At CES, Disney And Audi Unveil A New VR Experience You Play While Riding In A Car

During CES 2019, Disney and Audi unveiled Holoride, a software company that creates VR experiences that you play from the back seat of a moving car. One such experience tested at the event by CNET was Marvel's Avengers: Rocket's Rescue Run, which has you fly through an asteroid field with Rocket and Iron Man as you shoot down enemy drones and approaching asteroids. Disappointingly, it seems like the experience was created solely for CES, and will never be commercially available.

According to CNET, Holoride aims to provide a VR experience that's "intended to match, visually, what the passengers feel as they ride: If the car turns, accelerates or brakes, the VR environment will do the same thing. And the experience--whether it's a game or a movie or something else--will be automatically tailored to the length and movements of your drive route." Not every ride has to be a game, for example. A virtual reality overlay can be applied to the world, painting ordinary landscapes and landmarks into something new. One of the given examples was transforming a normal drive into a journey through a prehistoric world filled with dinosaurs.

"The idea is to give people something interesting to do when they're riding as a passenger in a car," says Audi head of digital business Nils Wollny. "There are a lot of passengers traveling in the back seat who have nothing to do," he continued, "In most cases, transit time feels like wasted time."

One of the more obvious problems with this technology is motion sickness, as there are people who report feeling nauseous while riding in a car or playing VR, and Holoride is combining both experiences. CNET did report feeling queasy after the demonstration.