We ride Magic Mountain and Air with Gear VR headsets strapped to our faces
Having your stomach turned over and your heart in your mouth just isn’t quite exhilarating enough these days. It was only a matter of time before we arrived at roller coaster VR.
Enter Galactica, the UK’s first roller coaster experience powered by a Samsung Gear VR headset and Alton Tower’s latest attempt at making people poop themselves. It’s basically the park’s veteran Air ‘flying’ ride with VR headsets thrown in to turn it into a journey through space.
And on the other side of the pond, there’s Samsung’s Gear VR experiences on rides at nine of Six Flags’ theme parks in the US, including Magic Mountain in its LA park.
Both are among the first to trial this new type of theme park thrill, with Thorpe Park in the UK joining in with Derren Brown’s HTC Vive-powered Ghost Train later this spring. The real question: is it thrilling enough to become a permanent fixture?
Lee Bell rides Galactica (UK)
Once I’m strapped in with a Gear VR on my face, Galactica’s VR experience is guided by an “on-board artificial intelligence” that transports me from a space station launch pad and up and around space.
Matching the twists and turns of the ride, the VR tour takes me face-first through the stratosphere of exploding planets as I physically feel the effects of the roller coaster tearing around the track.
And I have to say that Galactica doesn’t necessarily benefit hugely from the addition of VR.
Yes, the VR experience is improved by the exhilaration of my body being thrown around in the real world, adding to the digital experience, but while I’m flying around the track enjoying the content projected at me, it’s pretty impossible to shrug off that consciousness; the knowledge that I know the experience isn’t actually real. While Galactica’s VR experience is immersive, there was always part of my brain wondering what’s happening to my body in the real world.
Perhaps I’m just nosey, but my biggest mistake was taking the headset off for my last ride, and seeing what was happening in the real world. I was just as content, if not more, in the experience without the VR.
This could be telling of VR (or mobile VR at least); that it isn’t truly realistic enough yet, or that as humans we will always be aware of the headset, that half the experience isn’t real, and what we truly want is a real experience.
Lily Prasuethsut rides Magic Mountain (LA)
