A New Era of Motion Base Attractions

Established in 2014, CAVU Designwerks provides attractions for a variety of entertainment applications. The company’s original designs, engineering experience and cutting edge fabrication, combined with uncompromising quality standards, allows CAVU to offer attractions that deliver an exceptional guest experience, ride performance and ROI.

Immersive and interactive experiences have been marketed significantly over the last 10 years but our attractions aim to meet client demands in a different way. Traditionally in immersive attractions, guests shoot at targets on screens and aim for a high score. CAVU seeks to change this definition of interactivity by expanding the tools available for attraction designers to tell more meaningful stories. Shooting at targets and trying to get a high score doesn’t make sense for many stories. To combat this, our attractions bring new tools such as haptics, hand gesturing, voice recognition, and other techniques allowing guests to interact in more meaningful and sensory ways and connect more closely with the story. In addition, rather than aiming for a high score, our attractions react and respond in ways that immerse the guests more fully into the story. The right degree of motion plays an integral role in delivering immersion and seamlessly transporting the rider through the experience. By including motion, the effect that the riders have on the attraction can change the feel of the experience as well as the storyline. This connection of a tangible and meaningful effect to rider actions is new, exciting, and engaging and something that clients, both now and moving forward, have come to expect.

Virtual reality (VR) and Augmented reality (AR) technologies have progressed exponentially to create immersive environments where guests feel a heightened sense of realism. Our sister company, DreamCraft Attractions, is pioneering fully immersive experiences using advanced VR and AR technologies, and coupled with their proprietary software, they are innovating  the next generation of location based entertainment experiences. Immersion reaches beyond simply the visual sense. The ultimate goal is to engage riders by touching all the senses like smell, sound, and feel. Most forms of entertainment from movies to museums all rely on individuals suspending reality and allowing themselves to be drawn into the story. Story-based attractions are no different. However, guests can get kicked out of the story when the experience bends reality so much that the suspension of reality can no longer be maintained. The most common reason this occurs is because one or more of the senses isn’t right. For example, imagine you are in VR going through a chocolate factory but you smell grease from the ride system. This sensory dissonance between the visual and olfactory systems creates a juxtaposition so strong that some guests may fall out of the immersiveness of the story. At CAVU and DreamCraft, we continually look to advances in technology to more truly engage all the senses to provide the most immersive story ever. New technologies like binaural audio, realtime scent delivery, and adaptive force-feedback systems provide guests with exceptionally real sensations.

Midnight Ride is an action packed Hyper-reality VR experience set in the Twilight™ story universe. As guests race through the moonlit Pacific Northwest, they encounter daring jumps and chases alongside Jacob and the Wolf Pack. MidnightRide, features avatar embodiment and tracking with custom Predictive Ride Tracking for scaling guest avatars and increasing comfort in VR. Midnight Ride allows guests to interact with a story by directing the path they take. Giving guests the agency to choose their own path creates individual ride experiences and encourages repeat ridership.

Mockingjay Flight places guests into The Hunger Games narrative and takes them on a thrilling escape through the streets of the Capitol. This state of the art enclosed motion simulator is entirely electric and runs silently without environmental concerns. The 6DOF motion base supports a 30-person cabin and is themed as an authentic hovercraft used by the second rebellion. With an eye-popping digital presentation, this attraction delivers a vivid and realistic experience guests will love.

Thinkwell Group partnered with CAVU, DreamCraft and Framestore to develop MidnightRide and Mockingjay Flight. CAVU’s ride systems engineering talent combined with DreamCraft’s technical prowess, Framestore’s media expertise and Thinkwell’s creative and production leadership made The Twilight Saga: Midnight Ride possible along with the state-of-the-art immersive cabin simulator The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Flight Rebel Escape.

The unprecedented experiences, Midnight Ride and Mockingjay Flight, will launch in Lionsgate Entertainment World as a part of their 22,000 square meter property in China focused exclusively on VR and media based attractions.

Advances in engineering also have tremendous impact on guest experiences. CAVU takes a blue sky engineering approach to design never before seen attractions, like our Game Changers. https://www.cavudw.com/core-ridesystems/#_interactive-rides. Game Changers were created in partnership with London based Creative Technology agency Framestore. They revolutionize the way interactivity allows guests to change the ride vehicle movements and are changeable in real time, based on immediate feedback from the guest’s interactions.