Finding Vegas VR nirvana in the backseat of a ’67 DeVille at CES 2023 businessroundups.org

Being driven through the jammed streets of Las Vegas during CES can be nauseating – at the best of times. But do you do that with a virtual reality headset that blocks your view? Sure, it’s a recipe for disaster.

I don’t have the strongest stomachs; and I pack Dramamine wherever I go. So it was with more than a little trepidation that at CES 2023 I agreed to experience the morning traffic on The Strip in the back of a car while wearing a VR headset.

This wasn’t just any car, though, and it wasn’t just any VR system. The car was a 1967 Cadillac DeVille, remarkable in so many ways, but remarkable in this context for its appalling lack of technology. (Worryingly, it also lacked seatbelts, thankfully not necessary in this day and age.) The headset was an HTC VIVE Flow, paired with Holoride’s new retrofit kit, a $199 add-on that lets you get in-car VR experiences in literally every car.

Holoride’s initial launch was in partnership with Audi, which began integrating the company’s technology into its cars last year.

Holoride CEO Nils Wollny told me that while more OEM partnerships are coming (“we can’t announce this yet”), this retrofit kit provides an immediate, massive expansion of the product’s market reach. Wollny calls it “an easy way for people who want to go on a Holoride to equip their car they have so they don’t need the latest Audi.”

All you need is a place to mount the Holoride device, a puck-shaped contraption that contains an accelerometer, a high-performance GPS, and a wireless module to connect to the HTC Vive Flow. Stick it to the windshield, turn it on and you’re good to go. Data from that module drives the various app experiences that Holoride offers, experiences that all include some kind of visual cues to avoid motion sickness.

I sampled what the retrofit package had to offer while sitting in the Cadillac’s generous rear seat, a wide stretch of vinyl that has probably seen some very different experiences.

I started with Pixel Ripped 1995: On the Road. This is a Holoride-specific spin-off of the indie VR darling. Here you play a 2D platformer on a virtual handheld game system (a “Gear Kid Color”), sitting in the virtual backseat of a virtual car while your virtual parents in the front exchange idle banter.

As you actually drive through traffic, the game simulates a world around you, an endless, idyllic neighborhood. It’s nothing like the colossal excess of Sin City. It does match the general street grid, so that when the real car stops at an intersection, the virtual car does the same. The game is simple but fun, miles better than facing the stalemate.

In Cloudbreakers: Leaving Haven, a roguelike shooter exclusive to Holoride, you control a giant robot through digital clouds, shooting wave after wave of geometric opponents. Around and below you, vertical and horizontal smooth lines give a visual representation of streets. As the car makes a turn, the in-game action swings left or right to match.

The good news is that while playing through those experiences and more, I never felt the slightest bit queasy. In fact, I got more carsick after 10 minutes in the back of a cab on my way to my next appointment than I did in the 30 minutes I spent in that Cadillac wearing a VR headset.

The bad news is that none of the titles seem enticing enough right now to warrant the $19.99 a month or $180 a year to access Holoride’s service. Wollny says they are working with developers to add more titles to the library with an expected amount of new content every two weeks.

More of these simple experiences may not be the answer. In my eyes, the killer app here is media consumption. Leave the games and you can mirror your smartphone in VR and jump into any streaming app you like. The Holoride software again renders a virtual landscape, like a giant theater screen floating over a moving background, meaning you can enjoy your content free of distractions and motion sickness.

The next step? Wollny says they’re working to take the smartphone out of that equation: “We’re currently planning to have a native movie app or streaming app where you can also download the latest movies or TV shows and then just can relax, lean back, a virtual 180 inch screen.”

The retrofit kit is a great way to bring this technology to more people and for Holoride to gain access to many more customers.

However, Wollny told me that adding OEM partnerships is still the focus as Holoride works to make the integration as seamless as possible.

With more cars featuring accelerometers and quality GPS, adding support often just requires some software.

“We’ve kept the barrier as low as possible for automakers to integrate our solution because it’s an attractive solution for their passengers,” Wollny told businessroundups.org. “And it’s an additional revenue stream for any mobility data they have. They provide us with the data we share with them.”

More recurring revenue plus happier stomachs in the back seat sounds like a real win-win situation.