If you are familiar with the Japanese anime Sword Art Online, then you should know that one of the tools used in the story is the NerveGear, a helmet-like virtual reality headset that had a hidden design, when activated, can kill its user when they die inside an online game. Well, these days, technology has advanced to the point that they have now made such a device a reality.
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus, has designed another Virtual Reality headset, but this time, it has the capacity to kill you when you die in your online game. Since Oculus was acquired by Facebook, Luckey had been busy designing other products with a focus on things military. His Anduril company manufactures drones for different military applications.
In one of his blog posts, Luckey gave us a little hint on what made him design VR headsets and why it still continues to inspire him — the anime Sword Art Online. The killer headset created by a mad scientist within the anime for a VRMMORPG or virtual reality massive multiplayer role-playing game was the tool that made playing the game more realistic and required the player to play the game more seriously. After all, should they die in the game, their VR headset, namely the NerveGear, will emit microwave frequencies that are strong enough to physically kill the player.
In Luckey’s version of the NerveGear, instead of using powerful microwaves, the headset instead packs some explosive charges which, when the player dies in the game, will detonate the explosives killing the player instantly. Although certain specifics on how the game triggers the equipment to explode are not clear, Luckey himself does not have the courage to try the unit himself.
According to Luckey, since the headset in the anime can also kill should anyone tries to tamper with it, he also plans to add this feature on his newly designed headgear. This creates an increase threat over the consequences of playing a game.
Are you brave enough to try this new VR headgear?