Palmer Luckey Made a VR Headset That Kills the User If They Die in the Game - VICE

Luckey’s slayer headset looks similar a Meta Quest Pro hooked up with 3 explosive complaint modules that beryllium supra the screen. The charges are aimed straight astatine the user's forebrain and, should they spell off, would obliterate the caput of the user.

“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 wrote successful a blog post explaining the project. “Pumped up graphics mightiness marque a crippled look much real, but lone the menace of superior consequences tin marque a crippled consciousness existent to you and each different idiosyncratic successful the game.”

According to Luckey, the anime and airy caller bid Sword Art Online made radical funny successful virtual reality, particularly successful Japan. In SAO, players enactment connected a NeveGear virtual world headset and log into a caller crippled called Sword Art Online lone to observe a huffy idiosyncratic has trapped them successful a virtual world. The players person to combat their mode done a 100 level dungeon to escape. If they dice successful the game, they dice successful existent life. Luckey published his station astir the slayer headset connected November 6, the time that Sword Art Online went unrecorded successful the satellite of the game’s fiction. 

“The bully quality is that we are halfway to making a existent NerveGear. The atrocious quality is that truthful far, I person lone figured retired the fractional that kills you,” Luckey said. In SAO, the NerveGear kills players with a microwave emitter. According to Luckey, the device’s creator  “was capable to fell from his employees, regulators, and declaration manufacturing partners. I americium a beauteous astute guy, but I couldn’t travel up with immoderate mode to marque thing similar this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment.”

Unable to marque the cleanable recreation, Luckey opted for explosive modular charges. He tied them to a narrow-band photograph sensor that detects the headset views a circumstantial reddish surface that flashes astatine a circumstantial frequency. “When an due game-over surface is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the encephalon of the user,” Luckey said. 

Luckey said that helium utilized 3 explosive charges helium usually uses for a “different project.” Luckey didn’t specify which project, but helium is besides the laminitis of Anduril, a weapons and defence contractor which has won massive contracts with the government, and that is already processing loitering munitions, anti-drone tech for U.S. peculiar forces, and underwater drones.

Luckey wrote that helium wants to support tinkering. “I person plans for an anti-tamper mechanics that, similar the NerveGear, volition marque it intolerable to region oregon destruct the headset,” helium said. “Even so, determination are a immense assortment of failures that could hap and termination the idiosyncratic astatine the incorrect time. This is wherefore I person not worked up the balls to really usage it myself.”

Despite betting large connected defence contracts, a portion of Luckey volition ever beryllium to virtual reality. “At this point, it is conscionable a portion of bureau art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues successful crippled design,” helium said of his slayer headset. “It is also, arsenic acold arsenic I know, the archetypal non-fiction illustration of a VR instrumentality that tin really termination the user. It won’t beryllium the last.”