We Went Virtual Reality Skydiving and It Felt Like the Real Thing

iFly wants to take you on a 13,000 foot digital skydive.I’m hanging outside of a plane in a virtual world set some 2.5 miles above the Palm in Dubai. With a thumbs up from another skydiver, I follow a group of jumpers and a wingsuiter as they leap into the air.

Back in Westchester, N.Y. with a virtual reality full-face helmet strapped to my head, my physical body follows my virtual one into the wind and a tremendous whoosh lifts me into the air. In the real world, I am no more than five feet off the net of a wind tunnel, held securely in place by a flight instructor. In virtual reality, I’m plummeting toward Earth at 120 miles per hour with a guy in a wingsuit carving around me and two other…