VR Coaster

A virtual reality roller coaster is a special kind of amusement park ride attraction, consisting of a roller coaster facility or ride that can be experienced with virtual reality headsets. The term VR Coaster derives from the abbreviation of virtual reality and roller coaster. The first publicly operated VR Coasters have been opened in late 2015. Since then, several theme parks all over the world have been adapting this technology to extend their existing coaster facilities.

While virtual reality roller coaster simulations quickly became quite popular after the appearance of the Oculus Rift, it showed that dizziness and motion sickness, known as Virtual reality sickness, would be a major problem. This was caused by the offset between the simulated motion in VR and the lack of real motion, as the inner Sense of balance wouldn't feel the appropriate forces and turns. In order to test if this could be overcome by synchronizing VR movement to real motion, a research group of the University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern, led by Prof. Dipl.-Des. Thomas Wagner, together with roller coaster manufacturer Mack Rides and Europa-Park, has been conducting experiments on actual roller coaster facilities since early 2014. It showed that, with a precise synchronization, not only the nausea would disappear, but also a new kind of attraction was created as, for the first time, this setup allowed for a simulation ride to feature continuous g-forces, zero gravity and drops (or so called Air-time).

Still, the technical setup of the 2014 experiments was not feasible yet for a permanent installation. Most of all, mounting a computer on a coaster train would not have worked due to the continuous heavy vibrations; also the usual cable connection of a classical VR headset like the Oculus Rift would have meant a serious safety hazard. Wagner and his team could eventually overcome these problems by deploying so called mobile VR headsets like the Samsung Gear VR, where the entire image generation happens directly inside of the actual headset. The very first VR Coaster installations have been opened to the public in late 2015, starting at Europa-Park, Germany, followed by Canada's Wonderland and Universal Studios Japan, all of them developed by the startup company with the same name, VR Coaster GmbH & Co. KG, which originated from Wagners Research Group. As of June 2016, 17 theme parks worldwide are operating VR Coasters (list). The latest installations can be found in Six Flags parks, themed with Superman content from the DC Universe.

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