Audi was at CES 2019 last week and exhibited Holoride. In demos, passengers were driven around as they wore VR headsets, watched and interacted with entertaining virtual content. Holoride’s use of VR is said to entertain riders while also helping with motion sickness.

On the Road VR Adventures

VR technology covers the eyes and has you view screens inside the headset that replace what users see. Gamifying a short, medium or long distance ride is great for taking the stress out of morning traffic, unwinding after a long day, and keeping passengers with kids busy.

The VR platform that Audi is using works alongside the car’s actual movements. ThomasNet reports that “During tests of the new technology, participants said they couldn’t really tell that the car was moving fast.”

“We took relevant data points like location, speed, steering, acceleration and braking – and matched these with artificial environments. By doing so, we not only created a perfectly motion-synchronized journey through virtual worlds, but something radically new that entertains backseat passengers in an unseen way,” says Nils Wollny, co-founder and CEO of Holoride (as of February 1, 2019) in an Audi post.

Holoride passengers play attention-grabbing VR games with little chickens that the passenger can target for points as the car moves and stops. They also play synchronized games as a dinosaur or spaceship in flight to distract them.

Electronic Component News shares that at CES, Disney Games and Interactive Experiences gamified Audi’s rides with Marvel’s Avengers: Rocket’s Rescue Run. The game simulated the car’s turns and stops but the drawback of it was that what the rider was seeing was dependant on the movement of the car.

With the car, the game, and reality synced up, ECN noticed a blip, “if you’re stuck in traffic, you may be stuck in the asteroid field.” Creating interactive content between stops and traffic could help reroute lulls in action.

Holoride’s VR Synchronization Helps with Car Sickness

Keeping your mind free of worry as a driver takes you to your destination is a huge benefit to passengers of the future. So what about those that get car sick or motion sick?

VR has had its share of attempts to fix motion sickness with wearable gadgets, teleportation, and other in-game movement and graphics systems to help ground players before nausea hits.

In an article, Audi says that VR has helped “three times as many participants as would have been expected to get motion sick based on their history did not have any problems with motion sickness this time at all.”

The synchronized motion of the car and VR content as passengers experience it is said to help with reducing car sickness. It essentially anchors the passenger’s vestibular system with reality and with Virtual Reality but distracts them too.

They hope to release Holoride’s technology to Audi cars and other manufacturers within the next 3 years. Getting to your next destination is going to make traffic more tolerable and short trips into games. With self-driving cars on the way, we wonder what roads will look like in 3 years.