My Trip Inside Epic Universe: The Line Between Real and Virtual Blurs Even More

After stepping through a Floo chamber and teleporting in a puff of green smoke to a vast and stunning re-creation of the Ministry of Magic, I found myself boarding an elevator. Or something like one. That was after I combed through hallways and rooms where characters spoke to me from paintings and posters, but before I seemed to fly and dip and roam through a simulation of a magical world. Or maybe it was real. Or maybe it was both. As I saw characters appear and get swept away and vast spaces full of detail, I kept asking myself, "Is that a screen? Or an animatronic? Or both? Am I moving or staying still?" I've spent a lot of time with virtual technologies; headsets that try to mix reality with high-resolution displays, glasses that make things appear before me or create sounds that aren't there. At its best moments, Universal's newest theme park, Epic Universe, located in the theme park mecca of Orlando, Florida, blended virtual and reality so fluidly that even I was fooled. Univer ... Read full article.