No, it’s not a new episode of Black Mirror. What we are about to tell you is real life. Palmer Lucky, the founder of Oculus, designed a device that in comparison Saw The Riddler would appear to be a defenseless kitten puppy. Lucky has in fact created a VR viewer that, if you die in game, kills you in real life.
And not only that: Lucky would be now thinking of a way to prevent users from removing the device once it is worn. Shall we play a game?
How the VR headset that kills players works
The news comes from a post on Palmer Lucky’s official blog, in which the developer announced his new macabre project. The idea, according to Lucky himself, would derive from a series of Japanese novels called Sword Art Online. In the latter a scientist trapped thousands of people in a VR game. In the event of death, the headset – called NerveGear – killed players with a burst of radiation.
In the post, Lucky claims to have accomplished something very similar. He explained that in real life, to be able to deliver a lethal radiation burst, it is necessary to connect the headset to gigantic devices. Lucky claims he did and that he is now thinking about how make the viewer non-removable by players. In short, once worn, you either win or die. No escape. Surprisingly Lucky said the viewer has not been tested yet. At the moment.
In fact, in addition to the blatant illegality of the project, the VR viewer seems to be thought more like an art object than a real tech device. However, it remains very disturbing, also because Lucky has declared that “it will not be the last piece of deadly technology” that he will make.