Elevator rides to become visual adventures

Swedish firm Panoramia has developed a visual display system that turns boring lift rides in visually exciting journeys using screens and VR technology.

Few things are duller than lift journeys, especially long ones that are crammed full of people. But Panoramia – a Swedish interior design technology company – is set to change all that.

A service clearly aimed at the more upmarket building (office skyscrapers and swish apartment blocks), it uses either one or multiple screens installed into the lift then displays one of several completely different themes so users will think they’re doing something much more exciting. Example themes include having the lift rise up through a mountain range, or being in a space rocket that’s blasting off to space. And the technology is clever enough to adapt to the direction the lift is travelling in, and what time of day or night it is (so the scene will be nocturnal at night time, for example).

This isn’t merely just a screen that scrolls up and down – the firm has used its background in VR tech to create a 3D image effect, so when you scroll up and down the image depth will make the experience a lot more realistic.

At the moment customers can only pick one theme pre-installation, but the company has said by 2018 it will be far more customisable with owners able to swaps themes using simply software (regardless of if they bought it now or next year), plus the company is offering to deliver specific themes based on a customer’s design.

It sounds like it might work well in a high-tech building like the Pod Skyscraper concept (a completely modular block built using 3D printing). It also reminds us of the Field Trip to Mars, a group VR that uses 3D screens inside a school bus to make kids think they’re travelling across Mars. What other applications could this sort of headset-free VR be used for?