I wasn't sure how this would be as experiences go but there is some cool stuff in here. But this is also very qualified. I'd like to see the developer either fix some stuff or make it more intuitive if I am missing it. If I am, please reply and I'll amend the review.
The good - The model of the Hoover Dam is beautiful. It lacks some detail but I don't know how much the extra detail would enhance the experience. But the dam, the power lines, the structures, all look great. The information on how it works is good too. It's an interesting education piece for people unfamiliar with it.
The bad - The really impressive thing about Hoover Dam is the size. It's massive. With such a gorgeous render, I wanted to experience it in full size. The closest I ever got to that was at the Transformer location where you are near the water, the car is parked near, and you look up to see the dam, bridge, and power lines. All the other locations shrink the scale way down where it just looks like a model. It would be nice to have the kind of teleporting I thought was included where you can move around the structure/scene like in most other apps, where you are normal human scale, and let you experience the dam in all its huge glory. Another thing to consider adding would be a way to dynamically scale what you view - from desktop model size to real size. That would be very cool.
The narrator ends up being a little annoying especially if you accidentally select something twice and she tells you that you already heard about it. Just my opinion but if you select something, she should just tell you about it without questioning if that is what you really want to do or reminding you already did it. She should also not keep prompting you to do something when you are just looking around. It's the thing about human narration - you get annoyed if they nag you.
It feels like this experience is something you would find at the visitor center to give you a broad overview of what the dam does and how. I would like to be normal human size and experience it from up on the road across the top of the dam, at the spillways, on the top of the water inlets, at the visitor center, etc. You can lean in close and see all those things but they are tiny and toy-like. The cars going across the bridge are even cool. But I'd like to be human size on the bridge with the cars going by and look down to the gorge below. That would be another impressive thing to see but I couldn't sort any way to do it.
Also, I think the way of interaction is inventive, but I'd rather have a clear view without the balls that say bridge, dam, transformer, etc. I'd like to use standard transporting and like many of the other VR educational experiences, go to highlight rings that have info on sign boards you can read or have the narrator read. But it would be nice to freely move about the model and view it at different scales - but definitely at human scale.
Again, if that capability is in there, please let me know how to do it. I'm going to go back in and hunt some more. The intro where navigation is explained is also a bit tedious but at least you can skip it if you want. I listened through and the stuff about slowing animations and playing them forward and backward didn't seem useful in the actual experience. Similar for grabbing things. I did grab the dam and could scale that once I put it on the Place Here thing, but couldn't make it huge and out of context it's kind of uninteresting. The animations of stuff blowing into bits are kind of out of place in this experience. I'd ditch them. Also, somewhere in the narration mention is made of megawatts per minute or hour. I forget which. Time is already included in the unit watts. It's not dependent on time.
All in all this has a lot of promise. It would be a go-to experience to demo VR to people if I could just experience it at human scale and roam to lots of locations to look around. I hope this isn't too negative and you'll consider fixing it up - or let me know what I'm missing. It's a really good model. I'd love to see it in all its glory.
I'm going to recommend it but with caveats. I think most won't be too interested but I think the appeal would go way up with a little rework. But for the price, what the heck?
