HTC’s Vive ecosystem is getting a VR experience centered on learning to practice mindfulness and nail down the basics of meditation, appropriately titled ReMind VR: Daily Meditation. The software includes three simple mindfulness exercises that are meant to help you get in the right state of mind to empty your mind for meditation and train your brain over time to make mindfulness and mind clearing easier. All three experiences are simplistic and symbolic, and use immersive, but not overly detailed 3D environments to help you focus on the mindfulness training at hand. The new VR meditation experience is available for only $5 on Viveport, and Viveport subscribers will be able to download it for free.
The first of the experiences puts you on top of a skyscraper amid a sprawling urban landscape. With all of the hustle and bustle going on far below you, your objective is to grab a paper plane from a stack nearby, each one representing a stray thought, give it a toss, and watch it fly down to the streets below. The second experience puts you in a cathartic and beautiful Japanese garden in the winter. There, you’ll find a bowl of smooth stones and a still mountain spring. Skip the stones to cause disturbances on the water, and note how the water’s surface actively works to rid itself of the ripples and return to its previous state of restfulness, just as your mind should be able to do in order to achieve the best conditions for mindfulness and meditation. Finally, the third experience gives you a simple and artfully crafted sunrise to behold, a luxury that our busy modern lives rarely afford us in the real world without making a significant effort to ensure it so. Watch the sun slowly rise and the colors of the sky change in reaction, helping you learn to control and adapt your perspective so that the world’s negativity can never overwhelm you.
This VR experience is the first of its kind on Vive. There are a number of VR-based meditation aids for Cardboard in the Play Store, but thanks to the increased processing power and better controls afforded to the HTC Vive ecosystem, none of those experiences are quite as immersive and concentration-grabbing as ReMind VR. This app is yet more proof that VR can go far beyond adding another dimension to gaming or putting users in the middle of their favorite movies and shows.