Techrecipe

‘Steampunk World’ with a bumper car that meets a VR headset

A place where you can enjoy steampunk tank battles with bumper cars started operation at a German theme park. The main character is the Steampunk VR Scooter, an amusement park (Erlebnispark Schloss Thurn) located in Nuremberg, Germany, which started operation in April of last year.

This ride represents a steampunk tank battle that is enjoyed by combining a bumper car with a virtual reality headset. The virtual reality technology was jointly developed by Qualisys, a Swedish motion capture system company, HolodeckVR, a German virtual reality game company, and VR Coaster, a developer of VR games. It is explained that it has also realized a unique function that feels much faster than the actual bumper car speed.

In the game, humans and robots compete with other gamers, giving numerous additional functions and upgrades scattered across the stage. Of course, the perspective in the game space is completely different from reality. The bumper car looks like a cyber tank in the steampunk world, and in a virtual environment, you can experience cliffs and wasteland.

Being able to enjoy using a virtual reality headset on a bumper car can be attractive from the perspective of an amusement park as it can be relatively inexpensive compared to a large amount of equipment investment. Related information can be found here.