The next time you fly, you could get a meta quest 3 to entertain yourself with mixed reality experiences and films after the success of the recent Meta pilot program. Although it is already ruined by being used for new generation flight advertising.
Travel mode landed on quest helmets just under a year ago to allow you to use your VR device during a flight (and later in a train trip). Normally, the movements of the vehicle confuse the sensors of your helmet, but the travel mode uses an “adjusted” algorithm, according to Meta, which explains the movement of your plane so that it does not cause disturbance.
At the time, Meta announced a partnership with Lufthansa to provide entertainment in flight to people traveling in their allegated business class (on certain flights) so that they could enjoy activities such as virtual failures, meditation exercises and virtual visits.
Now, 4,000 travelers later, Meta and Lufthansa announce this success and have announced that this service would extend to “more airlines and roads” in the near future. Something that fascinates me.
Beyond more immersive flight entertainment – which could lift your film from this small screen on the seat in front of you and suspend it instead on a giant virtual display – I am particularly interested in these meditation exercises in flight and other techniques that could help the nervous leaflets.
I agree to fly, but I know many people who find the experience inducing stress. A VR helmet that can take you to a more relaxing place. Useful mindfulness exercises could be exactly what they need to make thefts a less trying experience.
A feature that I do not like, however, is how quest helmets could be used for flight advertising – something meta has also just announced in its blog article.
Lufthansa and Cupra (a brand from the Volkswagen group) have teamed up to create a “flight test test application”. Meta explains that helmets can personalize their own Cupra car and “get involved with the Cupra Tavascan” while they explore virtual recreation from Barcelona streets and a Cupra garage – where you can know more about the cars that the company offers.
Presumably, it will be an opt-in experience rather than a functionality that will be forced to users, but I still cannot help but feel already depreciating the entertainment system in revolutionary flight that VR headsets could offer by reducing it to another boring way to sell you things. A driving card in flight sponsored by the fresh Cupra would be one thing; It is something much more distorted.
I always believe that virtual reality in flight and mixed will be a great thing – I had a taste when I use Xreal One glasses on some recent trips – but we will have to wait and see if it evolves in a fun way or if it just becomes another tool to sell us things.
