Samsung and Six Flags are bringing roller coasters to virtual reality

I’m not excited about virtual reality because of the gaming or potential scientific uses, although those are great too, I’m excited for it because it’ll allow me to experience the outside world from the comfort of my own home. The experience will be lamer and less immersive than the real world equivalent, but seeing as I’ll never even have to leave my chair, that’s a trade-off that I’m more than happy to make. Samsung and Six Flags are already teaming up so that you’ll be able to enjoy the thrill of a roller coaster, albeit a watered down virtual version of the thrill, without having to go to a theme park, and it’s all thanks to virtual reality.

If the climbs, drops and loops of roller coasters weren’t thrilling enough for you, Six Flags is enhancing your coaster experience with virtual reality. Amusement park giant Six Flags announced today it has teamed up with Samsung to bring the world of roller coasters together with VR to create a unique amusement park experience. Once you put on the Samsung Gear VR headset and the ride starts, you will become a fighter pilot battling off an alien invasion or a witness to a comic book-inspired battle between Superman and Lex Luthor. The VR roller coaster experience will be available to try on nine different rides at nine different Six Flags parks in the U.S. and Canada. You don’t have to worry about bringing your own Gear VR and Samsung smartphone; the rides come equipped with custom Gear VRs that have an extra chin strap to ensure they don’t come flying off on steep drops and fast turns. “We’ve actually tested these at 5.9 G’s and there’s no problem with those,” Six Flags Senior VP of Marketing Brett Petit told Mashable. The headsets aren’t all showing the same thing at the same time, because the difference between movement and timing in the front and back of the cars could cause motion sickness. Instead, each headset tracks where it is in relation to a “black box” fixed onto the car, so the headsets always know where they are and are in sync with the movements of the ride.