Free Interactive Experiences
Anne Frank House VR
This interactive experience takes you into the secret annex where Anne Frank lived for two years in hiding from the Nazi regime. The experience lets you explore the entire annex where eight people hid, and experience what it must have been like for Frank up until the group was discovered and shipped off to concentration camps in August 1944.
- Developer: Force Field
- Store link
Mission: ISS
Get your space boots and Tang ready, because you’re about to take a trip into orbit to learn about life board the International Space Station. You’ll float around in the station’s microgravity environment and experience how to dock a space capsule, take a spacewalk, and let real NASA astronauts guide you on the ISS through informative videos and images. Look out over the pale blue dot and marvel at humankind’s most awesome achievements.
- Developer: Magnopus / Oculus
- Store link
Home After War
Home After War is a room-scale, interactive experience that takes you to Fallujah, a city that was, until recently, under Islamic State (IS) control. Even though the conflict has ended, there’s a looming fear of returning refugees: booby trapped homes and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the neighborhoods. Awe-inspiring. Human. Disturbing.
- Developer: NowHere Media
- Store link
Free Apps
Bigscreen Beta
Bigscreen is the mother of all VR video apps, and it’s social too. Configure your avatar and pop into virtual movie theaters to watch your own content, stream your own stuff for others to see, and watch other people’s content all while having a friendly chat. You can also rent movies, show up for bespoke movie nights, and watch all the free live TV you can shake a stick at, courtesy of a partnership with Pluto TV.
- Developer: Bigscreen VR
- Store link
Flipside Studio
Flipside Studio is a virtual production studio that lets you use VR to make real-time animated shows for Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, and more. You can pick from sets, avatars, and props, and collaborate in real-time so you can finally get that VR podcast off the ground, or make the next viral video about a hotdog man belittling some sort of lizard boy for whatever reason. Anyway, it’s up to you to make hilarity ensue!
- Developer: Flipside XR
- Store link
Gravity Sketch
Design models, ideate products, create anything in VR with Gravity Sketch. It has the ability to import images, video, and 3D files (.jpg, .png, .mp4, .obj) and output snapshots and 3D objects (.png, .obj, .iges). Even when it was a paid app, it was a powerful and surprisingly intuitive creation suite. Now that it’s exactly $0 with no hidden gotchas, it’s even better.
- Developer: Gravity Sketch
- Store link
Update (August 28th, 2023): Updated to reflect new games that recently released or went free-to-play.