Chernobyl Project is an educational VR experience in which you walk through the areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. This is not a game, but a virtual tour that lets you walk around both the reactor site itself and the abandoned city of Pripyat.

A haunting journey

Chernobyl Project highlights one of the possible uses of VR in education: to allow people to visit sites they couldn't normally visit. A remote location evacuated because of radioactivity is a perfect example of this kind of location. In addition to the virtual reality environments, you can also invoke 360-degree video that includes not only period footage of the site but also a video tour guide and interviews with witnesses. The modern environments are realistically created in virtual reality, giving the eerie impression of being in the danger zone. The VR graphics aren't quite up to the level of high-definition video, but the feeling of being there adds to the experience.

VR disaster tourism

Chernobyl Project isn't a game, but it's a fascinating use of VR as an educational tool. Wandering the ruined environment produces a strange, eerie feeling, and the additional video assets provide some welcome additional context.