In a world’s first, software developer PeriscapeVR has launched a new pop-up Virtual Reality (VR) Experience Center in Terminal 4 (T4) at John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK), New York.
Featuring curated virtual reality, the six-month pop-up will provide more than 70,000 daily passengers with immersive entertainment experiences to enjoy while traveling. Located in T4’s retail lounge, the Experience Center features several freestanding VR towers with a total of 12 stations. Experiences last 5-10 minutes and range from US$1 to US$2 per minute.
Lynn Rosenthal, founder and CEO of PeriscapeVR, said, “PeriscapeVR, meaning ‘escape within’, was created for travelers who desire a fun, blissful and euphoric respite from airport crowds and long hours between flights. As a frequent traveler, I recognized there was a gap in the market for this kind of airport entertainment, and I am delighted to be bringing PeriscapeVR to JFK T4.”
The experiences are grouped into five categories and feature content that has been carefully curated to appeal to a wide variety of air travelers. Categories include:
- First Time – theBlu: Whale encounter, reef migration and luminous abyss. An undersea encounter with the largest species on Earth, witness the magnificence of an undersea migration on the edge of a coral reef, venture into the deepest region of the ocean to discover the iridescent abyss.
- Experience – Irrational Exuberance: Journey to imaginary worlds as a lone explorer in deep space. Transport to beautiful, mysterious, and incredible worlds. Discover and interact with deep space phenomena with worlds of wildly different sensations, interactions, and impossible vistas.
- Create – MasterpieceVR: Shape your creativity. Build tangible objects, colorful environments, and high-quality 3D models with VR’s most powerful sculpting and painting tool.
- Play – Fruit Ninja and AudioShield: Fruit Ninja VR takes squishy, satisfying gameplay and turns it into a virtual reality experience that can be enjoyed by players of all ages and skill levels. Step into the Fruit Ninja universe and tackle fruit from all angles. AudioShield brings musical favorites to life, putting participants at the point of impact of every beat in a song.
- Social Cause – Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness – A magical and mesmerizing VR journey into the foreign land of the sightless. Based on John Hull’s sensory and psychological experience of blindness, the interactive experience uses binaural audio and real-time 3D animations to create a fully immersive journey through a world beyond sight.
The VR Experience Center uses state-of-the art HP Windows Mixed Reality Headsets for seamless immersion into virtual worlds, as well as HP Z240 Tower Workstations to provide the required performance levels. The center itself has been designed by architect Gensler.
“HP is proud to have been chosen to power the virtual-reality technology needs of PeriscapeVR for its groundbreaking experience at one of the world’s most visited airports,” said Joanna Popper, global head of virtual reality, Location Based Entertainment, HP. “We are thrilled to offer travelers the innovation, creativity and escape of virtual reality, and excited that they will experience this content through HP’s technology. We look forward to making this the first huge success of many together with the PeriscapeVR team.”