Apollo 11 VR

A very nice history lesson.

For space nerds. It's a ride-along on the Apollo 11 mission, like the title suggests. You get to fly the rocket, connect to parts of the rocket in space, and land the lander. And bounce around on the moon, that's fun.

The game has been broken for ages and the developers have just abandoned it. It was great, now for a lot of people it just black screens. Don't waste your money.

Great experience accept WONT work with the HP Reverb G2. Apollo 11 VR HD WILL work with HP Reverb G2. Steam Should FIX This in the VR Support Headsets.

Honestly, i love everything space related and on top of that, i love vr! Whats not to like!? I was really excited to play this, but the game is just full of bugs and glitches, for example, during some scenes the screen is just completely black and thats not just a problem for me, its happened to others too! But the weird thing is that on my flat screen its still vissible, i had to watch an entire cutscene that way but sadly i couldnt make it past low Earth orbit. Its such a shame, cause this game deserves better but if youre out there looking for a good vr space game that isnt entirely sci-fi, i would recommend Interkosmos, its not based on any real mission, but its definatively better than this, got all the interactivity a game like this needs and is free! Dont spend your money on this game.

TL;DR:
Game is buggy and bad, get interkosmos instead.

Does not work with Valve Index (Screen goes dark). Having same issue as others that are also using the Valve Index. In my experience, it seems to start just fine and as soon as the elevator scene begins it goes all black and cannot see anything. Please fix this. Did not pay $ to see a black screen. If anyone has a Valve Index fix, please let me know.

I'm going to guess this game was never optimized for the Valve Index. It is cool when it works, but I am having an issue where some scenes are completely black and I've found no way to fix this.

Some of the most amazing 48 minutes I've had in my whole life. This experience is truly great and it tries to capture the feeling of the most amazing accomplishment of humanity so far - the first landing on the moon. Although some people might find some stuff not being accurate, they don't degrade the overall experience. I am moved and I cried while watching. I cannot imagine what Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins must have felt and experienced and they are some of the bravest people out there. To see the blue marble we call home from afar really makes you question everything...

To the conspiracy theorists who claim we never landed on the moon - try to look at the facts not with your brain but with your heart. Because your mind can play tricks on you and make you see things that are not there. Your heart however can see beyond that. Everyone involved in the Apollo program sacrificed so much to accomplish a goal so great, so ahead of its time and they did it. They did it for all of us, to inspire us, to show us the human spirit can do great deeds. Humanity can be so much more...And it saddens me to see how so many people especially young ones simply do not care about anything other than social media, social status, looks, riches and other such meaningless things...How politicians ruin countries and societies...How greedy corporations ruin the environment...Our future lies in our hands and our hands only...It needs not politicians or money makers, it needs scientists, artists, poets, people who dare to dream, who DARE to dream BIG, who are not bound by ideologies or hate and greed. People who today we call our sons and daughters. It only takes one moment to do the right thing, to show them the way, to show them what it is to be human. The landing on the moon is one of those moments where dreams become reality, where people who dared to dream big set off to turn their dream into reality.

The game does not work on my Oculus Rift. I can't see any of the videos. All i see are the crew members on board. I contacted the publishers web site and got no reply. I would not recomend for Oculus Rift users. I bought it as a bundle with Titanic VR and that is working ok. It seems like I'm going to get beat for a few dollars but thats ok, I just dont want lots of people getting beat for a few dollars.

I really wanted to like this game, and it still certainly has tons of potentail. I think the idea of VR documentaries is super interesting and I really hope to see more in the future. As for this one though, it really just felt super unpolished. As people have mentioned, My biggest issue was the visuals of the whole situationn. It seems they spent so much time making the cockpit accurate, but the moon textures, astronauts (including that weird green guy), and just general realism was just really lacking. My other problem was the real lack of information I felt I received. For being a documentary, I hoped to learn some things about this memorable event, but instead just sat for ~ an hour watching largely unrealistic cutscenes with narration from the actual time period (which was nice). I personally didn't try the interactive mode (I read some reviews beforehand and knew to avoid that).

I really think that this had a lot of potential, but honestly I wouldn't recommend it particularly at its original price point (I got it on sale so idk)

Ok so here's how it is. It's an experience, not a game. You will spend most of the time watching, and some of the time on the moons surface reading info cards and listening to radio chatter. A very small part is an interactive mini-game of lining up a docking port, and another very small part is rotating the lander module and occasionally firing the booster in order to land.

If you don't naturally like this sort of thing, I don't think you'd like it. If you love learning about this sort of thing then you will enjoy it as I did.

This was a truly moving experience. I cried happy tears multiple times. Love the interactive sequences. Graphics are amazing on my 960M card. VR was really well done for the VIVE.

A few suggestions about the accuracy that could use some fixing:

1. Helmets were being worn and the astronauts were holding/carrying their oxygen generator while on the ride up the Launch Tower Elevators.
2. Would be cool to see them get into the Command module and shake the hands of the white room operators. (especially Günter Wendt's (wiki that name for a really cool story)).
3. During the Interactive Docking sequence:
- Add an ability to reverse thrust translation on the RCS, I only saw a forward thrust on the instructions.
- Add RCS fuel guage read out on the PAD Computer as well as a goal to stay above in the mission goals. Also add this functionality to the analog dial/guage on the instrument board.
- The command module had a radar range finder for docking sequences, and you would have seperation distance and closure rate read out in meters/sec on the computer. Advise what the ideal meters/sec is for the goal (right now its vauge) and included a functional read out of both values.
4. During the LEM seperation sequence, they would seperate in Earth view for COMMs. But during the film sequence, they were out of Earth view, so they would not have comms? LOS/AOS. Would recommend at least an Earth Rise for this portion to make it more accurate before SEP.
5. Remaining RCS fuel would be dumped shortly after main or drag chute deployment, yet Guages still showed values for the RCS fuel on the instrument board with the Parachutes deployed???
6. No Radio signal possible while the command module was going through re-entery ionization.....so how did they get a response the from the Apollo module while they were still going through this ionization? The radio contact audio was actually after the drag chutes were deployed, so matching the audio up during the correct re-entry sequence would be a simple fix.
7. During the PAN around the Saturn 5 rocket, before getting on the Elevator, add LOX vapor burnoff around the rocket body, this would make for a more detailed experience showing the rocket body all chilled down from the cryogenic fuel ready to blast off.

Otherwise, this was an amazing, awe-inspriring experience, and takes a space history buff to really tear apart the small in-accuracies that I found. Overall, this studio did an amazing job, well worth the price!!!!!!!!

I saw this game on sale at a somewhat random occasion on the store, and was at first quite interested in the concept.
This, however, turned out to be a very underwhelming experience, and the first genuinely BAD vr experience I've had overall.

So let's start from the top, with a simple question: does this game deliver on its promises, ALL of its promises ?

The short answer is no. Now for the long answer.

Apollo 11 VR sells itself as "a new type of documentary", but a documentary it is not. What it is, is a short, undercooked project with no genuine lasting impact, and very little short term fun or entertainment to be had. There is relatively little in the ways of information or factoids to be learned here, save for a fairly inelegant info dump in one of the later scenes. The "mix of original archive audio and video" is used in a rather unpleasant way as well - rather than here to complement visuals and audio, it feels closer to a tacky attempt at simulating historical fidelity, and it gets old very quick.

Another issue comes in the form of very limited interaction. The store page mentions several critical sections of the game being interactive, and well, it isn't lying - you CAN take control of the command modules, the lunar lander and explore the moon's surface, but it is extremely limited. Perhaps the comparison is a bit harsh to make, but I expected from those sequences something akin to a simplified Kerbal Space Program, and it is in some aspects - but there is so little to do, in such small capacity, that one has to wonder if there even is a point to putting this here to begin with.

The issue of visual fidelity also needs to be addressed. Apollo 11 VR goes for the laziest, most basic direction possible in terms of graphics, and persists on being just kind of mediocre graphically. It doesn't take a lot of trickery to make even average assets on an accessible engine look stunning and this application tries to utilize none of them, which is made worse by the fairly immersion breaking oddities one may come across, such as spinning lense flares or the lifeless eyes of the few human models one gets to see.

The most drastic problem that overarchs all of those is that Apollo 11 VR feels uninspired, flat and basic - more than a shame considering it is set out to pay tribute to one of mankind's most significant accomplishements of the last century. This won't make you love NASA or space faring or the inventivity of man. If you already love those things, it won't give you a new perspective on them - in fact, if you're into building space shuttles and sending them out into space, you're better off playing Kerbal Space Program, which has practically everything game offers sans the overdone "inspirational music" and without pretending to be historically accurate about anything.

One last problem about the game, as a VR title: it can be potentially very nauseating for some people. I have the huge advantage of not suffering from any motion sickness in VR, but those few scenes and panning shots of the moon or of planet earth can be extremely dizzying, and I can imagine that people who are more sensitive to the effects of motion sickness would not be able to get through these sequences without taking off the headset. A particular early sequence in which the player is set through a fly-by shot of the shuttle prepped for take-off is very uncomfortable, but doesn't really offer any of the thrill that one may expect from literally flying around a shuttle the height of a downtown appartment building.

As for longevity, well, I don't think it's quite as important as some may expect from a game like this that tries to be more of a set experience than something you'd go back to, but it struggles to reach 60 minutes. I hopped around the surface of the moon for as long as I could take it before getting bored at the complete absence of activites (don't trust the whole "deploy experiments" thing, there is no moving of parts or assembly required, just one press of a button and models magically pop up), and still couldn't get to make this last more than an hour.

It could have been a lot longer, and a lot better, if more creativity had been employed in the making of the interactive segments, which in themselves should have been more numerous. Not to be an ideas guy, but I expected a lot more from it - I've got a set of controllers that allow me to grab several things at once, twist them around and whatnot, so I expected the devs to do what plenty of other games do and let me take the whole shuttle apart to see how it's build, or let me deploy those experiments by hand, or physically move the controls and push buttons inside of the shuttle, but there's none of that.

To finish this review, I'd simply like to reiter my earlier recommendation of KSP for those of you who wanted to pick this one up as a semi-simulator of sorts. If you just want a simple demo to show off VR, there's plenty more options that fit the function more than this one, a lot of which are FREE.

This was amazing and well worth the money for me. The interactive sections are few, but enjoyable (at least for a space nerd like me). The moon landing itself is properly challenging and the atmosphere reentry, while not interactive, had me holding my breath. The rest of the experience is very atmospheric, especially thanks to the awesome soundtrack.

Camera flybys might be sickness inducing for some.

The Apollo 11 VR Experience gives you a close sense of what it was like for the astronauts on the first moon landing in 1969. You see everything either from the viewpoint of one of the astronauts, or from nearby. It brings out the unusual and disorientating effects of being in orbit. You get to try spinning the lander round to attach it to the command module and landing on the moon from orbit, which is not easy, I can tell you. This part is basically a flight simulator. Once on the moon, you get to check out Tranquility Base and find out about the experiments they performed up there. There are also a couple of easter eggs for you to find, including a cache of recordings from people connected with the VR project. Finally you return to Earth and splash down in the ocean.

It took me 2.7 hours to complete, but you could just watch it in about half an hour as a VR experience without struggling to complete the flight sim parts or explore the moon. If you enjoy the scientific endeavour of space exploration, you will no doubt enjoy Apollo 11 VR. If not, you may find it boring. I found it to be an immersive simulation, so I'd recommend it as just that, without suggesting it's really good fun or anything.

Honestly - there are no words. This is the reason you buy VR, and I don't mean it from a campy experience. This is a deep, educational journey that inspires.

When I bought this, I expected it to be the 3D-TV-like videos of flash and no substance. This is everything but. It's worth every penny and beyond and it's the first path I take people down when they start asking about the value of VR.

If you're ready to experience the challenges of capturing the LM, walking (and landing on) the moon, and want a view of Earth that makes you feel "there" instead of all those nice pictures that try to encapsulate it, you are in for a ride. This "game' (?) makes me want to walk around with my rig and Oculus and make people watch. It's impossibly good.

Oh my goodness. What an amazing experience. I literally teared up at the incredible experience I had as I rode the Saturn V into orbit in the Apollo command module with Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins; like almost nothing else I’ve experienced in VR to date, I really, truly felt like I was there. This review is based on an Oculus Rift and GTX 1080 for reference.

As a VR early adopter AND a longtime crazed Apollo buff, this seemed like exactly the program for me. And it IS! Sitting in an Apollo command module cockpit or standing in the lunar module on approach to a lunar landing, my jaw dropped at the fidelity and accuracy of what I was seeing- it really was like being transported into From the Earth to the Moon. I was especially impressed and happy to see the extremely accurate switches in the various cockpits and background audio.
The “game” parts of it are decent but not extraordinary; come for the ability to experience an Apollo launch in an extremely accurate and lifelike presentation of an Apollo capsule, or to land on the Moon with Neil and Buzz actually standing in their place in an exactly correct lunar module interior.

The lunar surface portion could use some better graphical fidelity; it was a little jarring after how excellent the in-spacecraft elements were.

Pacing is a little all over the place; with some very long external views which tend to be slightly less interesting to me alternating with the in-cockpit content, but it is all extremely impressive and well-made.

I would have liked a mode in which you can just sit in the cockpits and look around, and perhaps some interactivity with some of the switches – perhaps this can be added in the future. But as an interactive, you are there VR version of From the Earth to the Moon- look no further.

I feel like this title deserves recommending but begrudgingly so.

It is passably well made and there is value to it, but only in a specific niche.

It's not a simulation, it's kind of a documentary, but not really. As ride alongs on rockets go it's somewhat lackluster and definately lacks any replayability of it's compitors. Objects in the game are well modelled but often the low quality textures take you out of the experience. As it stands the visuals are okay. The strongest thing it has going for is it's use of music to set the mood. It's also quite short.

On the one hand, this is one of the first VR experiences of its type and that is applaudable. Additionally the small user base for VR means it's got to be hard to recoop development costs... But even so it feels overpriced. See even as a VR headset user I'm not going to get anything more out of this and I got little it of it as it was. It's a good demo for showing off to friends to give them an idea of where VR experiences are headed... But it's nothing spectacular in it's own right.

Unless of course you know nothing about the Apollo 11 mission, never heard the JFK speech before, generally experienced little of the moon landing media... Then it's a rather impressive introduction to those things. As a one off.

But for the same money you could buy 3 feature length movies on the topic just as moving and inspiring if not more so. Is it fare to compare the product of a small studio to Hollywood productions? Does that alone justify paying more? That's up to the consumer.

One area they had the chance to stand out was the interactive sequences. Unfortunately experiences are super simplistic and dumbed down or otherwise limited by the controls, plus few and far between. There are a lot of almost unnecassary drawn out external camera shots which while setup to set the mood, would be much more compelling if the player was given control durin them, to take them at their own pace and explore as they will.

That's not to say I don't think the developer hasn't put effort in. But while they are showing off some of the strengths of the medium they are drasticly underutilising others. There is some educational value to the product and it does stand up as a "demo" but it's not much more then that. I also definately want the developer to make their money back on it so we can see more such VR experiences and better ones as the medium is explored more.

As it stands, unless you have a lot of friends you are trying to show VR off to, have teenagers in the household or are really obsessed with the American space program... I'd wait till this product is on sale. Hopefully when it is it will sell well.

This has some great moments but it could have been better. For single purpose, limited scope experiences like this, I expect higher quality assets. Textures are lacking, especially orbital and ascent views of the Earth and Moon. The feeling of presence inside the spacecraft is excellent, but just when you want to reach out and flip a switch you realize you can't. The lunar surface is lacking in detail - this is only marginally better than any random spot on the Mun in Kerbal. Don't get me wrong, this has great moments. The Saturn V assembled for launch is great just for the scale of the thing. But as a paid VR experience, focusing on less than an hour's worth of content, I think the bar should be higher. The lunar surface needs footprints and regolith that gives way. There needs to something to do for ascent and docking with the command module for return.

I am an hard ass, I don't shed tears at the moment of family member deceasing,
but this VR documentary gave me wet eyes.

A must have, especially for space lovers.

Also, I highly recommend a book "How Apollo Flew to the Moon" by W. David Woods,
Every details of the mission is well explained in this great book. For example, the orbital
manevers for the mission, the idea of the Free Return Trajectory, a lot of terms
you may heard and don't know what it is in this documentary, and many many more.

Thank you so much, makers.

Anyone with a Rift or Vive should buy this. Although it's pretty short (played through in just under 1 1/2 hours with interaction mode enabled) the production values and attention to detail are nothing short of amazing and it really shows what the future of learning will be like in the coming years :) Would recommend this to anyone.

That was awesome!

Would love to have seen more interaction and the ability to 'walk' around on the moon with the Vive, but aside from the desire for more simulation... Apollo 11 VR was a wonderful, emotional experience and totally worth the price of admission.

As a developer also working in VR, I've tried dozens of VR experiences, and this is one of my favorites. Highly recommend.