The automaker has added a new option to their Porsche Experience Center in Carson, California. Called “Cosmic Chase,” the experience places you inside of a Cayenne S SUV, straps a Holoride VR headset on your face, and places a controller in your hand. Through the headset, you’ll see a sci-fi action experience, using your controller to shoot through robotic space worms. While the action is happening, the driver will be racing through the PEC road course, so that the twists and turns you see through the headset match up to the tugging of momentum in the car.
Nils Wollny, CEO and co-founder of Munich-based startup Holoride, explained to MotorTrend that this is what separates Porsche’s experience from traditional VR gaming.
“The breakthrough was basically taking software that picks up the motions of the car and anticipates how it's moving and modifying this for [entertainment]-content purposes. So that's why you have a very, very low latency because it's reacting super quick to what happens in the car, in the central computing entity of the car. Signals are sent [from the car], and our software reacts immediately, so almost in real time.”
The game is likened to something that you’d see at Disney World or other large scale amusement parks. You know the ones, where you sit in a car, go down a track, and shoot things. But since it’s digital, the action you encounter will be far more dynamic.
One session of Cosmic Chase takes about 10 minutes and will cost $49 a session, currently only available at the Porsche Experience Center.
We’ve tried VR gaming before, quite a bit actually, and we think it’s a fantastic new way to experience entertainment. Seeing it cleverly paired with the movement of a vehicle seems like a tremendously clever way to enhance things further. We’re not sure it’s worth 50 bucks, but it's a good idea all the same.
This did remind us of something we should touch on: this only is a good idea because is a closed experience. There have been talks in the past about creating a similar thing for ride-sharing services like Uber. The idea is to provide entertainment to a passenger while driving them to their destination. That is an awful idea, however. To play VR, you’re essentially blindfolding and deafening yourself. Doing so in the back of a stranger's car, registered with the ride-share or not, this sounds quite dangerous. They could intentionally go slower or go longer routes to run the meter, or even take you somewhere else entirely. No Thank You. But in a closed, controlled environment like that, there’s MUCH less risk of such things.
