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Industry defining experiences
“As we’re all dusting ourselves off and preparing for the world to fully reopen, we felt that it would be helpful to look at the current and future trends of virtual reality in the FEC and LBE sectors”, says Gregg Katano, SVP US Operations, HOLOGATE.
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n order to assess the current status of virtual reality (VR) and the projection for the future it always good to revisit where it has come from. Let’s take a quick moment to look at the evolution of VR.
Virtual reality first entered the market as an amusement platform in October 1991 with ‘Virtuality’, a line of virtual reality gaming machines and games produced by Virtuality Group. It utilised the virtual reality headset, the Visette (1000 series) followed later by the Visette (2000 series). Even with the lack of resolution and software support, the experience proved to be draw with consumers as they enjoyed venturing into a virtual playing environment. Yet the hardware proved temperamental and expensive. The Walt Disney Company was one of the first theme parks and entertainment corporations to explore the opportunities of virtual reality with the development of its ‘Disney Vision’ headset (which needed to be suspended due to its cumbersome size and weight) and then the launch of its indoor interactive theme park, DisneyQuest
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in1998. Sadly, due to the lack of continued funding and innovation, and the collapse of the management team behind the concept, only one of over twenty planned facilities ever opened and they closed its doors in 2016. Thomas Wagner invented the virtual reality roller coaster. His company, VR Coaster, consisted of riders on a physical roller coaster experiencing a virtual reality experience while wearing virtual reality headsets. Initially, the setup was problematic as the headsets were connected to computers mounted inside of the rollercoasters, which were affected by the heavy vibrations and the cable connections would be a serious safety hazard. They would overcome these problems once mobile virtual reality headsets came out eliminating the need for the computers and the cabling. In September of 2015, they launched the very first VR Coaster in Europa Park in Germany. The video experience in the VR headsets would be perfectly timed to the drops, twists and turns of the coaster but the riders would be immersed in an entirely new world.
SUMMER PART 1 2021
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