Alton Towers, the UK theme park, is to launch the first ever virtual reality roller-coaster this year. They are re-purposing the old Air roller-coaster, in which you are strapped in and ‘fly’ about horizontally, but rather than look at the other rides of the park you will have a VR headset attached to your noggin, allowing you to fly through any landscape they can program.
The new ride, Galatica, will use a bespoke version of the Gear VR headsets and will transport riders across the galaxy to the farthest reaches of space.
“Augmenting VR with the synchronisation of the ride makes Galactica truly unique,” explained Simon Reveley, Director of Figment Productions, the company behind the Galactica VR experience. “We can exaggerate the motions you feel. We can make you feel like you’re doing full 360-degree turns with slight movements to the left and right,” he added.
Galactica will launch this April.
Source: Digital Spy / BBC
RudeAwakening
Sounds great and safe!
JustTaylorNow
Hopefully no one loses a leg this time or should I say hopefully no one loses an eye (too soon?)
Forrest_01
So the difference is that you just wont see it coming when the ride crashes now! ;)
I am obviously poking fun at the atrocities of the smiler ride last year (too soon?), but this could actually be half decent. Gimmicky, but decent.
Amphlett
You’ll just see a “Blue Screen Of Death”.
Tuffcub
You win the internetz today for that comment
Amphlett
How long before one of the 17 year old summer workers streams some pron through the headsets? I wouldn’t want to be shaken around in that VR experience!
JR.
The only issue I have with this (and public VR in general) is wearing a headset that hundreds of thousands of strangers have worn before me. I know they’ll probably clean them (you’d hope) and I could bring some handy wipes but there are some very unsanitary people out there. I’d feel real uncomfortable putting that on my head/face.
Forrest_01
With the mention of Handy Wipes, yours & Amphlett’s comments almost go hand in hand! ;)
TSBonyman
Out of respect for the victims of the recent accident i will restrain myself from making the obvious joke, dammit.