Exploring The Universe From My Living Room

Every once in a while I stumble across an experience that makes me pause and say “Wow”. As a space fan, Cosmic XR is one of those rare gems.

Available now for Quest 3 and Quest 3S, this stunning mixed reality app transforms your play space into a cosmic classroom, blending mixed reality visuals with hand-tracked interactions, making it both awe-inspiring and educational.

Touching The Universe

Cosmic XR leans fully into hand tracking. Reaching out to move and rotate planets, zooming in to see the finer details of a distant galaxy, and walking around the stunning holographic recreations depicting stellar wonders while manipulating them with my own two hands feel natural and, dare I say, even godlike.

Cosmic XR gameplay footage captured by UploadVR

There’s something magical about pointing toward a planet and watching it spin, or pulling the entire Milky Way onto your desk to explore it in closer detail.

The Sights And Sounds Of The Cosmos

The graphics in CosmicXR look great on Quest 3, both in virtual and mixed reality, presenting appealing holographic models floating in your room.

The black hole at the center of our Galaxy

The app does a great job of filling the mixed reality playspace, allowing you to walk amongst a sea of galaxies and interact with a detailed representation of the planets in our solar system, at either the same size or a relative scale.

Some scenes, like the Cosmic Web, remain in VR mode, even when MR is selected, and visiting the Galactic Center takes a different approach, with the scene seemingly half in VR, with the rest of it presented in a blended mixed reality environment. The detail level is diminished if you resize the models to be very large, but this isn’t noticeable unless you expand them well past what would be usable in your playspace.

Menu interface in CosmicXR

The audio in Cosmic XR consists of a few ambient backtracks that seem fitting for the environments being explored, but what is missing here for me is a voice-over narration. There are several parts of the app that contain educational information, and hearing those read to me in Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson’s style would have taken this over the top.

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

After experiencing CosmicXR, I could only imagine seeing a full recreation of something like Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot in a mixed reality format.

Navigating The Universe

When it comes to selecting and interacting with the models, BRDY Studios has opted for a minimalist approach, providing a menu system that is compact, hideable, and to the point.

You can reach out and select a scene and then grab a planet or galaxy and spin it, pinch and drag to zoom in or rescale, and drag through the air to move it across your room. Pointing at some object tags provides detailed information, making the interactions feel less like navigation and more like exploration and education.

Bonus content available in CosmicXR

The interface also allows for the blending of the VR and MR spaces, similar to the effect of using the Digital Crown on headsets like Apple Vision Pro.

Bonus content provides models of the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Curiosity Mars Rover, and the International Space Station (ISS). These models become unlocked once you rate the app in the store, adding an interesting twist to receiving extra content in a VR/MR app.

Textbook Concepts Come To Life

Apps like this one, and a few others I’ve experienced recently, have opened my eyes to the potential of VR and mixed reality education being a real possibility for future generations. Being able to explore space in an app like this one or learn about the elements in other available experiences such as ASTRA or Tablecraft, one of our favorites from Not Suspicious last year, brings new ways to both educate and entertain that I think would have provided a significant difference in memory retention and made me a better student.

In a recent update, BRDY also added eleven new languages, which will allow more people across the globe to explore the app and learn about space in their own native tongue. After all, space belongs to everyone.

The update also brings a more detailed Milky Way model for virtual space explorers to view, complete with detailed spiral arms and newly labeled regions pointing to specific celestial wonders.

Being able to explore these structures spatially rather than just seeing them on a flat page or screen makes it much easier to understand the vastness and organization of the galaxy. One such wonder that caught my attention is the M16 Eagle Nebula, widely known for containing the iconic Pillars of Creation. Seeing this beauty floating in front of me in mixed reality at room scale was absolutely breathtaking. Instead of admiring it passively on the page or a screen, I was able to explore it somewhat interactively, shifting my perspective and truly allowing me to appreciate what I was seeing.

Final Thoughts

In its initial release, Cosmic XR already offers a glimpse into what could be the future of space education. Combining solid hand tracking, global accessibility, and space-based content that spans from the Milky Way all the way to the Pillars of Creation and fills your room makes learning about the space surrounding our tiny pale blue dot even more interactive and memorable than ever before.

While the app is good as-is already, there is still potential to grow. Narration, guided lessons, and an expanded catalog of celestial objects to explore and learn about could make CosmicXR an even stronger learning platform and even more enjoyable to just experience. Even in its current state, the app already provides another great example of how VR and mixed reality can move beyond entertainment and have real educational value.

For Quest 3 owners, whether you’re a space enthusiast or simply curious about what mixed reality technology can do, Cosmic XR is worthy of your time. You can grab a copy of this app on the Meta Horizon Store, and please let us know your thoughts on the potential for mixed and virtual reality in education in the comments.