Palmer Luckey, a virtual reality pioneer and the developer of Oculus – now better known as a part of Facebook’s Meta – created a VR device that will actually kill the player if they lose the game.
NerveGear, Luckey’s murderous headset, looks like a Meta Quest Pro coupled with three explosive charge units located above the screen.
The charges are aimed at the user’s forebrain, and if they detonate, they will entirely demolish the user’s skull.
Wearing a NeveGear VR headset, players start Sword Art Online, a new game based on the Japanese anime and book of the same name.
Luckey described the ‘killer’ VR on his blog:
Today is November 6th, 2022, the day of the SAO Incident. Thousands of VRMMORPG gamers were trapped by a mad scientist inside a death game that could only be escaped through completion. If their hit points dropped to zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, supposedly killing the user. The same would happen if anyone in the real world tampered with their NerveGear, the virtual reality head-mounted display that transported their minds and souls to Aincrad, the primary setting of Sword Art Online.
The players must battle their way through a 100-floor dungeon in order to escape a lunatic scientist’s virtual reality.
Don’t get too thrilled or scared because the killer VR headset is not yet available for purchase.
Luckey sold Oculus, the underpinning of Mark Zuckerberg’s march to the metaverse, to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.
