In a lot of dumb sci-fi movies, you die in the game, you die in the real world. Characters are trapped in a video game and must play for their lives. So do they. It seems that someone has made this a reality. Someone created a virtual reality headset that will kill you if you don't win a video game. I think it's fun. The creator is Palmer Luckey, the 30-year-old virtual reality wunderkind, defense contractor, Trump funder, and co- founder of the virtual reality firm Facebook bought for $3 billion. On Sunday, Luckey explained his weird new headset, which he claims is mostly a piece of office art, and also included a picture of it. It looks like this. This thing is going to kill you. It's rigged with bombs so that it explodes.
Luckey explains in his post how his new contraption works.
I used three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, tying them to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy. When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user.
There is a man named Jesus.
The plot of Sword Art Online has been brought to life by Luckey. This comic was the main inspiration for the project. In the comic, characters use a device called "NerveGear" that is capable of killing the user and recreates reality using a direct neural interface. They are dropped into a matrix like world by a mad scientist and forced to endure a "death game" where the stakes of the game are pegged to their own mortality. This is a great idea.
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.
The idea of being able to experience death-defying scenarios and not have your head explode is an interesting one. People may argue that.
Luckey seems to have a plan to make his hat even more frightening by adding anti-tamper tech to it.
This isn’t a perfect system, of course. I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset.
The ultimate goal is to make a murder-helmet that you can't take off. You can only remove it if you win the game or if your corpse is dragged out of a pile of gore-strewn rubble. This is the reason why Luckey hasn't used it yet. He said that.
... there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself, and also why I am convinced that, like in SAO, the final triggering should really be tied to a high-intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually correct.
...At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design.
Some will find this an exciting idea while others will probably be discouraged from taking part because of the phrase "kill the user at the wrong time." There is a grim cocktail of curiosity and schadenfreude that will keep me watching this project for the foreseeable future.
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