MEET OUR THEA AWARD RECIPIENT FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT: CONNECTED IMMERSION
JUMP By Limitless Flight Bluffdale, Utah USA Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement - Connected Immersion Overview
JUMP opened Bluffdale Utah (just south of Salt Lake City in the heart of BASE-jumping territory) in May 2022 with a two-bay installation. After arrival and check in, guests get tips in a pre-flight video Thenyou wingsuit up moving to a designated bay to put on your wingsuit and helmet. The helmet’s integrated VR display was designed by Value Index in conjunction with Optimal Design & Engineering. This particular headset has a uniquely adjustable Pupillary Distance which making the visuals especially crisp, clear, and better than real. Making the leap, the first sensation is that of free-fall. Then the Navigator system “catches” you before you set off to explore. The ride system allows you free-range to control your direction and steer through cliff tops and tree lines. The digital landscape surrounding you was captured by a 180 degree-megapixel camera array taken from helicopter flyover of selected locations. Each pixel you view is equal to one square centimeter This data set was then lit, textured, and rendered using the Unreal Engine 5 with Nanite to provide a never-before-achieved level of realism. The Guest Pilot has full control over flight path (as long as it is forward) with both the game engine and the mechanical flying rig reacting in real time. Eventually you deploy the parachute and feel the pull of the chute release-- thanks to IR tracking integration and the quick response of the game and mechanical systems. You’ll slowly glide to the ground by toggling the handles from your parachute. On landing, you de-suit, and go view the playback of your flight. The Pilot Guest experience is approximately 40 minutes from reservation check in to leaving with a v-log of your flight. Special mention: The team wants to provide the best possible experience for all levels of guest mobility. Their FAQ carefully outlines, for wheelchair-related inquiries, the amount of unassisted movement required for the experience. JUMP opens up the possibility of some thrilling and soaring experiences for challenged riders. Future plans include different flight paths and of course a roll out to other locations. The next announced location is at New Jersey’s American Dream Mall with six-bays.
What sets this attraction apart?
JUMP gathers together best-in-class technology and amps each to an even higher level. Each element sets new heights in the category of “industry standards”.JUMP is a thrilling leap forward merging experience with technology to create a total wish-fulfilling guest experience. JUMP is sophisticated, wicked-clever, and impactful. It merges physical experience with sophisticated flying control with the best-yet integration of VR into a physical guest experience.Let’s say you’ve always wanted to Sky Dive. No, let’s take it a bit further. You’ve always wanted to don a wingsuit and jump off a cliff and soar untethered over Notch Peak in the Utah mountains. But maybe you’ve been a bit trepidatious about your sporting skills, or perhaps maybe your personal safety. Well… we’ve found the hyperreal, immersive experience for you: JUMP by Limitless Flight.JUMP is a fiendishly smart combination of technologies that give you all the physical sensations –the weightless jump off a cliff, the rush of the wind, the wind engaging with the wings of your suit, the sense of controlling the direction and forward motion of your own travel as you soar over Utah until the moment your shoot engages, and you steer into an effortless and safe landing. Yes! You did it.! And you didn’t break a leg. Now, you want to turn right around and do it again. Which is why Limitless Flight has cleverly packaged their experience pricing to make successive jumps less expensive. The more you jump the less expensive each jump. You can surely guess that JUMP has not missed any gamification strategies…The team that worked on The Void VR experience a couple of years ago, James Jensen and Tait Towers, have added some new members. This time around Jensen and his JUMP co-founder, Matthew Hall, brought in BASE-jumper extraordinaire Marshall Miller as their consultant, your trainer, and sometimes the voice in your headset. In addition, the team includes an academy award production designer, a mind-set coach, record-setting athletes, and lots of really smart technologists.At Tait Towers, Project Manager Kim Ross worked in close collaboration with Jim Shumway, Senior Project Manager. Shumway worked with Limitless to develop the prototype concept for the JUMP bay and to fine-tune Tait’s Navigator Automation Platform. He is quite literally the guy who wrote the book, Automated Performer Flying, and was formerly a head rigger for Cirque de Soliel.
Jump is not you in a motion-based simulator, not you in a twisting roller coaster, this is not you floating in a wind tunnel. This is a whole new hyperreal, multi-sensory experience.
Combining live elements with guided free flight with drop dead graphic quality VR
All of this makes this an outstanding attraction that the entire Thea Awards Committee wants to JUMP into again and again.
This unparalleled hyperreal experience might be the thus-far illusive, killer application of VR that brings it into the mainstream.
How long did the project take to complete?
29 months until our grand opening in UT
Behind the Scenes
When we finished the first version of the flight physics, James jumped and crashed multiple times, saying, "I think something is wrong with the physics." Long story short, nothing was wrong; James didn't know how to fly a wingsuit. Once Marshall Miller, our resident human flight professional, saw how James was making the jump, he explained, "Yeah, That is how people die in the real world." It was so realistic you needed to know what you were doing.
