Here's what happens when you mix roller coasters and Oculus Rift
Something to keep track of.
A German professor has created an on-rails Oculus Rift demo to be experienced while riding a real-life roller coaster.
Prof Thomas Wagner, from the virtual design department at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, created the experience after wondering how he could make roller coasters more exciting.
His solution was to map a roller coaster's track and create new visuals that fitted its path.
The video below shows a glimpse at the work done so far - and of the demos available. One example places the Oculus Rift wearer in a deep space asteroid field. Another sees you flying through the air in a dragon-pulled carriage.
"On April 7th, we actually became VR coaster pioneers - being the very first people to experience an Oculus Rift VR-ride on a real roller coaster, synchronised to the real track," Wagner explains on the VR Coaster site.
"Over the following weeks and months, we have been performing more than a hundred test rides and have been making some amazing discoveries."
It's possible to make curves and drops more extreme in the visual experience - a 90-degree turn can be stretched to 135-degrees in simulated space - as our senses only detect directions with rough information.
This means that virtual tracks can be wildly exaggerated and still match up with the motion felt by the rider. See how it looks below:
