Review: Everest - The First Ascent by Eclipso
Image: Eclipso
Everest: The First Ascent is the latest immersive VR production from French producers Eclipso and Small Creative. Fresh off a debut at the Venice International Film Festival as part of Venice Immersive, the experience is set to run alongside Titanic: Echos from the Past and Colosseum: The Legendary Arena at Eclipso's permanent Camden High Street venue from the end of September.
Across the 35-minute experience, visitors follow in the footsteps of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in 1953 as they became the first people to successfully reach the summit of Everest, travelling alongside the pair as their expedition unfolds.
For Everest: The First Ascent, Eclipso has opted for PICO 4 Ultra Enterprise headsets over the HTC Vive headsets used in their other experiences. These newer headsets offer much-improved image resolution over previous generations of VR technology, and make every icicle, glacier and patch of untouched snow appear that much crisper. This extra clarity proves particularly effective here, with the experience relying heavily on stunning 360-degree vistas and a grand sense of scale to render its inhospitable environments.
Image: Eclipso
With headsets on, groups are ushered down a virtual corridor before finding themselves gathered around a campfire alongside Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. The opening scene follows Norgay and Hillary on their respective journeys to Kathmandu, albeit via very different modes of transport.
For Hillary, it's the relative luxury of a train as it banks around the terraced rice fields built into the slopes of the Himalayan mountains. For Norgay, it's on foot alongside a herd of cows through the forest outside the city as they transport the staggering amount of equipment needed for their upcoming ascent.
With plans finalised at the British Embassy in Kathmandu, the expedition party set off to Everest Base Camp via the Tengboche Monastery, where Norgay prays for safe passage in one of the experience's most reflective scenes. Before too long, they've traded the comfort of Kathmandu for canvas tents some 5,000 metres above sea level. With this, the environment becomes noticeably harsher as they continue to climb.
Image: Eclipso
For the pair, rare moments of solace come in the form of meals and tea prepared by other members of the expedition party on their route, but it's an unforgiving environment they find themselves in, and it's made all the more dangerous by the hazards they encounter along the way - including claustrophobic ice tunnels, hastily erected, vertigo-inducing bridges over ravines, and the ever-present threat of avalanches or the ground giving way.
Visually, the sweeping vistas that Hillary and Norgay encounter on their ascent and eventual summit are beautifully realised, with the 360-degree perspective making it possible for audiences to appreciate the scale of the landscape in a way that a conventional screen can't.
Image: Eclipso
While free-roaming VR is now a familiar format to many, with 'metaverse' zones having featured in immersive exhibitions like Cleopatra: The Experience and The Last Days of Pompeii, Eclipso's body of work has consistently delivered something of a much higher quality, in large part due to its massive scope and brilliant attention to detail.
With Everest: The First Ascent, Eclipso continues this streak and delivers another standout virtual reality experience that's up there with some of the best on offer anywhere in London. While it's far more contemplative than the action-packed Colosseum: The Legendary Arena, which runs alongside Everest at the company's Camden Town venue, it's nonetheless a wonderfully crafted piece of virtual reality that allows audiences to experience something they would never otherwise be able to.
★★★★
[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]
Everest: The First Ascent runs at Eclipso on Camden High Street daily from 30th September 2026. Tickets are priced from £25.00 per person and can be booked via feverup.com
