In the latest entry, Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Oculus Rift glasses, shared the idea of creating an extremely controversial virtual reality headset that would take the gamer experience to a whole different level. It can be said that it is extremely risky … Well the entrepreneur plans to prepare NerveGear glasses, which, using an extended interface, are able to kill the user, if he loses in the virtual world.
As Luckey points out, NerveGear would perfectly reflect reality and force players to thoroughly analyze the procedure in virtual reality. Eventually, the game will be the game with the highest stakes.
“You want NerveGear, an extraordinary device that perfectly recreates reality via a direct neural interface that is also capable of killing the user. The idea of associating real life with a virtual avatar has always fascinated me: immediately the stakes are high and it forces people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players. Enhanced graphics can make the game more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make the game real for you and everyone else. This is an area of videogame mechanics that has never been explored, despite a long history of real disciplines that revolve around similar topics. “
The creator has revealed that he is in the middle of the process of creating a controversial set – unfortunately so far he has not focused on the most perfect presentation of an alternate reality, but on the way to end the user’s life. Apparently, it still takes a few years to prepare the perfect VR set, while it has combined three explosive modules with a narrowband photosensor that detects a flashing screen in a specific way, which would signal the loss during gameplay.
At this stage of production, however, NerveGear is a very faulty device that can kill a person at the worst moment. Therefore, the project is not yet tested on humans.
“This is obviously not a perfect system. I am designing an anti-tamper mechanism which, as with NerveGear, will prevent the headset from being removed or destroyed. Even so, there is a huge amount of crashes that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. “
The idea of an even deeper immersion in virtual reality is very interesting, however the development of new technologies should become the beginning of a discussion on the ethical side of this project. Palmer Luckey’s idea, while innovative, could have many opponents.
