UP IN THE AIR

VR TO THE RESCUE

It sounds impossible at first, but pilotless drone taxis, capable of safely carrying passengers through the airspace towards their destination, actually do exist – at least in prototype form. One of the most interesting vehicles is the two-seater EHang 216, created by Chinese company EHang. It was one of the main attractions at this year’s 4Gamechangers festival, and rightly so. It is a fascinating piece of technology.

In a few years, this drone taxi will probably conquer the skies of cities all around the world, Vienna amongst them, but for now, it is not certified to fly in Austrian airspace and thus it’s hard to demonstrate to the public what it can achieve and what it feels like for a passenger to use it. That’s why 4 Creative Solutions asked us to create a VR experience that lets the audience take a virtual ride in tomorrow’s flying cab.

FLY ON

IT’S A TRICKY JOB BUT SOMEONE’S GOTTA DO IT

To add a bit of spice and realism to the virtual drone ride, we combined the experience with an interactive VR chair that moved and vibrated in correspondence with the simulation. The VR experience brought a lot of fun to a lot of people and became one of the highlights on the show floor of this year’s 4Gamechangers festival.

Finding a way to recreate the city of Vienna in VR is not a simple manner, especially when it’s not possible to use corresponding 360° video footage, simply because it is not allowed to fly a video drone above the inner city. In the end, we found a way to utilize Google Earth for our needs. Our own Philipp König wrote a blog article about the process, which is a really entertaining read: