An Amazing VR Piano Learning Game On the Oculus Quest 3 and 2 - PianoVision Review

If you’ve ever wanted to learn the Piano, or you already know how to play and want a great new way to practice your skills, then you might have heard of the VR Piano Learning Game called PianoVision on the Oculus Quest 2 and 3.

PianoVision is a VR Piano simulator that lets you play the piano completely within your Meta Quest headset in both Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality spaces. It’s pretty incredible, even if just to see how far this technology has come and how it can be applied to learning things like the Piano. Even though there are some drawbacks this alone makes PianoVision one of the best VR music games out there.

PianoVision definitely does what it says it does. It allows you to play a VR Piano with just your hands and a Quest headset, and yet at the same time it doesn’t contain all of the features that you would expect from an app that is meant to teach the Piano to someone who doesn’t know how.

So if you want to play some songs on a Virtual Reality Piano then PianoVision is fantastic, though it really stretches the limits of what hand tracking is capable of. At the same time PianoVision needs some new features to be considered the best VR Piano Learning game that it can be.

To find out why this is keep reading this PianoVision VR review. So if you’ve ever wondered “Is PianoVision worth it?” here is where you will find out.

PianoVision Review - Setting up the VR Piano

Luckily setting up the Virtual Piano was very easy.

You can use the virtual keyboard, a virtual grand piano, or use PianoVision by connecting a physical MIDI keyboard to your headset. For this review we’ll just be covering playing the VR Piano with the virtual keyboard, but keep in mind that a physical MIDI keyboard is also an option.

Regardless of which type of keyboard you use you’ll need to set up hand tracking on your Quest device.

If you’ve never done so before you’ll be prompted to do so when you start PianoVision, and the whole process as well as how to use hand tracking is very well explained by Meta’s handtracking setup guide. It’s relatively painless too and only takes a few minutes.

Setting up hand tracking on the Oculus Quest 2 or 3 is incredibly easy

Once you’re done with that and start PianoVision again. Now it’s time to set up the keyboard.

Just like with setting up hand tracking setting up your VR Piano in PianoVision is pretty straightforward and guided by the application itself.

There are a ton of different keyboard sizes to choose from, and later on when we actually play some songs notes that are not included on the smaller sized keyboards are played automatically. So if you don’t have a lot of space to play the VR Piano then no worries.

A big keyboard can be pretty intimidating, and so a smaller sized keyboard might be better for a beginner. Either way the easier songs won’t use a lot of keys.

When you select your keyboard size you place the left edge by holding your left finger up to where you want it and pressing a button with your right finger. Then you hold your right finger where the right edge of the keyboard should go and press a button with your left finger.

It’s pretty easy and then voila! A VR keyboard is floating in front of you.

Setting up your VR Piano is simple as well and very quick too

Pretty awesome right? You can also place the VR Piano keyboard on top of a flat surface like a desk, which can give you a little more tactile feeling when pressing the keys.

Though the default position of the keys might seem a little off, you can always adjust them with the adjustment menu off to the left side of your piano.

You can adjust your Virtual Reality Piano for comfort whenever you like

A video will play explaining the basics of PianoVision, but you can skip it if you want. It’s really not that complicated.

Well, you’d think a VR Piano Learning game would be kind of complicated, right? Unfortunately that’s not quite the case here. As I’ve mentioned before PianoVision is more of a VR Piano simulator than a guided VR Piano Learning experience.

PianoVision Review - Not Quite A VR Piano Teaching Game

So if you want to learn the piano entirely in VR, here’s where things sort of fall apart.

When you look through the song selection menu you’ll see some exercises, which are basically cords and progressions you can use to limber up and get to know your keys, and you’ll see songs separated into various levels.

Level 0 comes recommended for beginners to the piano, and I’d go so far as to recommend them to seasoned piano players that are using a Virtual Piano as well. More on that later, but for now let’s just say a virtual piano has some remarkable differences from a physical one and takes some time to get used to.

There are literally hundreds of songs to play in PianoVision

Starting a song is easy, and so is playing one.

Once it starts the notes will slide towards your piano keys, and the piano keys you should press are highlighted. Just press the keys as they come to the keyboard and before you know it you’ll find yourself playing music!

Playing music in VR is an incredible feeling, at least at first

This is pretty incredible, especially the first time you try it. By just putting your headset on you’ve got a whole VR Piano in front of you, wherever you are, and even if you’ve never touched a piano before in your life you can be playing a classical tune in minutes.

The technology is frankly incredible, and the fact that you can play with just your hands and empty space is even more so using the hand tracking technology of the Oculus Quest 3 or 2. It’s a joy to be able to make music so easily.

Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that PianoVision is perfect. For instance if you’re set on teaching yourself the piano in Virtual Reality. This app won’t stand on its own as a teacher.

Sure you can play a huge library of songs with it, but there’s no resources here to teach you the basics of how to play the piano. No guides on how to position your hands on the keys or set your wrists for optimal playing. There’s not even a tutorial on the setup of a keyboard or how octaves work.

You’ll quickly find that PianoVision is only a VR Piano Learning application as far as it will show you how to play songs by presenting the keys to press to you. It won’t teach you how to play the piano in Virtual Reality all on its own.

PianoVision is more about playing songs than teaching you how to play the Piano in VR

Of course playing the Piano is pretty enjoyable, especially with so little time or energy invested into doing it, but if you want to learn piano playing skills that are transferrable to a real piano then you’ll have to look a little further than just this game.

Still, with enough practice you could memorize some of these songs, though if you try to play them on a real keyboard you might find that you’ll still be playing them like a beginner even with hours of practice in PianoVision, and that’s the most disheartening thing to say about this game in this PianoVision review.

PianoVision Review - It’s Incredibly Impressive But Not Ideal

The quickest thing you’ll notice when playing songs in this game, and especially so if you’ve played a real piano before, is how hand tracking is not completely ideal for precise actions like pressing the keys on a keyboard.

If you hen peck the keys with your index fingers you’ll find them to be pretty responsive, but when you try to use all of your fingers to press them like you would when playing a piano properly, you’ll find that your other fingers don’t press the keys are responsively or reliably.

While this technology is incredible and has come a very long way since its inception, the Quest’s hand tracking won’t follow each of your fingers exactly, and so you’ll often find yourself flubbing notes despite your fingers being in the right place.

Missing a note because your pinky isn’t being tracked precisely is no fun

This on top of PianoVision’s lack of teaching resources for newcomers doesn’t make it an ideal VR Piano Learning app. As negative as this sounds I’d still like to say that playing a piano completely in Virtual Reality is still amazing, and will probably just get better over time as it improves.

There are an absolute ton of songs to play in this game, and if you’re not taking it too seriously it’s still a lot of fun to play the piano in Virtual Reality.

Still, PianoVision is overall better off as a way to practice the piano than to learn how to play. Expert piano players will also probably become frustrated with the occasionally flubbing due to hand tracking, though it’s by no means impossible to use, just occasionally annoying.

You can also just play freely as you like with no song to guide you, or change a variety of settings to make the songs harder to play and remove some of the teaching features, like highlighted keys.

There are a lot of options to make playing the keyboard more immersive, or easier for beginners

You can even change the sound of your piano to different sorts of keyboarded instruments, or even change it completely to something ridiculous like the horns or the drums.

Another fantastic option is to turn off the passthrough Mixed Reality view of the game completely and immersive yourself in Virtual Reality by putting you and your piano inside of a gigantic concert hall.

This is a great feature if you don’t like the look of Mixed Reality passthrough, and especially if you’re using a Quest 2, which has considerably worse looking passthrough compared to the Quest 3.

Now you too can play the piano inside of a massive concert hall wherever you are

Overall it’s no surprise that the introductory video and the game itself encourage you to use it with a MIDI keyboard, and seems to intend the virtual keyboard as more of an introduction to the concept of a VR piano app than as the primary way to use it.

Still, for the low price of 9.99$ PianoVision is the number one Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality piano experience on the Quest, and on any VR platform.

It’s easy to get into and a great way to mess around on the piano without having to invest tons of money into getting a physical one. So if you want an easy and portable way to practice the keyboard or want to give the VR piano a try as a way to see if you’d like to take learning the piano seriously, then PianoVision is the number one way to go.

Even just as a curiosity it is incredible that what this application does is even possible, and it’s a fun time to just mess around in if you’re curious. Whether or not you decide to pick up PianoVision and give it a try, enjoy yourself out there in Virtual Reality.