The world’s most unusual and scariest virtual helmet is NerveGear, designed to kill you in real life when you die in the game.
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, has announced a new virtual reality headset. But this time, it’s not a conventional product. In the new headset, if you die in-game, you “die” in real life!
In a blog post, Luckey announced that the headset, called NerveGear, is 50 percent complete. The headset is a regular VR device connected to three explosives. Equipped with a photosensor, the charges are set to kill the player when they die in any video game they are playing. When the screen flashes red at a particular frequency, the explosives that game designers will have to implement into the game will be triggered to kill the user.
“I’ve always been fascinated by linking one’s real life to one’s virtual avatar. You immediately raise the stakes to the maximum and force people to radically rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players who inhabit it,” Luckey said. “Improved graphics may make a game seem more real, but only the threat of severe consequences can make a game feel real to you and all other players.”
Luckey says he developed the device as an homage to Sword Art Online, the novel and anime series that used similar technology as a premise, says he “doesn’t have the guts” to use it yet.