Oculus Rift + Real Roller Coaster = Freaking Awesome!

I’ve been on real roller coasters, I’ve been on virtual simulator roller coasters and more recently I’ve been on VR roller coasters from the comfort of my own desk thanks in no small part to Oculus rift. Real roller coasters scared the life out of me, the simulator ones a load of fun and VR ones are mind bending at the best of times… so what happens if you put all three of these ideas together?

A team of researchers from the department of Virtual Design at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, have created an awesome project that throws you around real world roller coasters while subjecting you to a virtual track through the Oculus Rift! Why look at the dull real world when you can get the visuals of being on a flying horse and cart, dashing through an asteroid belt or chasing dragons, even better why not also give you a hand-held gun and let you shoot at virtual things while trying to throw up in the real world!

“Then, on April 7, we actually became VR coaster pioneers – being the very first people to experience an Oculus Rift VR-ride on a real roller coaster, synchronized to the real track,” Wagner wrote on the project’s website. “On that day, we all felt that we were laying the foundation of something very big. Over the following weeks and months, we have been performing more than a hundred test rides and have been making some amazing discoveries.”

“Other than riding an Oculus Rift coaster while sitting at home in front of your desktop, there is no motion sickness or dizziness happening when experiencing this on a real coaster,” the website states. “If the VR ride is synchronized to the real coaster, the sense of balance actually delivers exactly the right feedback that fits the VR simulation.”

They strap a laptop to the roller coaster to run the VR side of things, use sensor data to synchronize the experiences, strap you in with the Oculus Rift and off you go. I think this team have hit on a huge idea here, no doubt Disney and other major theme park operators will be knocking on their door very soon.

Thank you IGN for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of IGN.