VR 360 pods at the mall

So I was walking around a local mall today and came upon a VR experience that I've got to share.

Essentially it was a set up in the middle of foot traffic, where you'd normally see kiosks selling something. There were four pods, each of which could seat one person, set up with a VR headset and seatbelts. Why seatbelts you ask? That's because the pods all moved for a more immersive experience.

We're talking moving forward, backward, left, and right, and at a few points, it even felt like there was wind in my hair. It was $10 for two people to check out a single VR experience, and it was kind of awesome.

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Don't get me wrong, this was far from a flawless experience. The headsets were pretty janky to be entirely honest. The foam padding was pretty worn down, and at one point mine detached entirely from the headset and was wickedly uncomfortable. The headsets themselves were also in pretty rough shape, with tape holding them together in places.

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The movement was a little bit jerky and didn't always match up perfectly, but it did add a nifty degree of immersion to what I was watching. These pods were interactive too, with joysticks I could use to shoot at things inside of the experience that I'd picked.

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I wound up going with something called Ace Combat, which turned out to be a hilarious choice. I played a low-budget version of Iron Man, sans arc reactor, and had to basically shoot at anything that moved. I got jerked around a fair bit from flying around, but it was amusing and fun, even if the quality of graphics wasn't on par for what I'm used to from Daydream or Gear VR. There were tons of different experiences too including a roller coaster, and something with zombies that looked interesting.

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Still though that is frickin AWESOME! Well worth 10 bucks! Will this replace the ubiquitous message chairs we find in malls? That I can't seem to pass without putting in a few bucks!

$10 for two people doesn't sound too bad. Guessing the whole thing runs about 4-5 minutes per ride?

Cool! Now the ultimate question: Was there an option to drive a mech or other forms of walking, heavily armed and armored machine?

Originally Posted by iThunderbirt

Cool! Now the ultimate question: Was there an option to drive a mech or other forms of walking, heavily armed and armored machine?

THAT would be cool! Or any kind of driving, flying, racing etc game!