Cosmic XR is a mixed reality app for Meta Quest, designed to bring the solar system—and the grandeur of outer space—into your living room.
Virtual reality has always been uniquely suited to conveying a sense of scale, making it a natural fit for space visualization. The genre has deep roots: classics like Titans of Space and Universe Sandbox were some of the earliest VR experiences.
Both originally launched on PC VR, and while they eventually made their way to Meta Quest, neither has seen a substantial update in years.
Enter Cosmic XR, which picks up where those early apps left off. Building on the legacy, it uses modern graphics and VR features like passthrough and hand tracking to present the solar system, the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, and even the black hole Sagittarius A.
Reach Out and Touch the Solar System
I spent some time with Cosmic XR today.
The experience begins with a wide-angle view of the Milky Way galaxy appearing in the middle of your room. From there, you can switch to visualizations of different nebulae, Sagittarius A (the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy), or the solar system. The 3D solar system model responds naturally to your touch. Pick it up, rotate it, and zoom in or out.
Cosmic XR offers both a schematic and a “realistic” view of the solar system. The first mode focuses on the relative arrangement of the planets, while the second displays their true-to-scale distances and orbits.
Want to get granular? There’s a mode for that too. You can select individual planets, view them up close, and get a sense of their wildly different sizes. Even Jupiter’s moons—Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa—are rendered in detail and can be examined or enlarged. Clean, unobtrusive text overlays deliver facts and context without breaking the immersion.
The vastness and beauty of the universe brought to life
However, you should not expect a gigantic universe simulator Ă la Space Engine, in which space can be freely explored as a 3D map. Cosmic XR pursues a different goal: to make the solar system and space as accessible and aesthetically pleasing as possible.
In many visualizations, the transparency of the passthrough can be adjusted so that you can switch seamlessly between VR and MR. Ambient music, sometimes reminiscent of the movie Interstellar, makes Cosmic XR a meditative experience.
“I wanted people to feel the scale and beauty of the universe—not just see it, but touch it,” said Yoon Park, the creator of Cosmic XR. “With hand interaction and mixed reality, space becomes a personal, tangible experience.”
Whether you are trying out VR for the first time or have been using it for many years: Cosmic XR is a timelessly beautiful experience that belongs in every VR collection.
You can buy Cosmic XR from the Horizon Store.
