Holoride offers an immersive in-car VR experiences without the motion sickness.
What if you could get in a car, put on some VR goggles, and be immersed in a virtual world that’s perfectly in sync with the outside world? No motion sickness – just a vast alternate universe ripe for games and entertainment. That’s what holoride promises, and we had a chance to experience it at MWC and SXSW recently. Before we dive into what Holoride looks and feels like, let’s discuss the tech behind it. In Barcelona, Holoride used a Cupra Born EV (basically Seat’s version of the Volkswagen ID.3) for the demo, while in Austin, it used several Audi e-tron and e-tron Sportback EVs. In both cases, the cars were set up with Holoride’s developer kit, an HTC Vive Flow VR headset, and an old HTC U12+ smartphone. For our demo, we sat in the Cupra Born’s back seat, buckled up, donned the VR headset, and grabbed the phone. Since the HTC Vive Flow doesn’t come with controllers, the U12+ phone was being used as a simple controller. In the future, you’ll just use your own phone with Holoride, and maybe even bring your own VR headset, if you have one – though it might be easier to keep VR headsets in the car. We wouldn’t be surprised if some vehicles start getting bundled with VR headsets (or at least feature VR headset storage) in the next few years. At MWC, Holoride revealed the HTC Vive Flow is the first Holoride-ready VR headset, while at SXSW, the company announced that Audi will ship the first Holoride-ready cars (A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, Q5, Q7, Q8, e-tron, e-tron Sportback, and e-tron GT) starting June 2022 in the US and Europe (UK and Germany). Basically, any vehicle with VW Group’s third-generation Modular Infotainment Toolkit (MIB 3) will eventually be compatible. For cars without built-in support, there’s the Holoride’s developer kit, a hockey-puck sized device which attaches to the front windshield with a suction cup and plugs into a USB port for power.
