Entering an elevator in Tokyo and emerging thirty minutes later feeling as though you’ve just left Mars is almost absurd. At Tokyo’s newest science attraction, however, a glass-walled observation deck with a view of Tokyo Bay has been discreetly transformed into a launchpad for the Red Planet.
Through the use of VR headsets and motion tracking, the experience, which runs through late June, immerses guests in a virtual Martian colony where they can move freely across what appears to be an endless red landscape rather than sitting still. It’s a minor technical trick. A modestly sized floor begins to feel like open space because the software expands your sense of space by a factor of ten or twenty, even though the actual room is far too small to hold a planet. Its own silent engineering feat is that up to a hundred people can move through it simultaneously without ever running into one another.
The trip itself has a fairly well-known plot, but it’s done better than most VR attractions. In a brief, dramatic launch sequence, visitors take off from Earth, land on the Martian surface, and then board a virtual rover to race across dust-colored plains. A tour of a research base, a chance encounter with what appears to be a Martian, which is amusing rather than frightening, and the focal point, a blue sunset that dips below a Martian horizon, are all depicted with enough detail that visitors usually just stand there for a moment without saying anything.
The experience’s built-in photo feature is intriguing. It sounds like a gimmick until you see families actually taking selfies inside the virtual world, posing on a rover and mugging for the camera against a backdrop of far-off peaks and red dust. Although it’s a minor addition, it alters how users act within the simulation. They begin to view it as a place they have truly visited rather than as a ride.
There are already plenty of space-themed attractions in Tokyo. For example, the TeNQ museum in Tokyo Dome City offers a VR moonwalk experience that includes lunar gravity games and a voice-activated tour guide. This more recent Mars experience is unique in part because of its scale and in part because it seems appropriate to set up a Mars colony inside a structure that is best known for its expansive views of a real city skyline. With imagined Mars inside the glass and actual Tokyo outside, the contrast does some subtle work on its own.
It’s important to remember that not everyone is suited for the experience. There are footwear restrictions that seem strangely specific until you remember that people are walking, not sitting, throughout the entire event. Children under seven and anyone shorter than roughly 110 centimeters are not allowed to participate. Given how much of Tokyo’s tourist traffic still passes through this area of the bay, English-language support is available, and tickets are slightly more expensive on weekends.
It’s difficult to say whether this represents the future of science museums or is merely a clever seasonal exhibit. VR attractions typically have a limited lifespan, and novelty wanes more quickly than technological advancements. For the time being, though, there is a tiny room in Tokyo where the floor extends well ahead of the horizon, which is an odd enough trick to make the trip worthwhile.
