Google is killing off its Expeditions virtual reality app. The company announced on The Keyword that it intends to end the VR tour app’s support on June 30th, 2021.
Fortunately, the tours Google created for the app won’t go to waste, as the company announced that it would bring “the majority” of them to its popular Arts & Entertainment application.
This will let users experience the content with their mobile devices or on the web. The significant change comes shortly after Google rolled out a feature that enables you to put yourself inside various historical artifacts.
It’s Time to Say Goodbye to Google’s Expeditions VR App
The VR app allowed educators to use headsets and the app to take “students on new adventures to experience far-away places, travel back in time, or learn about cultures unlike their own.”
Google’s Jennifer Holland, Director of Program Management, Education, said, “It has been truly magical to see how educators and students alike incorporated our VR tours into their imaginative curriculums.”
As magical as it may have been for Google, it appears that the virtual reality app doesn’t make sense with today’s educational world.
Holland wrote about the changing educational landscape on The Keyword:
We’ve heard and recognize that immersive experiences with VR headsets are not always accessible to all learners and even more so this year, as the transition to hybrid learning has presented challenges for schools to effectively use Expeditions.
Google Expeditions Alternatives
This is yet another app that’ll make its way to the famed Google graveyard, but in this case, it’s hard to complain too much. Rather than killing off a beloved app for seemingly no reason, the company is dropping one and moving the content to another that’s more readily accessible to users.
Google’s Jennifer Holland spoke about plans for the virtual field trips:
To continue to add to the collection, and make Expeditions 360 tours available to everyone, we’re migrating most of them to Google Arts & Culture, accessible from the free site as well as the app on iOS or Android, where users can view the tours in 360 or on the web from any device.
If you haven’t downloaded the Google Arts & Culture application on your devices or tried it out on the web, you absolutely should, as Google is consistently adding some tremendous content to it.
Since going to museums is more challenging than ever, experiencing them virtually is a great alternative, whether for education or entertainment, and Google’s app delivers in a big way.