Before the virtual reality company known as Oculus was acquired by Facebook back in 2014, it began with a dream by Palmer Luckey. This man created a VR prototype that managed to impress the biggest names in the gaming industry. Today, the same individual has made his own standalone VR headset that kills users who die in a video game.
It may seem crazy, but it was, in fact, directly inspired by a popular anime, Sword Art Online, whose original air took place during the company’s early years.
Since this time, Luckey sold the company to the social media giant and became a billionaire. Recently, Facebook completely rebranded the company to Meta, with this technology as its foundational focus.
Now, as a defense contractor and ongoing enthusiast, he has made a device that looks similar to the Meta Quest Pro, connected to three explosive charge modules sitting above the display. These charges target the forehead and, if they were to go off, would blow a person’s head up.
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“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.”
Sword Art Online brought back a renewed interest in virtual reality and created millions of new fans, particularly in Japan. In SAO, players don a NerveGear virtual reality headset and log into an MMORPG known as Sword Art Online, only to find out that a mad scientist has them trapped in the virtual world. These players need to fight their way through a dungeon containing 100 floors to escape. If they die in-game, they die in the real life.
The post about this life-ending VR headset was released on November 6, the same day that SAO debuted in the world of the anime’s fiction.
“The good news is that we are halfway to making a true NerveGear. The bad news is that so far, I have only figured out the half that kills you,” Luckey said. When watching the SAO anime, the NerveGear uses a microwave emitter to kill players. The creator of the device “Was able to hide from his employees, regulators, and contract manufacturing partners. I am a pretty smart guy, but I couldn’t come up with any way to make anything like this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment.”
Without the ability to perfectly recreate the NerveGear, Luckey settled on explosive modular charges. By tying them to a photo sensor with a narrow band that detects the headset views with a specific red screen flashing at a particular frequency, it can trigger in response to the “appropriate game-over screen.”
The explosive charges are ones Luckey typically reserves for a “different project.” However, he is the founder of a weapons and defense contracting company known as Anduril, which has secured massive deals with the government and one that already develops anti-drone tech, underwater drones, and loitering munitions.
No matter his current priorities with defense contracting, Luckey has always had his heart set on VR. “At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design…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.”