Tag: VR

  • Oculus creator makes VR headset that actually kills users if they die in the game

    Oculus creator makes VR headset that actually kills users if they die in the game

    Palmer Luckey, a virtual reality pioneer and the developer of Oculus – now better known as a part of Facebook’s Meta – created a VR device that will actually kill the player if they lose the game.

    NerveGear, Luckey’s murderous headset, looks like a Meta Quest Pro coupled with three explosive charge units located above the screen.

    The charges are aimed at the user’s forebrain, and if they detonate, they will entirely demolish the user’s skull.

    Wearing a NeveGear VR headset, players start Sword Art Online, a new game based on the Japanese anime and book of the same name.

    Luckey described the ‘killer’ VR on his blog:

    Today is November 6th, 2022, the day of the SAO Incident.  Thousands of VRMMORPG gamers were trapped by a mad scientist inside a death game that could only be escaped through completion.  If their hit points dropped to zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, supposedly killing the user.  The same would happen if anyone in the real world tampered with their NerveGear, the virtual reality head-mounted display that transported their minds and souls to Aincrad, the primary setting of Sword Art Online.

    The players must battle their way through a 100-floor dungeon in order to escape a lunatic scientist’s virtual reality.

    Don’t get too thrilled or scared because the killer VR headset is not yet available for purchase.

    Luckey sold Oculus, the underpinning of Mark Zuckerberg’s march to the metaverse, to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.

  • Facebook launches virtual reality remote work app, users can be ‘avatars’ in meetings

    Facebook launches virtual reality remote work app, users can be ‘avatars’ in meetings

    Facebook Inc. on Thursday launched a test of a new virtual-reality remote work app where users of the company’s Oculus Quest 2 headsets can hold meetings as avatar versions of themselves.

    As per details, the beta test of Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms app comes as many companies continue to work from home after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down physical work spaces and as a new variant is sweeping across the globe.

    Facebook sees its latest launch as an early step toward building the futuristic “metaverse” that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has touted in recent weeks.

    In its first full VR news briefing, the company showed how Workrooms users can design avatar versions of themselves to meet in virtual reality conference rooms and collaborate on shared whiteboards or documents, still interacting with their own physical desk and computer keyboard. The app, free through the Quest 2 headsets which cost about $300, allows up to 16 people together in VR and up to 50 total including video conference participants. Bosworth said Facebook was now using Workrooms regularly for internal meetings.

    The world’s largest social network has invested heavily in virtual and augmented reality, developing hardware such as its Oculus VR headsets, working on AR glasses and wristband technologies and buying a bevy of VR gaming studios, including BigBox VR.

    Gaining dominance in this space, which Facebook bets will be the next big computing platform, will allow it to be less reliant in the future on other hardware makers, such as Apple Inc, the company has said.

    Facebook’s Vice President of its Reality Labs group, Andrew Bosworth, said the new Workrooms app gives “a good sense” of how the company envisions elements of the metaverse.

    “This is kind of one of those foundational steps in that direction,” Bosworth told reporters during a VR news conference.

    The term “metaverse,” coined in the 1992 dystopian novel “Snow Crash,” is used to describe immersive, shared spaces accessed across different platforms where the physical and digital converge. Zuckerberg has described it as an “embodied Internet.”

    In July, Facebook said it was creating a product team to work on the metaverse, which would be part of its AR and VR group Facebook Reality Labs.

    The company said it would not use people’s work conversations and materials in Workrooms to target ads on Facebook. It also said users must follow its VR community standards and that rule-breaking behavior can be reported to Oculus.

    Facebook recently halted sales of its Oculus Quest 2 headsets and recalled the foam face-liners due to reports of skin irritation in cooperation with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

    The recall notice said it affected about 4 million units in the United States, providing an estimate of Quest 2 headset sales which have not yet been officially announced by the company. Facebook reported non-advertising revenue, which comes from the AR and VR part of the business as well as e-commerce, of $497 million in the second quarter of 2021.