The next time you fly, you could be handed a Meta Quest 3 to keep you entertained with mixed reality experiences and movies following the success of Meta’s recent pilot program. Though it’s somehow already being ruined by being used for some next-gen in-flight advertising.
Travel Mode landed on Quest headsets a little less than a year ago to allow you to use your VR device while on a flight (and later while on a train journey). Normally, the vehicle’s movements would confuse your headset’s sensors, but travel mode uses a “tuned” algorithm, according to Meta, that accounts for your airplane’s motion so it doesn’t cause disruption.
At the time, Meta announced a partnership with Lufthansa to provide in-flight entertainment to people traveling in their Allegris Business Class Suite (on select flights) so they could enjoy activities like virtual chess, meditation exercises, and virtual sightseeing previews.
Now, 4,000 travelers later, Meta and Lufthansa are heralding that trial a success and announced that this service will be expanding to “more airlines and routes” in the near future. Something I’m super excited about.
Beyond more immersive in-flight entertainment – which could lift your movie off that tiny screen on the seat in front of you and suspend it on a giant virtual display instead – I’m particularly interested in those in-flight meditation exercises and other techniques that could help nervous fliers.
I’m fine with flying, but I know plenty of people who find the experience stress-inducing. A VR headset that can whisk you away to somewhere more relaxing. Useful mindfulness exercises could be just what they need to make flights a less nerve-wracking experience.
One feature I’m not keen on, though, is how the Quest headsets could be used for in-flight advertising – something Meta also just announced in its blog post.
Lufthansa and Cupra (a brand in the Volkswagen Group) have partnered to create an “in-flight test-drive app.” Meta explains that headset users will be able to customize their own Cupra car and “engage with the CUPRA Tavascan” as they explore virtual recreations of the streets of Barcelona and a Cupra garage – where you can learn more about the cars the company offers.
Presumably, this will be an opt-in experience rather than a feature that will be forced onto users, but I still can’t help but feel like it’s already cheapening the revolutionary in-flight entertainment system VR headsets could offer by reducing it to another boring way to sell you stuff. A cool Cupra-sponsored in-flight driving sim would be one thing; this is something way more icky-feeling.
I still believe in-flight virtual and mixed reality will be an awesome thing – I got a taste when using the Xreal One AR glasses on a few recent trips – but we’ll have to wait and see if it evolves in a fun way or if it just becomes another tool to sell us stuff.
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