Gear VR: first-class entertainment for frequent fliers

Gear VR is now officially available at Best Buy for $200, which is a neat price to pay for a pretty comprehensive virtual reality headset, that is if you can afford to get the Galaxy Note 4, too. Since the availability of Gear VR is no longer news and Samsung has managed to market the goggles pretty well, you are probably wondering what other uses the headset has. Qantas airlines has announced that those who travel with their airline, first-class, will have the opportunity to use Gear VR as an entertainment device during their flight.

Personally, I feel a bit freaked out about using virtual reality on a plane, especially if you choose to use a plane simulator and manage to crash. It might be a real downer and it could fuel your phobia of flying. Not to mention that you would get pretty disoriented using Gear VR in-flight. Alas, Qantas thought that it was a pretty good idea to offer the service to their first-class costumers. Gear VR will be available to passengers traveling from Sydney and Melbourne to LA will be the “test-subjects” for the company’s new entertainment system.

Qantas airlines will make Gear VR available on the Airbus A380 aircraft, one of the biggest within the company, for about three months. The first three months will be the testing-period of Gear VR, when the company will gather feedback from passengers to see if the virtual reality experience is enticing enough to make it a permanent offering during various flights. According to the company, they are developing new content for Gear VR with Jaunt, so that they can offer passengers the possibility to experience LA before getting there.

The project will be kicking off sometime next month, first only in the airport lounges, after which Gear VR will move onto flights. Qantas says that in-flight Gear VR will be available starting March, so we are looking forward to see how customers will feel like about the virtual reality experience. The Galaxy Note 4 will come along with Gear VR, naturally, so the temptation might be high. The initiative from Qantas Airlines is admirable, as it aims to offer a fun way of popularizing virtual reality in its entirety to those who can actually afford getting the whole setup. Aussie readers, let us know if you’re going to be flying from one of the aforementioned Australian cities to LA and if you get to try out Gear VR while doing so.