Oculus Rift Technology could change the way we experience travel.
The most immersive 4-D Virtual Travel Experience has arrived in London as Marriott Hotels imagines the future of travel with Oculus Rift Technology. Resembling something that could be found on the USS Enterprise, Marriott Hotels is pioneering the future of travel through innovation and new technologies utilising a high-tech simulator platform and space age headsets.
The concept also seems to be taken out of Star Trek on more ways than one as the 4-D experience allows guests to ‘get teleported’ with the first-ever virtual reality travel experience. The brand partnered with Framestore to develop an unprecedented and bold enterprise called Marriott Hotel’s Virtual Travel Experience, giving consumers a fully immersive, 4-D sensory experience with the aforementioned Oculus Rift technology. In seconds, see, hear and feel what it’s like to be in destinations halfway across the globe and at Marriott Hotels of the future. Just step onto the platform and slap on the headsets and you’ll be provided with a virtual reality experience that delivers the feeling of actually travelling to the beaches of Maui and beyond.
To create a virtual travel experience that truly feels like “being there,” Marriott Hotels turned to its partners, video effects and creative content studio Framestore and experiential marketing agency Relevent, to pioneer several new virtual reality innovations. This included developing a new, unparalleled technique for capturing 3-D, 360 degree live-action video, and then mixing that video with photo real CGI (computer-generated imagery) and 4-D elements such as heat, wind and mist.
During the Marriott Virtual Travel Experience, guests enter the Teleporter, a phone booth-like structure, where they will put on virtual reality headsets and headphones to be completely immersed in a virtual world. From there, they will visit a virtual version of a Greatroom Marriott lobby, and then travel to a black sand beach in Maui, Hawaii and to the top of a skyscraper in London. While “travelling,” 4-D elements kick in – the feeling of the warm sun on your skin, breeze in your hair, rumble of waves under foot and ocean spray in your face – to make the experience feel extremely real.
Travelling the world without leaving your home? This could bring a new meaning to the term ‘couchsurfing’.
