Inside Holloway is an Unreal Engine VR experience set in a recreated women’s prison cell, where personal objects reveal authentic testimony from incarcerated women, transforming lived experience into immersive learning. The project is a University of Greenwich research collaboration between a small interdisciplinary team of practice researchers and creative professionals in narrative, animation and sound, and criminologists researching the incarceration of women.
Inside Holloway
Inside Holloway Video
A just over a minute excerpt from the opening of the experience, captured in-headset. The full piece runs approximately ten minutes. This recording is from an earlier build.
Inside Holloway Script
Please download the script PDF from the following link.
Note you will need a password to open the file, provided for you in the documentation we have sent across.
Any issues please contact Ryan Flynn on r.d.flynn@gre.ac.uk
Project Links
Inside Holloway - Quest 3 Executable Build (approx 254MB):
Unreal Engine 5.5.4, packaged Shipping arm64 for Meta Quest 3. Approximately 10 minutes runtime end to end. Packaged April 2026. This build uses controllers for navigation; we are in the process of porting across to hand-tracking currently and using OpenXR as the basis for ongoing interaction development.
Instructions:
You'll need: a Meta Quest 3, a Windows or macOS computer, and a USB-C cable. Installation takes about ten minutes.
1. Enable Developer Mode on the headset
Developer Mode requires a free Meta developer account. If you don't already have one, create an organisation at developers.meta.com — it takes a couple of minutes and needs no company details.
Then, in the Meta Horizon mobile app: Menu → Devices → select your headset → Headset Settings → Developer Mode → toggle on. Restart the headset.
2. Download
Download insideHolloway-arm64.apk. You'll get a single .apk file.
3. Install
Easiest route — SideQuest: install SideQuest Advanced from sidequestvr.com, connect the headset by USB and accept the "Allow USB debugging" prompt inside the headset, then drag the .apk onto the SideQuest window.
Command line: with the headset connected and USB debugging accepted, run
adb install insideHolloway-arm64.apk4. Launch
In the headset, open the app library and switch the source dropdown from "All" to Unknown Sources. Holloway will be listed there — it won't appear in your main library.
5. Before you start
This build of Inside Holloway uses controllers, but we are working on a hand-tracking version. The controller version is a proof of concept of the interaction methods, which we are developing further in the newer builds. So remember to grab your charged controllers for the experience, and use the trigger button(s) to interact with objects in the scene. This is a seated experience. You can reach out to interact with objects to activate sounds, but you cannot move around the environment.
Play in a well-lit room with roughly 2m × 2m of clear space. On first launch you'll be asked to set a boundary if you haven't already.
Inside Holloway - Unreal Project Source for Reference
(WARNING: Large Zip file, approx 2GB):
Unreal Engine 5.5.4.