Sometimes planning for a future dream trip is almost as exciting as actually boarding a plane or packing your campervan.
Now the experience has become even more engaging, with new technologies allowing travelers to better understand which destination will be the best fit for them, long before they touch down in a different US state or a foreign country.
One of those such technologies is virtual reality, or VR as it is known, which can whisk people off into virtual interpretations of some of the world’s most exotic locations.
In this article, we look at the games and VR experiences that allow travelers to get a feel for their upcoming journeys, so they can better understand what they should pack and what to expect upon arrival.
Visit Entertainment Hubs and Luxury Destinations Via Online Games
While there are plenty of apps and sites making use of VR to show people around certain popular tourist destinations, sometimes one of the best ways to get a feel for a place is to not only see it but to interact with it virtually.
Of course, game interfaces are great ways of doing that, and more online games are using the opportunity to integrate VR aspects.
This can be seen in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, a VR game that takes people to the center of a post-apocalyptic New Orleans. Then there are classic games that have been given a VR makeover, with poker players able to do battle in places like Macau or on a Monte Carlo yacht. And for a change in pace, there is Real VR Fishing, which takes players to lakes, rivers, and shorelines that are all based on real ones found in South Korea.
Such games add that extra dimension to a standard VR experience, giving potential travelers the ability to begin to sense what their prospective holiday or break might look like, just without an annoying guide telling you what to do and where to go.
Travel Photographers Harness VR
While the graphics for VR games have improved immeasurably in recent times, there is still the odd occasion where an image becomes pixelated or distorted, ruining that beautiful view of the landscape you were admiring.
Thankfully, there are top travel and nature photographers who have been adapting their work to VR platforms, enabling users to see the world through the trained lenses of their high-resolution cameras.
Offerings like Window to the World and Gala360 provide superb tours of picturesque beauty spots around the world.
Undertake Adventures You Could Never Dream of Doing for Real
While in most cases, there is nothing that beats the real thing, there are now some VR experiences that allow you to go on adventures that might otherwise be physically impossible or beyond your budget.
One such experience is Patagonia, which takes people to the heights of one of the world’s most famous mountains, Monte Fitzroy, in Argentina. What makes this experience unique is that not only do users get stunning 360 vistas of the snow-covered peak, but they can also view it from wherever they wish, while hovering like an eagle, or scampering across sheer cliff faces like a mountain goat.
The same concept is used in Crater Lake, but with the added bonus of users being able to listen in to the calls of animals and birds that usually frequent the banks of this stretch of open water in the heart of Oregon.
What this means is that VR headsets may increasingly become an integral part of a trip abroad, with people taking them along to see things they do not have the physical ability or expensive equipment to reach.