French firm creates in-flight VR headset
Imagine settling into your seat for a cross-country flight and slipping on a pair of oversized goggles that will play 3D movies and virtual-reality videos just inches from your eyeballs.
To Skylights, that’s the future of inflight entertainment. The French startup company manufactures a headset with a builtin screen that claims to offer a “middle-row movie theatre field of view” for watching high-resolution 2D, 3D and virtual-reality content. On Thursday, Skylights released the second iteration of the wearable device, called Bravo, which airlines can rent and loan to their passengers for a fee.
Skylights has trialled the headsets on a handful of European airlines over the past year. In July, the company established an office in Palo Alto, Calif., with hopes of expanding into the U.S. market, said Laurence Fornari, the head of sales.
Skylights already has agreements to show films from 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks, Fornari said, adding that the headsets currently offer about 60 movie options and can run for six hours on a single charge.
Only a small portion of the content available today is 360-degree video or virtual-reality content. Watching true virtual-reality content is tricky when strapped into an airline seat, Fornari said, because viewers’ range of motion is limited and they may be more prone to motion sickness. She said the company aims to add more “cinematic VR” that places the viewer inside the video while allowing them to still watch passively.