![floor plan vr game fish floor plan vr game fish](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kwGXNx6pGKc/maxresdefault.jpg)
If series like Seven Worlds, One Planet are arguably as close as many people get to travel, the BBC’s Natural History Unit wants to take viewers further. Meanwhile, producers of all kinds are looking at fresh ways to immerse us, from Google – whose Expeditions app includes VR tours of the International Space Station and the National Museum of Iraq, using Cardboard headsets – to the BBC. Gaming “tourism” has become such a thing that late last year Rough Guides released The Rough Guide to Xbox, an exploration of beautiful locations in Xbox games, from the Arcadian Eddian Grove in Anthem to the Golden Sands Outpost in Sea of Thieves, a sort of Maldivian pirate island. The game also has a tour mode so gamers can explore Cleopatra-era Egypt with virtual tour guides instead of enemies from the Templar Order. Ubisoft, the makers of popular action-adventure game Assassin’s Creed Origins, employed an in-house historian and a team of Egyptologists to create a version of Ancient Egypt so accurate that it even predicted the 2017 discovery of a secret antechamber in the Great Pyramid. The wider video game industry – which was worth more than US$148.8 billion last year, according to industry analysts Newzoo – has long been creating rich and beautiful virtual worlds, from the anime sci-fi world of Final Fantasy to the rich Wild West of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the infinite galaxies of No Man’s Sky.
![floor plan vr game fish floor plan vr game fish](https://www.thevrgrid.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Floor-Plan_20180314204053-e1521088682938.jpg)
Half Life: Alyx, a darkly immersive new zombie shoot-em-up game for VR headsets, has already been hailed as a breakthrough for the format in terms of intuitive playability and storytelling. While the mainstream uptake of VR has been limited by the quality and quantity of releases, and the high cost of headsets like the HTC Vive and Oculus Quest, it is still improving. I could equally choose to swim with blue whales and entrancing blooms of jellyfish in Blu, or drive a Mars Rover around 15 square miles of rocky Martian ochre in Mars 2030. Everest VR, an hour-long recreation of an Everest climb – from incense ceremonies and kit run-throughs at Base Camp to crossing deep crevasses – is just one of the experiences available with VR headsets from brands such as Vive and Oculus.
![floor plan vr game fish floor plan vr game fish](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1534850/ss_96e9cde818c33f3e86cdf1804ac179674e7f7b96.1920x1080.jpg)
It’s become a time to reflect on what it actually means to travel, something I’ve done on an almost monthly basis for years – and whether it’s possible to travel without, well, travelling. Now, like many across the world, I’m mostly homebound There was a brief window where hiring a motor home and driving to the Scottish Western Isle of Eigg seemed like a good idea. I’ve had trips to Kazakhstan’s Charyn Canyon and Utah’s Canyon Point postponed indefinitely, and most of my commissions cancelled. While there are many people much worse off than I am, this is an awkward time to be a freelance travel writer. I find myself envying them, while also pondering if they really qualify as essential workers. Instead, beyond my Juliet balcony, a handful of builders are working on a new residential block, the sun glinting on their high-vis vests. My view is no longer a bird’s-eye one of the high Himalayas. As my eyes recalibrate, I find myself in my second-floor flat in Hackney, East London, on coronavirus-induced lockdown. I pause Everest VR and take off my HTC Vive virtual reality headset. When I reach the top of the wires and unclip, I feel faintly queasy, but not perhaps in the way the great Sherpa did.
![floor plan vr game fish floor plan vr game fish](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uXsUtyHiHGk/maxresdefault.jpg)
When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first known individuals to reach the summit of Everest in 1953, Hillary wrote of Norgay reaching the top of the Hillary Step: “He collapsed exhausted… like a giant fish when it has just been hauled from the sea after a terrific struggle.” With oxygen dangerously thin at approximately 8,790m high, many climbers have fallen here, or simply sat down and never stood up again. I am at the foot of the Hillary Step, the infamous 12m rock face near the summit of Everest, long considered the most challenging section of an ascent from the Nepal side. But I reach out, clip in and start to climb. I try to focus on the ascender clips on two wires leading steeply upwards, but there’s a constant temptation to look left to a sharp drop into a vast snowy abyss. Against a backdrop of whistling wind and heavy breathing, a man with a Germanic accent is yelling at me: “Take your time!”.