[I always enjoy visiting attractions that provide views from high above (e.g., Philadelphia’s One Liberty Observation Deck) but The Shard in London has taken things further, as reported in this story from the Evening Standard (where it includes several more pictures). For more information, Business Insider has a 1:31 minute summary video and Londonist has a story featuring a 2:30 minute viral video of a woman on the Slide attraction. Details and tickets are available directly from The View From The Shard’s website. Information about an earlier VR experience of the same building is available from Visualise. –Matthew]
You can now slide around the Shard… in virtual reality
Fasten your seat belts for a spin around the Shard… but put your virtual reality goggles on first
Mark Blunden
July 27, 2017
If you’ve ever wished that London’s tallest building was a giant helter-skelter, today is — almost — your lucky day.
Visitors to the Shard’s 72nd floor can don virtual-reality goggles and hurtle at 100mph along imaginary open-air tubes that corkscrew around the skyscraper.
To “fool the senses”, guests sit on a sloped platform that moves beneath them. Organisers said the Slide experience, which lasts two minutes, “answers the call of Londoners to turn the Shard into a helter-skelter” — and will give the 178-metre-high Orbit slide in Stratford’s Olympic Park a run for its money.
It is one of two VR experiences introduced by The View From The Shard, the tourist attraction, at its Skydeck.
The second, Vertigo, gives visitors the sensation of tip-toeing across girders in the sky as the tower is built. Whereas the Slide uses an Oculus Rift headset, for the Vertigo experience guests don a different device, HTC Vive, and have sensors strapped to their legs. This allows staff to track visitors as they “walk” around the virtual construction site. Both experiences trick guests by blowing fresh air at them.
The VR experiences were created by two east London firms, Inition and Happy Finish. The latter’s chief interactive officer, Daniel Cheetham, said: “We can now use virtual reality to totally immerse someone in an experience that would have previously only been available to the imagination.
“We can elicit emotional responses that feel absolutely real — with the Slide we directly evoke fear, joy and exhilaration equally by making people believe they are truly sliding out of the Shard on an adrenaline-fuelled ride.”
Adrian Leu, Inition’s chief executive, said: “Try to balance on a narrow girder, take a construction elevator to the top or just take in the view from an open platform at dizzy heights while wind rushes around and the city noises envelop you.
“It’s all in the power of virtual reality to fool your senses and to transport you in time and to a place which otherwise you would only dream to visit.”
The experiences are for over-12s and included with the £26 View From The Shard tickets until August 4, after which a fee applies.