The virtual world agenda is shaken by the latest invention of Palmer Luckey: VR headset that kills you.
VR headset that kills you: Palmer Luckey honores Sword Art Online with his latest invention
A Meta Quest Pro connected to three explosive charge modules that lie above the screen makes up Luckey’s VR headset that kills you. The user’s head would be completely destroyed by the charges, which are pointed straight at the user’s forebrain.
“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me—you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it,” Luckey said in his blog post.
Who is Palmer Luckey?
The inventor of modern virtual reality, Palmer Luckey, a defense contractor, has developed a VR headset that will murder the user if they lose a game they are playing. He did so to honor the anime Sword Art Online. Oculus was founded by Luckey, who in 2014 sold it to Facebook for $2 billion. As the basis for Meta, Mark Zuckerberg rebranded this technology.
“Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game,” he added.
Sword Art Online, an anime and light novel series, is credited with generating interest in virtual reality, particularly in Japan, according to Luckey. When players join into the new game Sword Art Online while wearing a NeveGear virtual reality headset, they soon learn that a mad scientist has imprisoned them in a virtual reality.
To get out, the players must battle their way through a dungeon of 100 floors. They pass away in real life if they pass away in the game. On November 6, the day Sword Art Online went live in the fictional world of the game, Luckey posted about the deadly headset.
“The good news is that we are halfway to making a true NerveGear. The bad news is that so far, I have only figured out the half that kills you. In Sword Art Online, the NerveGear kills players with a microwave emitter. According to Luckey, the device’s creator “was able to hide from his employees, regulators, and contract manufacturing partners. I am a pretty smart guy, but I couldn’t come up with any way to make anything like this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment,” said Luckey.
Luckey chose explosive modular charges because he was unable to create the ideal reproduction. He connected them to a device that identifies when a headset is viewing a particular red screen that flashes at a particular frequency using a narrow-band photo sensor. This was the base of the VR headset that kills you.
“When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user,” explained Luckey.
The three explosive charges that Luckey typically employs for a “other project” were used, according to him. Luckey did not specify which project he was referring to, but he is also the founder of Anduril, a weapons and defense company that has won significant government contracts and is currently working to develop loitering munitions, anti-drone technology for American special forces, and underwater drones.
“I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset. Even so, there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself,” he said.
Despite placing significant wagers on defense contracts, Luckey will always have a stake in virtual reality. He described his deadly headset as “At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design. It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user. It won’t be the last,” he said.
