Delft Hyperloop Demos Passenger Experience Using VR for SpaceX Competition
If billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has his way the future of transportation won’t be the flying cars in Back to the Future, it’ll be everyone whizzing around in pods inside vacuum-sealed tubes called Hyperloop. To make this vision a reality Musk has held a long-running competition over the last few years, encouraging teams from around the world to compete in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. As part of the 2019 competition, Delft Hyperloop is using a virtual reality (VR) experience to showcase what a Hyperloop future may look like.
The VR experience is of a Hyperloop journey, from entering the station to travelling in a pod and how they’d be designed to be light and seemingly airy, with a ceiling that would simulate looking into the countryside.
Delft Hyperloop is an award-winning team hailing from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, having won first place in the competition in 2017. For the VR experience, Delft Hyperloop brought in the talents of INDG and Altspace (not to be confused with AltspaceVR), both CG specialists with the latter responsible for the visual and technical aspects of the VR experience.
“At Delft Hyperloop we do not just focus on setting a new speed-record at the SpaceX Competition, but also on the long-term future of the Hyperloop,” said Rieneke van Noort, Team Captain of Delft Hyperloop III. “A part of this is showing the public what it will be like to travel using this new system. Through VR, we want to enable people to experience the Hyperloop in an interactive and immersive way. It is great to see people’s enthusiasm when they walk through the Hyperloop station and board one of the pods.”
“Our collaboration with Delft Hyperloop and INDG is grounded on the shared aspiration to work with technologies that advance and expand our lives,” adds Igor Voloschuk, CEO of AltSpace. “We supported their initiative by developing a VR experience that would allow the audience to dive into the world of the future and appreciate forthcoming breakthroughs. We believe the result is a bridge connecting the technologies of an innovative transportation system with the latest developments in real-time graphics.”
The 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition is now underway with twenty teams from around the globe competing to achieve the fastest top speed along the fully enclosed 1.25 km test track. While you can see a 2D version of the Delft Hyperloop concept, it’s unclear if the VR version will be publicly released. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.
https://www.vrfocus.com/2019/07/delft-hyperloop-demos-passenger-experience-using-vr-for-spacex-competition/
