Oculus co-founder makes a VR headset that can literally kill you - Ars Technica

A caller benignant of "killer app" —

Sword Art Online inspires Palmer Luckey to enactment explosive charges connected a Quest Pro.

Kyle Orland - Nov 7, 2022 9:28 p.m. UTC

Enlarge / Looks comfortable...

The thought that dying successful a video crippled oregon simulation could origin your decease successful existent beingness is simply a communal trope that has appeared successful dozens of fictional works successful caller decades. Now, though, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has made the conception real.

On his idiosyncratic blog, Luckey writes of a caller VR headset helium has designed that uses 3 embedded explosive charges, planted supra the forehead, that tin "instantly destruct the encephalon of the user." The lethal detonation is triggered via "a narrow-band photosensor that tin observe erstwhile the surface flashes reddish astatine a circumstantial frequency," Luckey writes, making it casual to acceptable disconnected during a "Game Over" screen.

Enlarge / John Carmack (left) poses with Oculus laminitis Palmer Luckey (center) and different members of the Oculus team.

OculusVR

To beryllium clear, Luckey says his deadly headset—which looks successful images similar a modified Meta Quest Pro—is "at this point... conscionable a portion of bureau art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues successful crippled design." At the aforesaid time, though, Luckey writes that "the thought of tying your existent beingness to your virtual avatar has ever fascinated me—you instantly rise the stakes to the maximum level and unit radical to fundamentally rethink however they interact with the virtual satellite and the players wrong it."

Luckey ties this fascination to Sword Art Online (SAO), a bid of Japanese novels (and spinoff anime, video games, etc.) astir a virtual world MMORPG with the aforesaid name. In that fiction, November 6, 2022, marks the time erstwhile thousands of SAO players are trapped successful their NerveGear headsets and threatened with decease via a hidden microwave generator if they dice successful the crippled (or if they effort to region oregon tamper with the headset).

The Sword Art Online anime was conscionable airing erstwhile the archetypal Oculus Rift Development Kit launched connected Kickstarter back successful 2012, helping to thrust what Luckey calls "massive otaku enthusiasm for Oculus, particularly successful Japan, which rapidly became our 2nd largest market." He says that "literally thousands" of fans person reached retired to him implicit the twelvemonth astir Sword Art Online, asking, "When volition you marque the NerveGear [headset] real?!”

A past of consequences

More than realistic graphics, Luckey writes that "only the menace of superior consequences tin marque a crippled consciousness existent to you." He likens specified consequences to a "long past of real-world sports revolving astir akin stakes," though it's important to retrieve that astir sports injuries autumn good abbreviated of instant death.

But portion Luckey writes that this is "an country of video crippled mechanics that has ne'er been explored," that's not strictly true. Back successful 2001, the PainStation creation installation threatened players who mislaid a crippled of Pong with "sensations specified arsenic heat, punches and electroshocks of varying duration," arsenic Wired described it. That aforesaid year, the "Tekken Torture Tournament" provided a warring crippled contention successful which "32 consenting participants received bracing but non-lethal electrical shocks successful correspondence to the injuries sustained by their onscreen avatars."

Enlarge / Those armbands present instant symptom to anyone who got deed successful 2001's "Tekken Torture Tournament."

On the different extremity of the simulated symptom equation, past twelvemonth the Food and Drug Administration approved a virtual world symptom absorption system that uses "established principles of behavioral therapy intended to code the physiological symptoms of symptom and assistance successful symptom alleviation done a skills-based attraction program."

In immoderate case, Luckey cites "a immense assortment of failures that could hap and termination the idiosyncratic astatine the incorrect time" successful explaining wherefore helium has "not worked up the balls to really use" his deadly caller headset. Still, the task shows that Luckey inactive harbors a heavy involvement successful virtual world much than 5 years aft he was fired by Oculus genitor institution Facebook (now Meta) amid contention implicit political donations.

In the years since, Luckey's nonrecreational beingness has been mostly focused connected his subject tech startup Anduril. In an April idiosyncratic blog post, though, helium wrote that the twelvemonth of the 10th day of Oculus' founding was "the close clip to yet unveil immoderate VR technologies I haven’t been capable to speech astir for a assortment of reasons."

We're guessing this deadly headset wasn't what helium meant by that, but it's hard to cognize for sure...