If Total Recall was a story about yours truly it wouldn’t have been a very good movie. I don’t know that I’d have the creativity to say “send me to Mars” if I was about to go on a virtual reality vacation. I’d ask the virtual reality assistant/attendant/travel agent person to just send me to Tahiti.
“Put me inside a really, really big barrel,” I’d say. And that’d be that. I’d get spat out of a barrel or twelve and boom, end of vacation. We’re back home surfing sloppy onshore beach breaks. End of movie. We’re sorry you spent $14 on a ticket for that, suckers. No you may not have a refund.
So leave it to surfers to do exactly that with virtual reality starting to pick up some steam. Sony, GoPro, Google, Facebook (Oculus) and of course Samsung are just a few names getting in the mix of making virtual reality a simple and user friendly experience. And given Samsung’s partnership with the WSL it seemed like a pretty logical step to put their Rapid VR to the test by going for a spin in Tahiti and catching a few waves. It’s not a mobile friendly video. If you’re watching this on your phone it might just look like several frames blended side by side. I had to learn this the hard way. If you’re lucky you can twirl around like a ballerina holding your phone in front of you and the display will follow your every movement, up down, and around, like you’re in the thick of it all.
It’s not exactly worthy of a feature film, but it’s still cool watching all these little virtual reality variations pop up more often. VR surfing on Mars, though. That could be something cool.
