Switzerland

Virtual travel to Switzerland in VR180

From village streets to snow-capped peaks, Switzerland is the alpine dream realized. Wander through charming mountain villages, walk trails through impossibly green meadows, and stand above the turquoise water of a lake held in a bowl of rock. The Swiss Alps offer some of Earth’s most pristine mountain scenery, now in stunning 8K VR180.

Switzerland in our library means two valleys: the bowl of rock that holds Oeschinen Lake, and Lauterbrunnen, the deepest and most vertical of the Bernese valleys. Four titles circle Oeschinen alone. Lake Oeschinen Loop walks the shoreline all the way round, Oeschinen Lake Lookout climbs the ridge trail to a viewpoint high above the water, Oeschinen Lake Stream sits beside the alpine stream that feeds it, and Oeschinen Lake Meadow simply lies down in the buttercups and looks at the turquoise. Watching those four in that order is close to spending a whole day up there.

Lauterbrunnen Valley Viewpoint is the outlier and, if you only watch one thing here, make it this. It is a fixed two minute loop from a viewpoint on the valley side, and the valley itself is a glacial trench with near-vertical walls and waterfalls coming off the rim in ribbons. In stereo the far wall sits exactly where it should sit, which is unnervingly distant and unnervingly tall at the same instant. Flat video flattens that into wallpaper. A headset does not, and the difference is not subtle.

This is summer material, and it looks it: open meadows, buttercups, grazing pasture and turquoise meltwater. The Swiss Alps hold that appearance from roughly late June, once the snow line has retreated above the tree line, until September, and the snow still visible in Alpine Meadows and Mighty Peaks is where it belongs, up on the tops rather than under your feet. Relaxing Swiss Meadow is four unhurried minutes of the same green hillside held from a fixed camera, and Swiss Village Adventure is the one that puts buildings back into it, hiking through meadows and the timber villages that sit between them.

New to the Swiss set? Start with Lauterbrunnen Valley Viewpoint, a fixed viewpoint over the most vertical valley in the Alps and the shortest route to understanding what depth does in a headset. Swiss Village Adventure is the one to follow it with if you would rather be walking: five minutes of meadow, trail and village.

The high country and the quiet sitting-still titles carry over into Mountains and Still & Calm.