A FULL motion virtual reality experience which brings the history and future of flight to life opens in the North-East today.

Built for British Airways by award-winning VR creators and an Oscar-winning practical effects team, Fly is an interactive, multisensory experience that traces humankind’s relationship to flying.

Through an interactive 3D pod, visitors wear a headset to become a time-travelling pilot and navigate their way through aviation history from Leonardo da Vinci’s earliest day-dreams of soaring through the sky as a bird to his ornithopter design.

It is followed by the Wright Brothers’ first successful attempt at flight on KittyHawk, to British Airways’ predecessor, AT&T’s, first passenger flight to Paris.

Users also experience travel on Concorde before piloting the brand new A350 and onwards to a vision of the possible vision of the future of aviation.

The uplifting experience is a treat for the senses as Fly incorporates heat, motion, wind and scent on the travel through time and the imagined flight of the future.

Charlotte Mikkelborg, the creator of Fly, said: “Today, flying is so accessible that we forget it took incredible human ingenuity and perseverance to make human flight possible.

“Fly returns a sense of awe and wonder to humankind’s ability to take flight and is the first of its kind in the VR world.”

The virtual reality experience was first seen in London in August as part of the airline’s BA 2119: Flight of the Future project.

For the next month people try the experience for themselves at PROTO, a digital production facility, in Gateshead, before it heads to New York.

The Fly experience costs £10, it takes just over ten minutes and visitors are asked to arrive 15 minutes before their slot. To visit: ba.com/BA2119

British Airways’ chairman Alex Cruz said: “We’re delighted to be bringing Fly to Gateshead to enable the people of the North-East to experience.

“As we’ve been celebrating our centenary this year, we wanted to take the time to reflect back and then look forward to the future.

“We hope visitors will enjoy Fly and that it sparks conversation and debate.”