No, it's not a clickbait title, but rather the new invention of Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift headset, bought by Facebook and renamed Meta Quest. The 30-year-old billionaire is not done with virtual reality and seems to want to push the limits of fiction with this helmet straight out of a science fiction film. In a message posted on his official website, Palmer Luckey explains how this completely surreal helmet works. The device is actually equipped with three explosive charges, capable of being triggered when the Game Over in the game occurs. The device will indeed be connected to a system capable of identifying a specific frequency when the screen flashes red. The explosive charges, located at forehead level, would instantly destroy the user's brain. Palmer Luckey explains that he was inspired by the Sword Art Online series, novels written by Reki Kawahara and adapted in anime and video games for several years. In this saga, there are VRMMORPGs for Virtual Reality Multi Massively Online Role Playing Game, and in one of the stories, a mad scientist traps thousands of players with the NerveGear, a deadly virtual reality headset.
The idea of ​​linking your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me - you instantly raise the stakes to the max and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players in it. Extensive graphics can make a game photo-realistic, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game real for you and everyone else in the game. This is a video game mechanic that has never been explored, while real-world sports have already experienced deadly risks.
It's not just a bored-at-home entrepreneur fantasy, but a raging urge to take the next step in the world of virtual entertainment. Palmer Luckey explains that his explosive helmet is still in the prototype stage and suffers from some malfunctions. He explains in particular that the VR headset starts to explode when Game Over is not activated and that is the reason why he has not tried it yet.
It's not 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 helmet. Even so, there are a wide variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. That's why I don't have the balls to use it myself, and also why I'm convinced that, like in Sword Art Online, the final trigger really should be tied to a highly intelligent agent who can easily determine if the conditions of destruction are indeed correct.
Creator of the Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey sold his headset and company to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. He then joined Mark Zuckerberg's company, but officially resigned from Facebook after several months of absence and media silence on March 31, 2017.
