This mobile VR truck is what everyone needs at their party.
The hottest truck to hit the San Francisco food scene isn’t what you’re expecting.
With an equally long line of customers, you won’t be waiting for the latest duck confit tacos or crispy miso tofu steamed buns from this truck anytime soon.
In fact, this truck isn’t a food truck at all.
This is the latest trend in mobile experiences on wheels, pushing only one thing to consumers during a crisp clear night in the city — virtual reality.
Instead of plating late night dinner specials, Exit Reality is serving up 13 of the freshest VR experiences on the HTC Vive, all from the back of a converted mail delivery truck. In what may be the next evolution of VR arcades to hit the States, where VR is instead brought to where the customer is, Exit Reality is taking the food truck model to an appetizing new level.
Speaking with Yoni Koenig, Co-Founder and CEO of Exit Reality, the truck is off to a quick start, considering its only been in commission for a month now. The extensively fabricated VR on wheels made its debut parked outside the Hotel Zetta in San Francisco earlier this month. Soon after, the mobile VR truck let customers step into new worlds during an Off The Grid dining block party tour in Mountain View California.
Koenig explains that the mail delivery truck was completely rebuilt from the frame up, with the team adding heftier electrical and additional head room to allow customers to stand up right and walk around — experiencing the best of room-scale VR when in the Vive.
In a given night, the truck can serve 50-100 users with a menu of “classic” VR content to choose from, including experiences like Raw Data, AudioShield, Gnomes & Goblins, Invasion!, and The Rose & I. All the content is licensed individually from developers, similar to what we’ve seen other VR arcades do as well, often paying a fixed monthly fee for commercial use. For now, Exit Reality is allowing free play for curious customers, but has not ruled out working with HTC closer on utilizing their Viveport Arcade platform to better manage a pay-per-minute type arcade system.
In addition to Exit Reality’s traveling VR truck experience for events, the team is also helping to introduce VR to even more consumers at restaurants and bars around the city with their Cube pop-up experience. The metallic looking cube will let you privately escape your friends and let loose in some gun-slinging Space Pirate Trainer or whatever your heart desires after throwing back a few pints.
Exit Reality is hoping to scale quickly throughout the San Francisco area and keep up a more consistent schedule at events in the Bay, aspiring to replicate the model in other major metropolitan cities in the United States. Although this is one of the first VR on wheels we’ve seen to date, Exit Reality is part of a growing trend globally to meet hands-on consumer demand with location-based VR experiences like VR theme parks, cafes, and arcades.
In October, HTC opened up their first Vive branded VR cafe in Shenzhen China, a country that has seen VR steadily going mainstream, thanks to hundreds of dedicated arcades and cafes popping up in major cities across the country.
For many consumers, VR arcades or in this case, VR in a truck, may be the easiest way to try virtual reality for the first time. Whether wanting to experience VR before they invest in a system, not having a large enough space at home for room-scale, or just not being able to afford purchasing high-end VR hardware right now, we should welcome all the variations of getting VR on the heads and into the hands of more people around the world.
And if it means parking it next to a wood-fired pizza oven and a cupcake truck, i’ll be sure to wear my fat pants to this VR party.
Image Credit: Exit Reality
