How is Audi using Extended Reality in Their New Cars?

Audi has just created the ultimate backseat ride, and Disney has something to do with it. The German automaker just debuted Holoride in Las Vegas during the 2019 CES consumer technology show. Holoride will launch as a company in February and begin bringing the Extended Reality (XR) experience of movies and games for both children and adult passengers within the next three years.

During the demonstration at a racetrack in the desert about 20 minutes from the Strip, news reporters put on an Oculus headset and got into the backseat of Audi’s new e-Tron electric vehicle. Then, the wild and crazy fun began. Disney’s “Marvel’s Avengers: Rocket’s Rescue Run” blasted journalists into a space adventure like no other. The XR journey perfectly matched every movement of the car as passengers shot at enemies during the spaceship ride.

Each XR experience would be different and unique depending on the road the car is traveling on. For instance, when the Audi car speeds up, slows down or comes to a halt, the Holoride journey would adapt to what the car is doing. The real movement of the vehicle determines the kind of spaceship adventure for the backseat passenger who is lost to reality and enjoying the disconnect from an otherwise typical, boring transit. Holoride also believes this kind of XR experience can help cut down on motion sickness.

It’s all about synching a computer game with a car’s movements and bringing a story to the backseat ride. Audi, Disney Games, and Interactive Experiences developed “Rocket’s Rescue Run” to demonstrate how virtual content can be adapted to the movements of the vehicle itself in real time. The collaboration hopes to attract content developers to purchase Holoride’s software kit and begin imagining new adventures that could be offered on a Holoride app shortly.

The passenger is becoming the next big market, and Holoride wants to entertain backseat guests who also enjoy using ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. The company hopes to make the in-car entertainment available to other automakers, so the concept explodes on the market.

Soon, staring out the window from the backseat might become a thing of the past. Think about it; who needs the radio when Extended Reality can deliver a space adventure for passengers?

What Are Immersive Showrooms, And How Do They Incorporate Technology?

With smart technology gaining significant momentum in recent years, more industries are quickly discovering the diverse opportunities that technology brings to them. The capabilities that smart technology has is unparalleled and has the potential to help bring industries around the world to the next level. With so many benefits to using smart technology, countless industries including education, entertainment, and real estate, are finding ways to utilize new, innovative technology. One of the areas of smart technology that has seen a considerable spike in popularity are immersive showrooms.

What Is An Immersive Showroom?

Immersive showrooms use the latest advances in technology to create interactive, hands-on exhibits that can specifically be touched by people. What makes immersive showrooms so exciting are their ability to provide visitors with a more realistic and well-founded understanding of a given topic or industry. Technology that is commonly used in showrooms includes mixed reality, 3D glasses, holograms, and live streaming services, with many more technologies being incorporated each year. Immersive showrooms give visitors the opportunity to learn and interact through technology that brings the physical and digital spaces together in real time.

What else makes immersive showrooms so exciting exactly? To begin, many technologies are used to create the best possible experience through more interactive, 3D projections. As an innovator in entertainment technology, VX Entertainment was immediately impressed by the potential that an immersive showroom brings for both technology and education as whole. This curiosity eventually led VX Entertainment to create the world’s largest immersive showroom that includes all of the latest technology in one place. Altogether, the immersive showroom from VX Entertainment uses holograms, mixed reality, augmented reality, glasses-free 3D, motion capture, live streaming, 7D interactive experiences, gestural walls, and projection to create the most exciting experience possible.

One of the compelling exhibits that the showroom features is an interactive sandbox. Using an augmented reality projector, the exhibit allows viewers to play with the sand while learning more about the topic itself. The sand that visitors can play within the exhibit is also lined with sensors that detect changes and can adjust the augmented reality projection automatically, making it seem realistic. This can not only attract visitors to the showroom, but it can also improve the way that we learn in the future.

By incorporating new, cutting edge technologies into the immersive showroom, VX Entertainment is helping to drive the future of technology using a more interactive, hands-on approach. With such a wide scope of capabilities, industries around the world are beginning to explore the different ways that smart technology can offer.

The Success of Mixed Reality

Mixed reality is one of the most recent developments in the world of technology, and it is quite a success. The technology involves combining the real world with virtual worlds to create new environments and visualizations, resulting in a place where physical and digital objects coexist and interact in real time. There are two types of technologies that incorporate mixed reality: one that starts in the real world and one that begins in the virtual world.

Mixed Reality Starting in the Real World

This technology not only allows users to experience virtual objects in the real world, but they can interact with them as well. The user remains in the real world, while digital objects are overlaid in the real world.

Mixed Reality Starting in the Virtual World

The user is fully immersed in a digital world in this form of Mixed Reality, blocking out the real world. The difference between this technology and virtual reality is the objects in the virtual world overlap the objects in the real world, unlike virtual reality where there is no anchor or connection to the real world.

Beginning this technological adventure in China allowed for a bridge of cultural and work-style differences to come together, and I foresee Mixed Reality to expand beyond the entertainment industry. The continued development of these technologies in the entertainment industry is almost a natural progression, but I also anticipate the technology expanding in real estate, health care, education, and luxury goods in China.

Simply using your smartphone, Mixed Reality will equip users with the ability to visualize how a dress or a hat would look on their person, and so much more. With 5G coming to China and being among the first to launch it, Mixed Reality will give people the opportunity and drive to purchase items they never previously purchased, or even considered, before. 5G, the next generation of wireless technology, will provide much faster, more reliable internet connections with low latency, ultimately, providing new opportunities in the realm of technology.

Rick Garson is the founder of VX Entertainment, a technology-based company located in Beijing, China, focused on creating, developing, producing, and owning global media properties.