Spacetours VR - Ep1 The Solar System

This is fun. Checking out the planets and solar system with great graphics. A definitely worthwhile game especially for younger folks, school age children or sci-fi/space enthusiasts.

Dear friends, and developers. I'v encountered a problem in several games, most recently THIS GAME..... The problem is that I am handicaped and confined to a chair. When I run this game I find myself in a non playable position with no way to move using the controllers.
When I spent the money to move up to VR, I had hopes of experiencing things, like this game, even though I could not physically be present.
Most of the VR games I have used expext me to be able to move physically (I.E. HEAD. HANDS) instead of providing controller, or keyboard, interface for movement.
Hope this helps to make your product more successful,
PS.. why not start a "HANDICAP ACCESABLE" label for your tours once they are fixed. I would be happy to serve as a product tester/representative for handicaped VR users.
Rev. Gary Utz (retired)

Solar system is just beautiful....That is as far as I can say about this experience. Compared to Discovering Space, this doesn't even come close. This is a self guided tour with VERY loose controls. Grab objects to start events...What events? All that appeared were bullet points highlighting specific interests, is that what you are calling an 'event'...Should be labelled touch for more information. Such a shame. If this was similar to Discovering space, where the tours actually take you on a guided tour of all the planets, with voiceover I might add, similar to when I visited a PLanetarium when I was young, then I could recommend this as an enjoyable experience...However after just a few minutes exploring, I had more than enough...

This is a nice "visit the planets" kind of experience. You do get to see some details about the planet and moons and some probes. The graphics were nice and there was a nice futuristic feel to it with your travel pod and controls. I had two main gripes about it though: 1. I wish the female voice read the fact sheets out loud but she doesn't. 2. I wish we could have visited all the major moons and other objects up close. This was a good VR experience and what was done was done pretty well but it was skimpy on content and places to travel. I am going to give it a thumbs up because it is a nice quick tour and good for the kids to do and even teachers use for their class. But I will say this is not worth more than $5 tops. The price needs to come down in my opinion or add more places to travel: moons;asteroid belts;pluto and its known neighbors; a view from voyager of the solar system.

Recent first play video here:

https://youtu.be/CzVug9B7CMc

For the sale price of $2.99, I do heartily recommend this VR tour of our galaxy. It is very informative and has some very nice views of the planets from space and a nice up close look at our moon. A lot of the focus is on the terrain of each planet along with their moons. Space satellites are also mentioned when applicable.

I think it's strange they didn't include the Sun. Also, the controls were clunky. I get that they are going for immersion with holding the grips when launching off to another planet or opening the doors of the shuttle. However, it gets annoying after a few space hops. And you can't easily go where you want, you have to literally find the planet and then point towards it. It took me a whlie to find Venus. And you have to open the tabs on the machine and then open more tabs to get more information on the planet or moons.

Still, I enjoyed the VR tour of our galaxy. It took me exactly 42 minutes with trying to make sure I looked at everything the tour had to offer (game doesn't tell you).

Rate 6/10 sale price recommendation

Spacetours Ep1 is a gateway to space.

As the name states, it is an interactive space tour of our Solar System, and it is the user experience that gets a recommendation from me. I felt like a kid going to the planetarium for the first time, and it woke up a sense of wonder in me. The panel used to read the objects information is well thought off and adds a lot to the experience.

The only real distraction for me was the "god rays" with my Rift but that is more of a hardware problem that might not even bother Vive users. I noticed them most at first and from time to time again, there might be some tweaks the developer could try just for us people using the Rift, and it would make this app so much better.

For me, it was a good investment, just because of the set of emotions that brought back my younger self and me being a space geek.

It's a great no frills app to lose yourself a bit and to show your VR gear to somene else. It's the first time I let my 7 year old daughter try the Rift and she was ten times more amazed at the sense of presence than me. She would almost yell at every planet she visited or nrely discovered interaction she tried.

One more point to add, and this is all relative. I love Titans of Space, and yet this being a newer and maybe less mature app, I felt that the user experience and interactivity are better in Spacetours VR. Even my daughter asked me to let her in Spacetours after trying Titans of Space and that is as honest as it can get on the interactivity of this app.

I see some negative reviews. Everyone has a right to their own opinion, I would just ask them to reevaluate their recommendation after updating the app to the latest version. If it's still not their cup of tea, then to each their own.

Some ideas to make it better: Adding more content, allow more display settings customization like resolution, IQ and even being able to reduce the amount of stars visible.

I see a lot of potential in this first rendition of Spacetours VR. I'm looking forward to seeing more conent in this app, along with other experiences from this developer. IMO, it will only get better.

Simply FANTASTIC! I will never forget the first time I floated in space near those planets. I actually yelled out of fear and awe. This is where VR really shines.

I was a disappointed with this Space Tour showcase and actually thought that maybe some of its features weren't actually working for me but no, it operates as intended.

Good:
-Good visuals and sound effects
-Has the wow factor when the ship walls dematerialise

Bad:
-Control system is confusing, buttoms on the control panel don't actually have any function, other functions like toggling ship visibility seems to operate at random.
-NO INFO about planets, moons, satellites at all, not even a label, save the title of the planet on the control panel!!??
-No ability to fly around the chosen planet, you're just parked in orbit in a spaceship/platform with no movement controls!?
-Help menu says laserpointer triggers 'Events' I've yet to see or hear any event; it wouldn't be hard to add more information to make this app informative and more fulfilling - its almost there developer

This tops my outer/inner space collection. A+
I love the atmosphere of this game. If you enjoy VR tourism I also recommend The Grand Canyon VR Experience.

It's still a bit buggy, barely tolerable, but the in-game visuals make it up for those bugs.

Disappointing. Was hoping for something more like an interactive planetarium, but was basically a 3D slideshow. Also the controls were wonky for me, sometimes the game didn't seem to register what I was doing.

I've been waiting a while for something like this where the experience has been designed with standing up in mind rather than sitting down. Travel to the Solar System planets in an instant and then hover over the planets and basically look at them and Space all round them; very nice and well made! Saturn looks massive in VR you can also check out the International Space Station close up. My only gripe is I can't have a closer look at the Moon as it's not a Planet but that would be an awesome edition in a one off capacity!

My setup is using GTX1080 and 1.4 super sampling and it now works fine after latest update - you probably can go a little higher and that's what I'm gonna do later...
I think families and people who are new to VR would like this program as a 'look at what VR can do' sorta program, and also for people who just like looking at Space stuff.

I very much like this!

What you do yourself in this VR experience is straightforward - you select a planet and travel to it in your pod. On arrival you can either stick your head out the window to view the massive planet (ever seen a dog stick it's head out of a car window - yeah, that'scwhat you'll feel or look like in VR) or you can select for the pod walls to withdraw into a small circular platform which allows you to view 360. Of course, the purpose of the program is to travel and view the planets and wow - superb! The imagery on the planets is awesome - IMO really high standard. To view the different planets of the Solar System involves pointing to a planet, sucking it in with the laser pointer and inserting the planet into a sort of capsule holder, hold the poles to activate hyperspace travel - and off you go in style! If you like using Google Earth to view Earth zoomed out in Space then you'll really enjoy exploring the Solar System planets with this. It goes without saying you can't actually go into the atmosphere of the planets as the Google Street View cars haven't mapped them yet!

The audio is perfect - even the planet destination announcer woman sounds perfectly suited to her task - the ambience the audio generates is just right.

I've tried Universe Sandbox on the Vive - it was alright, and it was just alright for me because it didn't make me stop and go 'wow'! This ain't a game - it's a Spacetour where you travel and view a planet from a close distance whilst still in Space - one of those programs that you observe the grandeur of Space and just go off in a little wonder - clearly a labour of love! This is ep1 - I'm very interested where we're going with ep2?? Anyway - recommended!

I recently got a Vive for cheap. And while I am still not quite convinced by the the whole VR trend, this little gem is giving me some hope. It feels like VR exists to bring experiences like these to life and it is also a great showcase for what can be the competetive advantage for the VR experience in the future. It is hard to explain the sensation when you enter the lobby, hear the subtle humming in the background and marvel at the futuristic aesthetics. It truly makes you feel like a highly sophisticated space explorer about the begin your first stroll into the endless depths of space. And since watching the new "Cosmos" documentary by Neil deGrasse Tyson (highly recommended on netflix!) I have been longing for a sensation like this. It might not be 100% the same experience as gliding through space yourself, but until we can book our own real space vacation I feel like this is the next best thing.

Of course if you want to play some high octane wave shooter or surreal experience like Rez, then this is not the game for you. Spacetours' strength is its atmosphere and immersion. Something that it exceeds at. And to be honest: with the heavy workload these days and daily life that is accelerating more and more, this actually suits me.

All in all: Keep it coming! Stuff like this will keep me occupied in short bursts until I can get my hands on the Vive version of Resident Evil in 2018. Here's hoping! And even then I am sure that I will keep an eye on future episodes of Spacetours.

Spacetours VR is a short but beautiful exploration game, playing with scope and alieness, a reminder of man's forlornness in the lonliness of space.

Or you can just use it to show off your shiny new vive and rub the awesomness of your rig in the face of your very best friends.


8/10

Well, this is going to be my first review in steam so I´ll keep it short. I´ll call this “the leberation from the **** whale”. I have my vive almost a year now and figured out 2 main uses for it so far. First you can watch short and entertaining “Movieclips”. Second, you can show other people VR and why you are so excited about it. For these VR-sessions i have a routine: start with the lab and than a little bit of amazing painting (Bob Ross style). And than, when everybody craves for more of this new delicious VR-experience I have to choose: experienced gamer friends will be pushed into some serious Sam or space pirates action or, for the casual granny, the wale.... I hate the whale because everybody is like: okay, fine, got it... Bye. All excitement gone... **** whale! So that’s where this game experience comes into play. I bought it because it looks superb and it is in space! No deep sea but space!
I played the whole experience in one go and enjoyed it a lot. It is exactly what I was looking for. A mellow and smooth experience with high-end Graphics to impress all the loved ones who are new to the VR world. Enjoy!

PS: Please be aware of the proplems concernig SuperSampling while using the recent build of SteamVR beta! Switch to non-beta for a crisp Graphic till this issue is resolved!

Some neat views of the planets, but it stutters quite a bit on my beefy rig (6850K SLI 1080's) and the controls weren't consistent ( i tried to push buttons and grab the floaty objects, but sometimes it would grab and sometimes it wouldn't).

awesome, love the whole look and feel! very laid-back and classy.

basically a visually driven experience with interactive events along the way. each planet is presented differently, some in really surprising perspectives.
the probes around the levels were really cool the watch and interact with, made space less sterile.
amazing sound effects also, you can feel the warp jump in your stomach, make sure you wear headphones!!

game mechanics are very basic. you can play around with little versions of the planets and destroy one asteroid. would have loved to able to do more here (e.g. scaling), but what is there works.

ISS is like the action part, the 100 meter free fall nearly made my heart stop lol. Good thing it's optional.

visiting all planets took me around 40min, will be back to see what I missed!

runs great on my 1070, the other reviewer must have issues with his rig.

8/10

Didn't spend much time with it, simply because there wasn't much to do. And as another reviewer said, the planets don't have much detail and there aren't any info panels or anything. Might be a meditative break game if I didn't feel like a was in a jail cell most of the time with the Sunlight reflecting blindly off of the port hole.

At this phase of the VR game you're going to have to at least do better than Titans of Space if you want that kind of sticker price.

Was really hoping this would be a great showcase demo of the vive and decided to pick it up. Bad idea.
I have a 1080 and the game lags even with no SS on. It also has no graphics settings which you can adjust. And the best part is it is not even that graphically good, the planets are washed out and not impressive at all.

I hope the devs see this and adress the issues.