Hold the World (2018) is an educational VR experience from Sky that lets you come face-to-face with Sir David Attenborough, the English broadcaster and world’s foremost naturalist, as he teaches you about a number of species going as far back as the Trilobite and as recent as the flea.

The interactive experience takes you to London’s Natural History Museum, and puts you in reach of a few rare specimens from its world-famous collection, letting you handle and resize the objects while Attenborough teaches you important facts about how the animals must have lived, ate, breathed, and more.

Attenborough is presented to the user by way of high-quality volumetric video capture, and he takes you behind the scenes to a few areas out-of-bounds to the general public. Like the items themselves, the environments have been captured using photogrammetry, allowing you to truly feel like you’re in iconic museum’s geology library, fossil lab, and herbarium.

 

Skeletons and fossilized specimens come to life as well, showing you a true 1:1 scale of how a Pterosaur must have flown, or how a dragon-fly independently controls each of its four wings as it makes its long migratory trips across the world.

At $4, the experience is undoubtedly one the best price to value ratios out there; everything is lovingly reconstructed to maximize for realism, truly making you feel like you’re sitting across the table with the affable and always knowledgeable Sir David Attenborough. It took me about an hour to complete, going through every animal presented in the experience and taking the few quick quizzes to go along with it. It’s truly something that could be made into a larger series, as I found sitting across from Attenborough and learning with the object in hand to be a really effective way of absorbing the information.

SEE ALSO
'Apollo 11 VR' Studio Partners with Shenandoah University to Create the Next Generation of VR Training Programs

Hold the World features no artificial locomotion (it’s a 100% seated experience) and comes with intuitive hands-on Touch controls which really makes the experience perfect for VR first-timers and experienced users alike.

If you’re a Sky customer and enrolled in the free Sky VIP loyalty program, you can access Hold the World for free via the Sky VR app in UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy. If not, you can purchase the experience on the Oculus Store.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Sandy Wich

    Hey that’s pretty cool. You know I also saw a Cinemassacre, “Angry Video Game Nerd”, upload a VR video too.

    It’s nuts how such simple concepts as teaching/walking around talking about stuff suddenly becomes so amazing with VR when it never did before. “At least for me”.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    God created the heavens and earth.

    • Rogue Transfer

      A story tale or myth does not apply here. As you grow older you’ll realise the contradictions, if you think it through.

    • Laurence Nairne

      Actually J. R. R. Tolkien did.

    • PJ

      Really? Prove it

    • jj

      man you had been doing so good recently at not shit posting religion all over the site. too bad, but looks like were gona have to go back to opposing you’re forced and unsolicited religious views.
      Why would God create a place that confuses us and if we get lead wrong, its eternal suffering? thats not fair, that’s pure evil and self loathing.

      If i created something as unintelligent as ants compared to us now, I wouldn’t get upset when those ‘ants’ don’t absolutely love me, or follow me BLINDLY.
      Mainly if your following blindly, what happens if u accidentally blindly follow the wrong person??Eternal hell. i mean ur BLINDLY following, you’re not looking into what theyre telling you, you’re just going. So endless plot holes.

      HAIL SATAN

  • Nicolas Galan

    I am so happy to read that you appreciated our photogrammetry work to reconstruct the museum (done by our team at Alter Equals http://www.alter-equals.com) for Hold The World, because at Alter Equals, we appreciate a lot Road To VR and read it in details for a while :-)
    Nicolas Galan

    • Craig Anderson

      Seeing this experience made me want to learn more about photogrammetry, what you guys were able to do is really impressive!

  • Nidra

    Any possibility of using this program on the HTC Vive?

    • G-man

      probably with revive, like all the other rift games