VR can take us to our dream destinations in a matter of minutes, but it can also transport us to places we might otherwise never see simply because they’re not safe. The Chernobyl VR Project is a great example of that.
This piece initially released in Early Access on a range of VR headsets last year, developed by The Farm 51, the makers of this year’s Get Even. This month on the PlayStation Blog, though, the team confirmed it’s on its way to PSVR too. It offers a tour of the abandoned Ukrainian city of Pripyat, which of course played victim to the tragic Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986.
More than just a set of 360 degree videos, though, Chernobyl Project mixes interactive elements with computer generated renders of environments you wouldn’t be able to visit if you were to go to the site for yourself. Farm 51 used scans to accurately recreate some of these areas. The piece is designed to be educational as well as explorative, so you’ll learn stories about those that experienced the disaster and its fallout as you travel around.
Locations include well-known places like the Duga Radar, the amusement park, the Azure swimming pool as well as more obscure areas such as Primary School No.3, the hospital, apartments and the scrap yard.
We’ve seen the piece in the past and there are definitely some incredible sights to it that you couldn’t get even from going to Chernobyl by yourself. The launch date for the PSVR version hasn’t been confirmed (outside of “coming soon”), though we’d guess the full version of the PC edition might launch around the same time. The Farm 51 planned to add more locations and increased video resolutions to the full version.
