Palmer Lucky the creator of the famous VR headset, Oculus, has claimed to have created a new headset that has the capability to kill a user in real life. This story is surprisingly real, fascinating, and slightly disturbing for those who don’t know him.
His VR headset, bought by Facebook in 2014, is now known as the Oculus by Meta. In 2017, Lucky left Oculus and founded a defense contract business revolving around military drones and sensors, considering some of the contracts he’s been getting in recent years. It was easy for a lot of people to presume his VR days were behind him, but a few months ago, Lucky posted something to his personal blog that suggested the contrary and a whole lot more. The November 6th post was simply titled, “If you die in the game, you die in real life.”
He went on to say that Nerve Gear is a made-up VR helmet seen in the Japanese novel Sword Art Online and the anime series based on it. In this series, a mad scientist uses the headset to trap thousands of players in the game, which can only be escaped by completing it. If they run out of HP in the game or their headset is tampered with in the real world, their brains would be blasted with microwaves, and they would die.
Now that sounds like a very grim fantasy, and it is, but Lucky saw a lot of parallels between that story and his Oculus Rift. He talked in his post about how Sword Art Online led to public enthusiasm for Oculus and that thousands of people were reaching out to them to ask if they could make Nerve Gear real. Not too long after that, Lucky announced that the good news is that we are halfway to making a true Nerve Gear, and the bad news is that so far you have only figured out the half that kills you.
The explanation is serious consequences, and he believes the maximum enjoyment from a game comes from maximum reality, which can only truly be achieved when facing real danger while playing. Of course, this raises the question of when a VR experience stops being a game for fun and becomes a genuine fight for survival. He makes the comparison to Real sports having similar stakes, but in the real world, athletes don’t go into games with genuine expectations of death as a result of failure.
Now to be fair, perhaps Lucky is talking here about his headsets having the potential to kill just like sports have the potential to, but that the vast majority of player experiences with this headset won’t result in death, at least that’s what I think, but before we dive too far down the rabbit hole of ethics, I imagine a lot of you guys are thinking at this point how exactly this thing is supposed to kill a person.
In Sword Art Online, the nerve gear uses microwaves emitted at lethal levels, which are hidden from everyone in the project except the mad scientist. Lucky said that although he is pretty smart, he couldn’t come up with a way to make that work but said that quote.
In lieu of this I use three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project tying them to a narrow band photo sensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy when an appropriate game over screen has displayed the charges fire instantly destroying the brain of the user this isn’t a perfect system, of course, I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that like the nerve gear 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 at the balls to actually use it myself and also why I am convinced that like in Sword Art Online the final triggering should really be tied to a high intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually.
Is the nerve gear real?
Cubanvr.com has stated that the NerveGear, a VR headset that can kill you if you die in the game, is a fictional device.
What is the most deadliest VR?
NerveGear to be the deadliest VR to ever try if it comes as written in the fiction.
Why did someone make a VR headset that kills you?
The idea of a VR headset that can harm or kill its users is a fictional concept that originated in a light novel and anime series called Sword Art Online. In the story, NerveGear is a fictional company that creates a full-dive virtual reality system that traps players inside a game, and if they die in the game, they also die in real life.
While the concept of NerveGear and the Sword Art Online story may be entertaining, it is not a real technology or product that exists in the real world. It’s important to differentiate between fiction and reality, and to approach any news or rumors with a critical and discerning mindset.
Over to you
What’s your opinion about the VR headset that can kill you, Would this be something that should go into actual production, or is it better to remain a fiction? Feel free to let us know what you think via the comment box below, and if you find this interesting, kindly share with your friends on social media.