The future of VR demoed by Disney Imagineers and it is amazing
By Brian Miller
Anyone who has seen the film, Ready Player One, knows the film is about the immersion into a digital reality where fiction and fact come together to allow people to escape, reality. Now, Disney is showing off the future.
The product is called HoloTile and it is a foot pad that is omnidirectional allowing users to advance in a digital space using limited real-world space.
Disney Imagineers just demoed the HoloTile floor.
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HoloTile is an omnidirectional treadmill surface that could be a breakthrough product for a truly immersive VR experience.
With Apple's Vision Pro coming, VR is going to get insane in the next 5 years.pic.twitter.com/3ro3ZRN6VC
The uses for this tech can be limitless. Movie production will surely take advantage of this use, especially for green-screen and motion capturing but how could this tech make its way into real-world Disney use?
In the next ten years, VR is going to explode but we are still at least that far away before we step into a Disney World attraction that features the technology. What might be interesting is whether or not Disney can utilize this tech to bring visitors to the parks in a virtual world.
Imagine walking through Disney Paris for the first time from the comfort of your own home. What about Shanghai Disney? It most certainly wouldn't be the same. The sounds would be real but the smells most assuredly would not and you obviously can't buy the food or take a seat next to Walt Disney at EPCOT.
You could potentially jump into a live concert or one of the Disney live shows at the parks. Theoretically, you could wait in line for a roller coaster and then experience the attraction from a 3D VR camera on the front car.
Maybe this tech is used for line queues where you don a pair of VR goggles and walk the pathway to the ride or the VR environment immerses you deeper into the world you are visiting. What if you could dive into the world of AVATAR? Flight of Passage already uses a 3D VR-type system to fly you on the back of a banshee, in the future you may take a walk through Pandora, exploring it all on your own.
The future is so uncertain but Disney Imagineers have been creating new tech for decades and now it appears that it might be taking another big leap into a realm Disney has yet to truly explore, VR.