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You can now explore the 3 cabins inside of an Emirates Airbus A380 on Emirates.com courtesy of “web virtual reality (VR) technology”. As things stand the aircraft on view is home to the older style First Class cabin but Emirates says that the technology will soon include all configurations of the A380 and its Boeing 777 aircraft.
The technology allows users to see inside the various cabins just by moving a round their screen with a mouse and, if you’re one of the few who have a VR headset (like Google Cardboard), you can use that to get an even more immersive experience.
Here’s what the cabins loom like on a regular laptop screen:
Emirates A380 First Class
You can’t just visit any part of the aircraft you like – there are predefined viewing position set by the software – but you can still get a good idea of what the aircraft offers.
Here’s a view of a First Class suite from the aisle….
….and then the same suite viewed from the inside:
There are markers within the suite which, when clicked, give a bit more information on the amenities available and the seat characteristics.
You can take a look around the small (but very useful) shower “spa”….
…and check out the onboard lounge (which is shared with Business Class) too:
Emirates A380 Business Class
The Business Class tour works in much the same way except that you can choose to view a window seat, an aisle seat or see what the twin seats look like:
Once again you can click on a number of areas around the seat to get more in formation about the amenities available.
Emirates A380 Economy Class
In the Economy Class cabin you can view the whole cabin….
…the extra legroom seats….
…the window seats….
…and the aisle seats….
Unsurprisingly you’re not give n a chance to see what a middle seat looks like.
Thoughts
I like the idea behind this because it gives a passenger a little bit more of an idea of what to expect onboard but I found the laptop experience very limiting.
You can’t walk up and down the aisles in a similar way to how a Google Maps experience lets you walk around so you’re restricted to what you can actually view.
This may not be an issue for those viewing with a VR headset but, as I suspect they’ll form a very small percentage of people exploring the aircraft, that shouldn’t really be the target audience for this kind of tour.
The best way for me to sum up my feelings is this: I like the concept but I’m not overly impressed with the execution.
