This VR headset will literally kill you if you die in-game
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has made a VR headset that will quite literally kill those who wear it
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Killer VR headset
😱 Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has created a VR headset that can kill
⚔️ The headset is inspired by the anime Sword Art Online
💀 If you die in-game, the headset will kill the user
🙏 Palmer hasn’t tested the headset, which is a modified Meta Quest Pro
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus, has created a VR headset that can literally kill users if they die in-game. Yes, you read that right.
As spotted by Vice, Luckey – who many credit as being the father of modern virtual reality – made the VR headset in honor of the anime Sword Art Online. In the anime, those who suffer in-game deaths or try to forcibly remove their “nervegear” equipment when out of the game suffer real-life deaths.
It makes sense, then, that someone would want to recreate this harrowing scenario in the real world… 🙃
The headset that Luckey has fashioned into a killing machine appears to be a modified Meta Quest Pro. The expensive headset has explosive charge modules inserted where a user’s forehead rests, and – should a user die in-game – the charges will detonate, causing the same effect to your head as if you hit a watermelon with a sledgehammer.
In a blog post explaining his bizarre project, Luckey said:
“The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me—you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it.
“Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game. This is an area of videogame mechanics that has never been explored, despite the long history of real-world sports revolving around similar stakes.”
Thankfully, Luckey hasn’t “worked up the balls to actually use it” and has no plans to make any of his employees give it a spin. However, he teases that more killer VR headsets could be on the way or at least more things that mimic sci-fi fantasies. We’ve already seen a VR headset that simulates suffocation.
“At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design,” wrote Luckey. “It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user. It won’t be the last.”
Feeling Luckey, punk? 🎲
Luckey sold Oculus to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, which became the foundation of Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand to Meta. Luckey is now the founder of Anduril, a weapons and defense contractor in the US, which is developing all sorts of military equipment to wage wars with.
As for Meta, the company is all in on the metaverse. Xbox’s Phil Spencer recently likened the metaverse to “a poorly built video game” but that hasn’t stopped Meta from investing billions of dollars into the project, and losing billions as a result.
Meta’s Quest 3 headset is due to release in 2023, which should put it in direct competition with Sony’s PSVR 2, which is out on February 23, 2023. Don’t forget to sign up for our PSVR 2 pre-order notifications if you’d like a VR headset that only threatens to kill your social life, and not your real-life one.