I stumbled upon this strange thing today at the at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo, a virtual reality capsule chair developed by the Iwata-Yano Laboratory at the University of Tsukuba. The so-called “Media Vehicle” mounts a spherical display and is supposed to let passengers move around both in the real world (it has 5 wheels) and a virtual reality environment.

The vehicle looks like it’s coming straight out of cult anime Akira, but I am too heavy to be able to use it and so couldn’t try it out myself.