Driving around the congested streets of Las Vegas during CES can make you nauseous — at the best of times. But do so with a virtual reality headset blocking your view? Sure, it’s a recipe for disaster.
I don’t have the strongest stomach; I carry Dramamine with me wherever I go. So with a little more worry that transparent CES 2023 I agreed to experience morning traffic on The Strip in the back of a car wearing a VR headset.
This isn’t just any car, though, and it’s not just any VR system. 1967 car Cadilla DeVille, is remarkable in many ways, but in this context, notable for its lack of technology. (Disturbingly, it also lacks a seat belt, which thankfully isn’t necessary these days.) Headphones are a thing. HTC VIVE seriescombined with a Holoride’s New Retrofit Bộa $199 add-on that lets you get an in-car VR experience on any car.
Image credits: Tim Stevens
Holoride’s debut was in collaboration with audiostarted company’s technology integration into its car last year.
Holoride CEO Nils Wollny told me, while they’re about to have more OEM partnerships (“we can’t announce this yet”), this retrofit kit makes for rapid expansion. , large-scale market reach of the product. Wollny calls it “an easy way for people who want to go Holoride to equip the car they have, so they don’t have to have the latest Audi.”
All you need is a place to mount the Holoride device, a high-quality, accelerometer-shaped object. GPS and a wireless module to connect to HTC Vive Flow. Stick it on the windshield, turn it on and you’re good to go. The data from that module drives the different app experiences offered by Holoride — all of which include some sort of visual cue to prevent motion sickness.
Image credits: Tim Stevens
I got a taste of what the retrofit package has to offer while sitting in the spacious back seat of the Cadillaca wide range of vinyl might have seen some experiences of a very different kind.
I started with Pixel Ripped 1995: On the Road. This is a Holoride-exclusive spinoff of the indie VR darling. Here you are playing a 2-D platformer on a virtual handheld game system (“Gear Kid Color”), sitting in the virtual back seat of a virtual car while your virtual parent trades idle chatter ahead.
As you actually drive through traffic, the game simulates a world around you: an idyllic, endless neighborhood. It looks nothing like the massive excess of Sin City. It matches the general layout of the street so that when the real car stops at the intersection, the virtual car does the same. The gameplay is basic but fun — better for miles than gazing out at a bottleneck.
In Cloudbreakers: Leaving Haven, a rogue-like shooter exclusive to Holoride, you control a giant robot through digital clouds, blasting wave after wave of geometric opponents. Around and below you, vertical and horizontal sweeping lines provide a representation of the street. When the car turns, the action in the game swings left or right to match.
The good news is, while playing those experiences and more, I never felt even the slightest bit nauseous. In fact, I get more motion sickness after 10 minutes in the back of a taxi on my way to my next appointment than I did in the 30 minutes I spent in that Cadillac wearing a VR headset.
The bad news is that there are currently no titles that are compelling enough to justify paying $19.99 monthly or $180 per year to gain access to Holoride’s service. Wollny says it is working with developers to add more titles to its library at an expected rate of new content every two weeks.
This simple experience may not be the answer. In my eyes, the killer app here is media consumption. Exit the game and you can mirror your smartphone into VR, jumping into any streaming app you like. Holoride software once again recreates the virtual landscape, like a giant theater screen floating on a moving background, meaning you can enjoy your content without distractions and motion sickness.
Next step? Wollny says they’re working to take smartphones out of that equation: “We’re currently planning on having a native movie or streaming app where you can also download sets the latest movies or TV shows and then just relax, sit back [and watch] on a virtual 180-inch screen.”
Retrofit kits are a great way to bring this technology to more people and let Holoride reach more customers.
However, Wollny told me that the addition of OEM partnerships remains a huge focus with Holoride working to make the integration as seamless as possible.
With more and more cars equipped with high-quality GPS and accelerometer sensors, adding assistance often requires only some software.
“We’ve lowered the barrier as much as possible for automakers to integrate our solution, because for them it’s a compelling solution for their passengers,” Wollny said. TechCrunch. “And, it’s an additional revenue stream for the mobile data they have. They provide the data to us; we share the revenue with them.”
More recurring revenue plus more fun in the backseat sounds like a win-win.
