What Are the Advantages of virtual roller coaster simulator?
The Emergence of Virtual Reality Coasters and Their Benefits
Among the more popular experiences available on consumer virtual reality (VR) systems are roller coaster rides. By strapping on headsets, users can take simulated rides aboard thrill machines while remaining firmly tethered to their living room couches.
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But what if passengers aboard actual roller coasters wore virtual reality goggles? That’s the idea behind VR coasters, a novelty that had its moment in the spotlight but has mostly been dismissed as a fad that never quite lived up to its promise.
Rather than simulating roller coaster rides on terra firma, VR coasters use the physical sensations and G-forces of real roller coasters and marry them to visual (and, in some cases, audio) content to create high-thrills, virtual journeys. This concept, however, often falls short of an optimal experience.
Virtual reality coasters are somewhat similar to motion simulator attractions, such as Star Tours at the Disney parks and Despicable Me Minion Mayhem at the Universal Parks. They use motion bases that move in tandem with point-of-view media to create the illusion that guests are participating in high-speed action sequences. Instead of personal VR goggles, motion simulator attractions project the media onto large screens.
Parks and designers experimented with VR coasters, but the concept really took hold in 2016 when Six Flags began offering VR as an option at many of its parks. Among the rides that included VR were Superman the Ride at Six Flags New England in Massachusetts and New Revolution at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California. None of the Six Flags parks now have VR coasters. Another high-profile VR coaster was Kraken Unleashed at SeaWorld Orlando, which took riders aboard the floorless, looping coaster on an underwater journey to encounter the mythical Kraken creature. The park has since removed the VR option from the ride.
Advantages of Virtual Roller Coaster Simulators
If it’s done well (and that's a big if), virtual roller coaster simulator can realistically transport passengers to alternate realities and turbocharge the experience with the kinetic sensations of a real thrill ride. They can combine the best of both worlds by delivering an exhilarating coaster ride with a convincing story-based experience.
Motion simulator rides can blast riders into space and mimic a freefall off of a skyscraper (like Universal’s Spider-Man ride). But the motion bases on simulator attractions never actually move more than a few inches in any direction and do so at relatively slow speeds. Coasters, on the other hand, can really climb the height of a skyscraper and plunge as well as reach speeds that would warrant a ticket on most highways. They can turn passengers in any number of directions, including upside down.
Part of the appeal of VR coasters is that they allow parks to take existing coasters, overlay them with a VR story, and market the rides as “new,” themed attractions. By changing out the storyline from season to season, the same ride could be the focus of multiple marketing campaigns.
Challenges of Virtual Reality Coasters
In practice, VR coasters have presented several challenges:
Perhaps the biggest drawback is that VR coasters can be an operational and logistical nightmare for parks, and therefore for their visitors. One of the critical metrics for an attraction is its throughput—the number of people that can ride it each hour. The amount of time it takes to distribute VR headsets, get riders properly outfitted and synced with the system, collect the VR headsets after the ride, and clean them between rides cuts the throughput by approximately 50 percent.
Parks need to allocate a lot more employees–at least twice as many–to distribute the goggles, help riders adjust them, and everything else involved with operating a VR coaster.
Latency can wreak havoc with VR coasters. Latency refers to the lag time between the action that passengers see in their VR headsets and the corresponding motion they experience aboard the coaster. If the visuals don't precisely match the coaster ride, passengers can experience discomfort, including nausea.
Other technical and practical problems can occur as well. For example, points of reference can shift during a ride, causing disorientation. Headsets can fail mid-ride, leaving passengers with blank screens. Between the high speeds and forces that coasters deliver and the challenges inherent in using one-size-fits-all headsets, the equipment can come loose and even fall off of passengers during rides.
While VR technology has advanced, the imagery can often appear primitive, low-resolution, dark, blurry, or have any number of other qualities that render it less than convincing.
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Where to Ride Virtual Reality Coasters
While many parks tested the waters with VR coasters and subsequently removed the technology, a few remain. In the U.S., there are a couple to try:
The Great Lego Race at Legoland Florida: Passengers are transformed into Lego mini-figures and race against other figures in vehicles on the ground and in the air. Note that while the coaster has a 42-inch height requirement, riders must be 48 inches to ride with the VR headset.
The Big Apple Coaster Virtual Reality Experience at the New York New York Casino: Riders chase alien invaders who have entered the airspace above the Vegas Strip. The casino charges $20 to ride the VR coaster. That’s $5 more than the already hefty price it costs for boarding the coaster without the VR option.
Beyond the U.S., there are more VR coaster options. Among the choices are:
Europa Park in Rust, Germany, was the first park to offer a VR coaster, and it continues to provide VR on its Alpenexpress Coastiality and Eurosat Coastiality coasters.
Dubai Drone at VR Park Dubai in the United Arab Emirates
Gods of Egypt - Battle for Eternity at Lionsgate Entertainment World in Guangdong, China
Batman: Arkham Asylum at Parque Warner in Madrid, Spain
Parks and ride designers have incorporated virtual reality on other rides with varying degrees of success. These include drop tower rides, spinning rides, and motion simulator attractions. VR has met with more critical success and guest satisfaction when it is used in custom-made, free-roaming VR experiences such as ones offered by The Void.
Why VR Improves Roller Coasters
One week after riding The New Revolution at Six Flags Magic Mountain, I'm still thinking about how much I enjoyed my first ride on a virtual reality roller coaster.
As I mentioned in my review of The New Revolution, I was skeptical about whether VR on a coaster would be too extreme. Like many other doubters, I wondered if I'd come off the coaster ready to lose my lunch. But as I rode The New Revolution, I discovered that the addition of virtual reality actually helped make this one of the most comfortable rides I'd ever experienced on a roller coaster.
Virtual Reality completely obstructs your view of the "real" world with whatever video is shown on the VR screen that strapped across your eyes. Augmented reality does not block your entire view of whatever is around you, but uses clear or partial screens to impose video imagery into whatever you see. Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) is what VR and AR typically use to create whatever video you see on those screens.
The New Revolution, like all of Six Flags' new coasters, uses Virtual Reality, meaning that you won't see any of the views fans are used to seeing on these coasters, unless you decided not to wear the provided VR headsets, of course. No one has developed an Augmented Reality coaster yet, but that's the next step I cannot wait to experience. AR promises the potential of the best of both worlds—the heights and other practical visuals from riding a roller coaster, coupled with CGI storytelling.
But let's get back to the skepticism. I think a large part of that grew from movie fans' frustration with how filmmakers have abused CGI over the years. Since almost all VR relies on CGI, the sins of the one are often attributed to the other. It's bad enough to sit in a stationary theater and watch CGI from directors who ignore the laws of physics. No one wants to do while riding a moving roller coaster at the same time.
But putting VR on a roller coaster forces creators to obey those laws of physics that they can get away with ignoring in movies. If you are going to synchronize the action on the VR screen with the movement of a roller coaster, you can't start moving and gyrating in unnatural ways. You have to go with the flow of the physical coaster. And that enforces a more natural sequence of motion in the VR, one that removes much of the discomfort that moviegoers feel with poorly-storyboarded CGI.
With the motion on screen in sync with motion of the ride, we also can avoid the physical disconnect that viewers typically feel when they see wildly gyrating POV on the screen while sitting in stationary seats. I think many fans feared that they would be seeing that same, physics-defying CGI in their VR headsets, while riding a coaster whose movements wouldn't—and couldn't—match the crazy action on screen.
That is why so many fans have feared VR coasters, in my opinion. But in reality, roller coasters improve VR by forcing directors to behave themselves.
And VR can help improve roller coasters by injecting some fresh excitement into aging mid-range rides whose specs too often leave them in the "no fans land" between family coasters and the latest world-class thrill rides. Smart use of VR can leave fans wanting to ride again and again on coasters that otherwise might quickly lose their appeal. Heck, on a VR coaster, maybe some squeamish riders might even be able to overcome their fear of heights and agree to ride. After all, they'll never see where they are above the ground.
If VR allows parks to justify rebuilding tracks, installing new trains, and otherwise refurbishing coasters to provide the smoother ride that best complements a VR installation, that's great news even for fans who decline to ride with the headsets, too.
So instead of VR and coasters creating the most unholy mash-up since Batman fought Superman, VR coasters give fans that business-school cliché—a "win-win."
With The New Revolution, Six Flags has given skeptics reason to believe that VR and coasters can be a great mix. If enough fans give VR coasters a try, maybe companies will hire more designers and developers to advance VR storytelling in theme parks, creating new adventures for fans to enjoy. That's a trend that even the most skeptical fans ought to be willing to embrace.
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