It’s officially called “holoride,” and if you invest in buying a new Audi later this year, it could be a part of your ride, too. What holoride is, basically, is virtual reality-based infotainment designed specifically for cars and the use, we should make clear, of passengers. Introduced in 2019 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a collaboration between Disney Games and Interactive Experiences, holoride is an onboard gaming adventure involving Marvel Entertainment characters that actually fuses the vehicle’s motions – your vehicle – into the gaming scenario. It’s all undertaken through VR goggles linked to the vehicle.
Beginning in June, a broad range of Audi vehicles, including the all-electric e-tron, designed and produced with Audi’s third generation modular infotainment toolkit (MIB 3) and the latest software cluster will be holoride-capable. The initial launch will be in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, with other markets following. So, what’s holoride do? Essentially, it adapts the ride motions of a VR-equipped vehicle to the process of a game in real time. If you’re Audi accelerates, the spaceship or monster in your game will blast or lurch forward. When the car turns, so do they. In the digital world, this is known as extendable reality, and holoride will be further adaptable to link directly with Audi’s autonomous-driving technology when it comes on line, which presumably will allow the driver to play, too.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 