Phantasialand opens new VR roller coaster Crazy Bats

Phantasialand has, as announced, opened its new virtual reality rollercoaster "Crazy Bats" this Tuesday. Bats accompany the ride through a castle.

It happens very quickly: as soon as visitors put on their virtual reality goggles, the real world around them disappears. From now on, three little bats are the protagonists in their virtual world. Animated film meets the world's longest dark rollercoaster - that's the motto of the latest Phantasialand-Crazy Bats" attraction, which has been open since this Tuesday. On the track of the former "Temple of the Nighthawk" rollercoaster, guests can now experience a fun, four-minute adventure starring three crazy bats.

Employees of the Brühl amusement park were able to get a first impression of the new attraction on Monday evening. "The ride exceeded my expectations. It was really great," praised Léon after the ride. His colleague Lena was also impressed: "The image is very well matched to the track. And the theming with the bats is very nice."

Billions of pixel dots

Phantasialand has brought two partners on board for the realisation of "Crazy Bats": the animation studio Ambient Entertainment and the company VR Coaster. "At Phantasialand, we have taken virtual reality (VR) to the next level," says Bernd Bohnert from Ambient Entertainment, referring above all to the sharp image quality and the special depth representation. This is ensured by one billion pixels per second. For comparison: a normal animated film in the cinema has around 170 million pixels per second. Each of the three bats in the film has around two million hairs, which an employee had to create on the computer and "style" accordingly. The animation is so complex that an employee could only edit an average of seven to eight seconds of film per week.

The Story

In the story, the "Crazy Bats" live in a castle with long corridors and magnificent halls. When the passengers enter the walls, a battle for their favour begins among the little animals - but things go wrong. Instead of gifting the visitors with a magical ice flake, they give the castle a big ice age. And the passengers race frozen in a large block of ice through and around the entire castle - always accompanied by the trio. Sometimes the visitors are hurled along a chandelier or they ride backwards - at least that's what they think, because the rollercoaster actually only goes forwards. Finally, the passengers even look into their own animated mirror image, you might think, because the bat in the mirror turns its head to mirror the guest's movements.

"You forget that you're on a rollercoaster. The vastness you experience is great," said René, who, as a spectacle wearer, had no problems after a ride on what the park claims is the longest VR coaster in the world. The Phantasialand employee simply pulled the VR goggles, which are handed over to guests just before the station, placed on a conveyor belt after the ride and then taken to be cleaned, over his own. The VR goggles can be easily secured on the head with a twist lock on the back.

The system essentially consists of two components: a fully automatic capture system and the latest generation of VR glasses. "Special lenses ensure that the image is always in focus automatically as soon as the passenger puts on the goggles," explained Thomas Wagner, Managing Director of VR Coaster and Professor of Virtual Design at Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences, to the GA. He continued: "As soon as the passengers have put on the goggles, they are captured and aligned by an automatic tracking system using video cameras. The passengers' line of vision is synchronised with the image on the VR glasses." This procedure, which has to be carried out manually in other parks and takes a considerable amount of time, runs in the background at Phantasialand. Another special feature: there are three versions of the film: for passengers at the front, in the middle and at the back of the train. "Depending on where you sit, the experience on a rollercoaster is very different," continues Wagner.

Source: Fantasialand / Youtube / General Anzeiger