You no longer need to spend roughly one billion hours on a plane to get to New Zeland. WellTown takes you there in an instant using VR.
Launching today on the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, WellTown turns the New Zealand city of Wellington into a VR landscape. It’s a little like Google Earth VR, except dotted around the town are interactive games and experiences. Take a look in the trailer below.
Developer WellingtonNZ aimed to take some of the things Wellington is known for in some fun directions for this project. Wellington is a cafe town, for example, so one game has you shooting caffeine at sleepy zombies. Or you can visit local buskers and jam with them on a virtual drum kit. This being New Zealand, there are some brushes with nature too including a deep dive in the harbor and a chance to explore the wilderness.
There are 360 videos, too. You can watch footage from an All Blacks rugby test match or, uh, visit the offices of accountancy firm Xero. Some VR enthusiasts may also recall that Wellington is home to Weta, Peter Jackson’s award-winning digital effects studio. It’s helped produce the likes of Lord of the Rings, and WellTown offers a glimpse inside.
It is, of course, all designed to actually get you to come to New Zealand for yourself. It’s a little like Spain’s Legends of Catalonia experience. I guess if you can afford a PC VR headset you can probably afford the flight ticket too.
WellTown is available for free on the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
