight Simulator, which allows him to pilot a drone anywhere on earth, thanks to Google Earth’s comprehensive coverage of our planet. The visuals are stunning for such a small standalone headset, and while the controls aren’t as realistic as an aircraft simulator, they’re extremely intuitive and perfect for budding explorers looking to satisfy their wanderlust.

We use it for creativity

Every generation of the Meta Quest has been great for arty types – like our daughter – but our Quest 3S, with its advanced mixed reality capabilities, has upped the game even further. Pencil – Learn to Draw stands out as one of the best mixed reality apps, as it overlays guided lessons onto physical paper, teaching techniques from cartoons to anatomy via a companion character, Leo.

That said, she’s quite happy to revert to Open Brush, a free 3D painting app where your brush strokes float around you. This app has been one of her favourites since the original Quest, but the ability to use “passthrough” to paint her own room on the Quest 3S is truly magical, and she adores it. As well as being completely free, Open Brush is easy to get to grips with but also extremely capable if you’re a serious artist.

We built our own retro arcade

As a child of the 1980s, I’ve always dreamed of having a corner of my home dedicated to 80s arcade machines for myself and the kids to enjoy together. My wife, naturally, has other ideas. But thanks to a couple of Meta Quest apps called Arcade Ranger and Pinball FX VR, we’ve got an entire arcade in Harrison’s bedroom. Obviously, playing 80s arcade games on Meta Quest controllers doesn’t feel particularly authentic, but we solved that problem with the Arcade 2TV-XR from X-Arcade.

Not only does the 2TV-XR look amazing, with its sleek white design and frosted LED light, but it feels just like the real thing. There are two heavy-duty arcade sticks, arcade-quality buttons – including side buttons for pinball games – and even a trackball mouse for playing classics like Missile Command and Marble Madness as they were meant to be played. Once coupled with either our Meta Quest 2 or Quest 3S, it literally feels as though we are standing in front of a real arcade machine or pinball table, both visually and tactilely.

The Quest 3S’ mixed reality even lets us position what looks like a full-size pinball machine anywhere in the house, while taking up a tiny fraction of the space, while the 2TV-XR makes it feel like the real thing too. Better still, the X-Arcade controller isn’t just for our Quest; it also works as a two player arcade controller for any generation of console from the original PlayStation and Xbox, all the way through to the current generation, as well as laptops or tablets if you’d like to play retro or modern arcade games.

Speaking of games

While educational and creative uses abound in VR, the kids are going to want to play some games on it too. The great news is that there are tons of free games and trials on the Meta Quest. We really enjoyed First Encounters, which comes packaged free with the Quest 3S and uses mixed reality to see cute aliens breaking into your room, while you have to catch them and match the colours to get higher scores. It’s wonderful, child-friendly fun and a great showcase for what mixed reality can do.

Games that do cost money in the Meta Horizon Store are often far cheaper than on the Xbox or PlayStation, and especially on the Nintendo Switch 2. For instance, the newly released Star Wars: Beyond Victory is a pod racing game that allows you to turn part of your room into an arena to race pods around. It’s fantastic fun and only costs £15.99 compared to £75 for Mario Kart World on the Nintendo Switch 2.

The Quest 3S comes with a three-month subscription trial to Meta Horizon Plus, which gives access to over 40 top titles and has a rolling selection of games that you can download and own, so you won’t be short on games to enjoy in those first few months after Christmas. Away from the Horizon Plus selection, there are countless other titles, many of which have free trials. Be warned, once you try the trial version of Beat Saber you’re going to end up buying it. It’s still the quintessential VR title, blending music, rhythm and light sabres, and a guaranteed hit for the whole family.

One last thing to note is that you’re not just limited to VR and MR games in the Meta Horizon Store either. The Meta Quest 2,3, and 3S are all capable of running Xbox Cloud Gaming, which effectively brings the entire Xbox Cloud Gaming catalogue to your Quest, allowing you to play them on a massive screen if you have an Xbox Game Pass. So, if you’re still deciding whether to get them an Xbox or Quest for Christmas, just remember that – in many ways – the Quest can work as both.