Orlando company creates VR thrill ride for Super Bowl

An Orlando-based business is Super Bowl bound.  IDEAS, a media and experience design company, has come up with a virtual reality thrill ride that will take fans to Mars and then drop hem in middle of the NFL action.

Future Flight, which simulates a trip to the Red Planet and back, will be featured at the Super Bowl Live fan festival.  Passengers will be loaded onto a 90-foot drop tower structure, then they will put on virtual reality goggles for the ride, which lasts just over two minutes. 

"The whole idea of Future Flight is to celebrate the courage and the commitment and the absolute one-of-a-kind nature of the relationship between NASA and Houston, because Houston is the world's home of human space flight," said Bob Allen with IDEAS. "Future Flight is kind of an homage to the next great deep space mission trip to Mars."

Allen said a number of partners have collaborated on the project.

"We have worked very closely with NASA's VR lab at Johnson Space Center in Texas, and our boots on the ground production partners at Global Experience Specialists," said Allen. "It has been a joint effort but almost six months to develop and get to the point where we're now in the final construction on the ride and in final production on the VR components."