Seat Affinity Virtual Reality


Aircraft seat selection normally presents an overhead view of a seat map to select your seat from the reservation system. "Figure 1: Static Overhead View of Seating Chart" shows a partial seating chart where each point, shown as a sphere, represents a seat. The nose-to-tail direction runs North to South (vertical orientation) and each row has 6 seats per row going West to East, horizontally.

The columns, from left to right, can be numbered 1 to 6 representing the Window-Middle-Aisle-Aisle-Middle-Window seat prototypes. The pattern repeats 6 seat across for each row so this could be an B737 Economy cabin.

Some columns in the static views appear slightly distorted, especially towards the center columns 3 and 4. The seats in our model are not in the same Cartesian coordinate plane. We are looking at a 2D overhead view, producing some distortion similar to the 1981 Atari game called "Tempest".

Figure 1: Static Overhead View of Seating Chart

"Figure 2: Static Side View of Seating Chart" shows the same seating chart, but from a side view and with seats as cubes rather than spheres. This view illustrates how the seats levitate above the x-y plane producing the distortion of aisle seats in columns 3 and 4 from the overhead view. The aisle seats float higher the highest. The more the passenger prefers a seat, the farther up the z-axis its affinity.

Figure 2: Static Side View of Seating Chart

"Figure 3: Static Underside View of Seating Chart" shows another angle to help visualize the VR animations. Notice how the axes are now closer to our viewpoint with seat cube shading on the underside of the cube. We are looking at these aircraft seats from ground level. The higher up the cube, the greater the affinity.
Figure 3: Static Underside View of Seating Chart

The 3D movie starts with an overhead view like Figure 1, of the aircraft seating chart. The animation rotates our viewpoint, ending with a view looking down the length of the cabin from nose-to-tail.

If you walked the center aisle of the aircraft towards the tail wearing a VR helmet, and seats rose in proportion to passenger seating preference, this is what you might see. Seats would be on your left and right Hopscotch calculates the seat levitation per your preference. The higher the seat sits above the cabin floor, the greater your affinity for such a seat.



Another 3D movie of the same model helps to visualize the VR simulation of seat affinity from another angle.


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