Making Transit Time Count: The Future of In-Car Entertainment
People spend a lot of time on the go. Why not make transit time count? In this guest blog, holoride CEO and co-founder Nils J. Wollny talks about the future of in-vehicle entertainment and the role of Extended Reality experiences in it.
Although people around the globe spend roughly 400 billion hours each year as passengers in cars, there’s still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to the average in-car passenger experience. Travel time is often perceived as wasted time. And yet, it holds tremendous potential for new in-car products and services. It is estimated that the total economic value of travel time is approximately 1.2 trillion Euros.
Turning travel time into valuable time
At holoride, we pursue the goal to take everyday journeys and transform them into hyper immersive experiences, because we want to make transit time count. We do this by combining Extended Reality (XR) technology with navigational and car data to create what we call “Elastic Content”, a novel media category, providing a never-before-seen world of in-vehicle experiences for passengers to enjoy and explore. Elastic Content opens up new immersive possibilities for games, educational content, improved productivity, mindfulness, and many other use cases. Our applications can be installed on stand-alone, personal XR devices, meaning that there is no extra hardware needed.
Cooperation between Porsche and holoride
We’re delighted to announce the commercial installation of holoride at the Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles. This pilot project is another milestone in holoride’s journey towards revolutionizing backseat entertainment. As part of our collaboration with Porsche, we now offer a new type of attraction to automotive and entertainment-savvy audiences in the greater Los Angeles area, giving them the thrill of a high-speed ride in a Porsche, combined with a highly immersive VR experience for those who are not in the driver’s seat. Thanks to the new attraction, the whole family can enjoy their stay, and no one is left out.
Our collaboration with Porsche started in 2019 as part of STARTUP AUTOBAHN, Europe’s biggest innovation platform. Porsche was also the partner for our very first edutainment experience: together with media company Discovery, we presented our new VR solution at the 2019 International Motor Show in Frankfurt, demonstrating content categories outside of traditional gaming and that our technology is also capable of streaming 2D content within a motion-synchronized environment.
In the new VR attraction at Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles, user will now find themselves aboard a spaceship together with a group of recruits that form the Earth Alliance, fighting off the alien Cymex. This location-based VR game was co-developed with Schell Games, a leading game development company specializing in entertainment, educational and virtual reality experiences.
Vehicle localization
Our vehicle localization software collects and processes navigational and car data in real-time. The VR content is then synchronized to the movement, location, and route of the vehicle. In other words, the car’s physical motion and the actual driving directly influence what the user sees on screen. Thus, the XR content will never be the same: with holoride, every ride will be a unique adventure!
Moreover, holoride’s real-time synchronization can reduce motion sickness for many people, which is caused by conflicting sensory input. Often, people can’t enjoy transit time, because watching a movie or reading in a moving vehicle makes them feel uncomfortable. Approximately 30 percent of all passengers suffer from severe motion sickness. By matching what users see and what they feel with almost no latency, holoride has the ability to reduce motion sickness symptoms for many of them. While holoride is not a medical device and we can’t promise to fully eliminate motion sickness, our technology is helping to enjoy commutes turn transit time into time well spent.
A world of infinite possibilities
With holoride, we’re creating a completely new market for our partners and key industries, one that promises a captive audience and additional revenue streams. We’re building the world’s first immersive in-vehicle media platform for the future of in-car entertainment.
Furthermore, by eliminating tech and business complexity and by providing commercial scale, we enable content creators to develop contextual, immersive experiences for passengers. With our powerful Elastic Software Development Kit (Elastic SDK), they can unleash their full creative potential and break new ground with a novel media category that is made for moving vehicles.
In my opinion, holoride is more than just another entertainment solution. It’s the future of how we will entertain ourselves while on the go. Although widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles is still a few years away, the passenger economy is already here. With holoride, we want to make passengers smarter, happier, and more productive.
About this publication: Where innovation meets tradition. There’s more to Porsche than sports cars — we are developing new digital products and services — always with our customers in focus. On our Medium blog, we tell these stories. It’s about our #nextvisions, emerging technologies, and the people that drive our digital journey. If you want to know more, follow us on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
