If virtual reality just isn't immersive enough for you yet, the combination of a VR space walk and a 'weightlessness' chair could change your mind.
Created in collaboration with the BBC, Rewind:VR’s 15-minute space walk experience ‘Home’ is terrifying - in a good way. With a rumble pack behind you, a HTC Vive headset and two controllers, the premise is that you're an astronaut with a mission to check the exterior status of the ISS. Using the controls, you can pull yourself out of the ISS, into virtual reality space. Because there’s no sound in space, the headphones play white noise during your descent.
You then have to manoeuvre yourself around the ISS, trying not to be phased by the fact it looks like you’re about to fall into a black abyss of nothingness. Reaching for a toolkit to the side of you, the box suddenly spirals out of control - and an explosion (cue: squealing) throws you into nothingness. This is where the spinning happens. Then, after the dizzying spinning taking you closer to your death slows, you have steer your way back to the ISS using your jetpack, trying not to panic too much. “We put astronauts through it and they felt it was the real deal!” Jude Forbes at Rewind:VR said in the WIRED2016 Test Lab.
But what of the expensive chair? The Elysium chair is designed to make you feel weightless, evoking a feeling akin to being in a flotation tank. It’s very comfortable, but the balancing requirement of the chair can often leave you feeling tense rather than relaxed.
Read more: This £20,000 chair is designed to make you feel weightless
Designed by British Designer Dr David Wicket, the chair’s ability to make you feel weightless is based on ten years of research. This, combined with a visual stimulus that makes you think you’re floating, is unnerving.
‘Home’ is fantastic, though it stands more as a short movie to watch once than to play over and over. Like most VR headsets, you’re tethered to a computer which limits the experience somewhat, and the controls require a lot of space meaning the arms on the £20,000 chair constantly got in our way. Sitting in it while in a VR space walk exaggerated the detachment from stable ground to an extent that it does make you feel very sick afterwards, a reaction that programmers try to limit within VR games.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
