Got a Meta Quest? Shock your family with this mixed reality experience
Panic Room for Meta Quest 3 and 3S offers some good thrills through the effective use of mixed reality.
Virtual reality is the perfect medium for horror because it feels so unmediated. As if there is nothing between the viewer and the object of fear. The experience is so connected to your body that the threat feels almost physical.
So it's no wonder that many of the first VR experiences were designed to scare and shock. I still remember games and experiences like Dreadhalls, The Elevator Ritual, Face Your Fears, and A Chair in a Room that are forever etched in my mind.
Now, with the advent of mixed reality, virtual horror takes on a new dimension: it takes place in physical reality itself. When the physical and digital worlds merge in a way that blurs the lines between the two, the result can be even more terrifying.
Panic Room achieves this effect only to a certain extent, but it is certainly enough to give you a thrill and get your heart pumping.
Beware of spiders and ghosts
Panic Room currently offers two horror experiences, each lasting no more than 10 minutes, but they both use mixed reality in sometimes surprising ways and are well suited to demonstrating the magic of this new technology to others. For those who found Meta's introduction to MR, First Encounters, too bright and cheerful, Panic Room can be seen as a dark counterpart and alternative.
The first experience involves spiders. It starts quite harmless and ends with a nightmarish spider infestation and much worse. I don't want to spoil anything here, so I haven't included any of my own video footage or the trailer.
The second experience recreates one of the most famous horror scenes in movie history, where a ghost crawls out of the television to haunt you. An iconic moment of media transgression that lends itself perfectly to mixed reality.
Panic Room is still in Early Access and the team is looking to expand and refine the experiences. A third experience, which we don't know about yet, is coming soon.
You can purchase Panic Room for $5 from the Horizon Store. Only Quest 3 and 3S are supported.
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