I’m hanging outside of a plane in a virtual world set some 2.5 miles above the Palm in Dubai. With a thumbs up from another skydiver, I follow a group of jumpers and a wingsuiter as they leap into the air.
Back in Westchester, N.Y. with a virtual reality full-face helmet strapped to my head, my physical body follows my virtual one into the wind and a tremendous whoosh lifts me into the air. In the real world, I am no more than five feet off the net of a wind tunnel, held securely in place by a flight instructor. In virtual reality, I’m plummeting toward Earth at 120 miles per hour with a guy in a wingsuit carving around me and two other jumpers doing tricks in front of me.
In this four-dimensional experience, the combination of virtual reality and the wind from the tunnel briefly tricks my brain into thinking I’m actually flying over Dubai — and this is coming from someone who has jumped out of a plane in the real world more than 200 times. I’m told later that I was trying to stay on level with the other jumpers in the virtual word, something experienced skydivers tend to do.
iFly Indoor Skydiving, the largest operator of indoor skydiving facilities in the world, recently began rolling out a new virtual reality experience designed to mimic real skydiving. Currently available at 28 iFly facilities, the experience takes fliers to some of the most pristine skydiving dropzones in the world: Southern California, Hawaii, Dubai and the Swiss Alps. It will soon be available across iFly’s global fleet of tunnels to anyone aged eight and above.
The iFly wind tunnel has a patented design that’s meant to mimic freefall as close as possible. It’s already used by many licensed skydivers to hone their flying skills in a more controlled environment and to introduce new fliers and children to the world of flight.
The new virtual reality experience, which is powered by a Samsung Gear VR that’s attached securely to a Cookie G3 skydiving helmet, is meant to give those who won’t or can’t try real skydiving a taste of the real thing. There are even surprises for the most seasoned skydivers. I was in awe watching skydivers much more experienced than I carving around me in a place where I’m not yet qualified to jump in real life. Dubai’s Palm is only accessible to the world’s most advanced jumpers.
“Skydiving has always been in iFly’s DNA,” says Mason Barrett, iFly’s director of product development. “We’ve always been interested in delivering the most realistic version of skydiving, and virtual reality is something we’ve always been interested in. Now that the VR tech has caught up, we’re super excited to combine the two. The bodily sensation with the images: it’s something you’d only get when actually skydiving.”
It’s important to note, however, that VR skydiving can’t replicate some of the more gratifying feelings you get from real skydiving. You won’t feel the same sense of pride, for example, when you’ve finally tackled your fear of heights, or the peacefulness of the parachute ride at sunset.
iFly has been working on the technology for the past year. The company partnered with some of the best skydivers and videographers in the industry to practice dive flows with challenging maneuvers (head-down carving in a wingsuit around a person flying on their belly is NOT an easy feat).
Barrett says they took effort to minimize the dizzying effect some people feel from virtual reality by using advanced VR videographing techniques, though some novice users I spoke to who have never been skydiving said they still felt a little disoriented at times, which is a challenge of virtual reality in general. (And to be fair, real-life skydiving can also be disorienting to first-timers as they experience new sights and sensations for the first time.)
Barrett believes disorientation will be ironed out over time. iFly’s technology is in a sense ahead of 3D virtual reality experiences because it’s four dimensional. The body matches what it is seeing and what the brain is thinking it should be feeling, which reduces disorientation compared to if you were having the same experience while sitting idly in a chair. I personally felt fine.
In the future, iFly plans to add additional virtual dropzones and new aerial experiences. One area the company is considering adding is proximity wingsuit flying, which is one of the most dangerous sports in the world and one only accessible to a very tiny subset of the skydiving and BASE-jumping communities. In that experience, iFly would strap cameras to experienced professionals in wingsuits who would jump off cliffs and fly unnervingly close to the ground.
iFly might also develop new aerial activities that might be more appealing to kids, such as flying on the outside of a space shuttle soaring through the galaxy or alongside a superhero flying above cities.
Barrett says iFly hopes to democratize the world of skydiving and make flight more accessible to people of all ages (you must be at least 18-years-old to go real skydiving in the U.S.). With virtual reality, he says, it’s all about discovering what you can do by defying the rules of gravity and reality.