When I first tried VR, an original Oculus developer headset at a developer conference, I thought it could be a great learning tool that could give everyone a glimpse of the real world. Yes, it can be fun to beat things with virtual sabers, but it’s also important to use technology as a tool to make the world a better place.
This is exactly what The Stolen Art Gallery does, and it does it very well.
The Stolen Art Gallery: What is it?
Since this is not a shooter or other type of common virtual reality gameit is worth talking about what The Stolen Art Gallery is.
There have been hundreds of paintings that have been stolen over the years, and artists like Rembrandt and Manet have created beautiful works that the world will likely never see again.
the people in UOL compass They have recreated these works in digital format and have created a small interactive gallery to display them. Thoughtful additions like being able to watch them together with friends or share your experience via social media make everything a little more fun.
Of course, any gallery display should also teach us more about the work on display. At The Stolen Art Gallery, each painting comes with an information panel that tells you who the artist was, the medium, the year it was created, and a description of the work itself.
In addition, you can also learn even more about the artist and the work through a virtual tour guide. This is much like what you would find in a physical art gallery.
The Stolen Art Gallery: What I Loved
Admittedly, I’m not the world’s biggest fan when it comes to fine art. I do appreciate them, and a trip to the National Gallery or Freer Art Gallery is a great way to spend a summer Saturday, but I don’t live and breathe fine art like many others. That doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate and enjoy beautiful work or the excellent way it’s presented.
And that, in a nutshell, is exactly what I love about The Stolen Gallery. He had no idea that there were great works stolen and unrecovered, and he was eager to learn more about them. the Android app it’s great and just as informative as the Quest version, but the extra immersion that VR adds made this app an instant favorite.
The controls add to the experience in a big way. Because it’s VR, you literally touch things with a virtual finger, and learning more about a painting is as easy as touching the info button or the button to hear the presenter tell you all about the work.
Additional features, such as drawing in the air or sharing on social networks, can be easily accessed by touching your virtual wristwatch and the corresponding icon. There is no user manual or tutorial because you don’t really need it. Everything is presented in a way that’s easy to understand and use, and I think that’s the mark of a great app.
The Stolen Art Gallery: An Excellent Accessibility Tool
I am very lucky when it comes to my disability. Yes, I would love to be able to walk, run and play softball like I used to, but being in a wheelchair doesn’t stop me from having a nice life because I have wonderful people who help me. Not everyone is that lucky.
Some people are forced to be left behind and alone because they don’t have a great support network, and for them, virtual reality can be a way to live a little. It’s hard for anyone to imagine what life can be like being stuck at home; Doing it for six months to avoid a global pandemic brought out the worst in many of us, because no one likes to be left out of life.
This is the best thing about The Stolen Art Gallery – it can allow someone who could never experience seeing fine art in a gallery to establish a means of doing so. The fact that these are the rarest works because they have been removed from the art world is also a bonus.
I challenge all technology companies to build something like The Stolen Art Gallery. Compass UOL is small compared to giants like Google, Facebook or Apple, but they have done an amazing job here. We need more like this.
The Stolen Art Gallery: What I Didn’t Like
There are two things I didn’t enjoy about the app, but one of them is completely out of the developer’s hands.
We’ll start there: Meta’s Quest’s “room” setup sucks for anyone who doesn’t have a full range of motion. Defining the limits is nearly impossible if you can’t rotate a full 360 degrees; the headphones seem to constantly forget what floor height you set, and even if everything works and you set it, you’ll probably run into instances where apps go haywire and ignore everything until you restart them.
It would be easy to blame this on every app I tried, but Occam’s razor tells me the only point of failure: the mission 2The operating system and settings are the likely culprits.
In any case, I ran into parts of The Stolen Gallery app where I wish I could just stand up and touch something that was single out of reach.
The second is that I want plus! The Stolen Art Gallery features five lost works displayed in amazing detail, and it’s the first time I’ve really thought of one metaverse. Because of how the app piqued my interest, I discovered that there are hundreds of other paintings that have been stolen or lost, and I sure would like to see as many as I can.
The Stolen Art Gallery: Should You Install It?
Yes!
Stolen Art Gallery can be installed and enjoyed for free from Google Play, The Oculus Store (although it’s still an early open beta at this point), and the Apple App Store. Of course, the VR version offers the best experience, but you don’t need a VR headset to take a look.
Unless you are an art historian, you Will learn something. Even then, he can enjoy seeing masterpieces that he would otherwise never see, and they are all in high definition right before his eyes.
If you can’t get out and see a “real” art gallery, trust me when I say this is almost as good. In addition to everything I’ve said above, know that an hour at The Stolen Gallery is a great way to spend your next Saturday off.