 Virtual reality is having a renaissance. Big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Samsung are all building headsets consumers can buy and use in the comfort of their own homes. But virtual reality is also reshaping an entirely different set of industries. It starts here, in theme parks, but it'll spread to malls and movie theaters and arcades. Virtual reality will reshape the way we consume entertainment, not just passively sitting on our couch, but also when we're having fun out in the real world. This summer, the future of this industry will start to roll out to the masses. Six Flags is going to put VR coasters in nine parks across the United States. And Sony Pictures is working with an ambitious startup called The Void to put a Ghostbusters virtual reality experience right into the heart of Times Square. Okay, I know what you're thinking. Wearing a VR headset on a roller coaster seems ridiculous. And, well, obviously it is. But, having tried it myself, I can say there's actually something amazing about it. When you combine real world forces with great virtual reality, you get something new, something more exciting and terrifying than either one on its own. Layering virtual reality on top of rides that already exist works well. But startups are also starting from scratch. Zero Latency, for example, is creating a sort of virtual reality shooting range. Think the next generation of Lasertag. And The Void, with its new Ghostbusters experience, is going even further. It's trying to map the virtual world onto the real one, so that when you reach out to touch a wall in the simulation, it's actually there. Using heat lamps and fans, trapdoors and elevators, it's adding physical effects to the simulation, creating what it calls hyperreality. These projects will have a profound impact on the VR experience in two ways. First, they'll act as a catalyst for mainstream adoption. Six Flags estimates that 7 million people will get to experience VR this summer on their rides. That's seven times the number of active users Samsung believes it has for its VR headset right now. Second, they'll give consumers a taste of the near future. The Void is willing to spend a lot of money on its headset. For the average consumer VR experience, consumers aren't willing to pay more than $600 to $800, plus $1,000 for their gaming PC. The Void can spend around $10,000 on a single headset in order to give people an ultra-high-end experience that's worth the price of admission. And that's why theme parks are going to be the future of virtual reality. You want the biggest number of people to experience the best the technology has to offer. And that's only going to happen in a place like this. Unless it doesn't. Actually, we've been on this ride before. A few decades ago, people thought that theme parks were going to be the future of virtual reality and vice versa. That ride didn't end so well. It's 7.43 in the morning. Right now, we are going to rock your world through virtual reality. Ah, the 1990s. At the time, a lot of companies were jumping on the increasingly hot VR bandwagon, and one of the biggest was Virtual World Entertainment. Now, the guys from that company thought that VR headsets made you look like an idiot, and they were not wrong. So they created what they called Battle Tech Pods, these big, complex-looking cockpits that you could strap into and battle not-very-realistic-looking robots. People loved it. They loved it so much that VW was able to create its own series of virtual reality parks. They even had bars where you could go to tell your war stories. Weird Al was a fan. Wow, that was great! Yeah, it was a thing. Around the same time, Disney began to experiment with its own brand of virtual reality. It opened up an Aladdin magic carpet ride with some very cumbersome-looking helmets, and Bill Nye did a little work on a cyberspace mountain. VR theme parks and arcades were big business. Until the novelty wore off, that is. It turns out that they couldn't keep the software updated fast enough to make it interesting. They didn't have the same eternal enjoyment as a roller coaster. VR was just another amusement, one with a very short shelf life. So is VR today just another fad? It's hard to say, obviously. We know it's not as bulky or expensive as it was back then, and no doubt the immersive experiences you can have in your living room will improve by leaps and bounds over the next few years. But until people start putting roller coasters in their backyards or turning their houses into funhouse mazes full of props, there'll be a certain kind of magic that's only possible when you actually get off the couch. John Malachar, who is the virtual reality king, is getting ready to take us on the virtual reality tour this morning. He joins us live from Pasadena. Good morning, Jar. Nice. New hat. Good. Good morning. This is a real man's hat. They don't call me dead meat for nothing. You guys gonna fly with me today? Tony? Susan? You there? Yes, we are. You guys are just like... Well, hey. No, no, we're here. We're here. Oh, there you are. We're in virtual reality somewhere. We're in virtual reality somewhere.