The Man Behind Oculus Rift Has Designed a VR Headset That Can Kill You

It sounds like the premise of a dystopian horror movie: if you die in the game, you die in real life. But that's exactly the purpose of a new VR headset designed by Palmer Luckey, the founder of VR gaming company Oculus.

Inspired by the "NerveGear" from the fictional world of Sword Art Online, Luckey claims to have developed hardware which mirrors the sci-fi staple where a failure in a virtual setting has grave real-world consequences.

"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," Luckey wrote in his blog. "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. This is an area of videogame mechanics that has never been explored, despite the long history of real-world sports revolving around similar stakes."

"The good news is that we are halfway to making a true NerveGear," he continued. " The bad news is that so far, I have only figured out the half that kills you."

Luckey explained that he has devised headgear which is fitted with three explosive charges, tied to a sensor which can detect flashes of red in the game and will trigger the charges when a "Game Over" screen appears. He went on to outline his plans for an "anti-tampering mechanism" which will make it impossible for a user to remove the headset without setting off the explosives.

"At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design," he concluded. "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."

Well that's not ominous at all.

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