Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, writing on his private weblog: In the present day is November sixth, 2022, the day of the SAO Incident. Hundreds of VRMMORPG avid gamers have been trapped by a mad scientist inside a dying recreation that would solely be escaped by completion. If their hit factors dropped to zero, their mind could be bombarded by terribly highly effective microwaves, supposedly killing the person. The identical would occur if anybody in the actual world tampered with their NerveGear, the digital actuality head-mounted-display that transported their minds and souls to Aincrad, the first setting of Sword Artwork On-line.
[…] In SAO, the NerveGear contained a microwave emitter that could possibly be overdriven to deadly ranges, one thing the creator of SAO and the NerveGear itself (Akihiko Kayaba) was in a position to cover from his staff, regulators, and contract manufacturing companions. I’m a reasonably sensible man, however I could not give you any solution to make something like this work, not with out attaching the headset to gigantic items of apparatus.
In lieu of this, I used three of the explosive cost modules I often use for a special mission, tying them to a narrow-band photosensor that may detect when the display flashes purple at a selected frequency, making game-over integration on the a part of the developer very straightforward. When an acceptable game-over display is displayed, the fees fireplace, immediately destroying the mind of the person. This is not an ideal system, after all. I’ve plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, just like the NerveGear, will make it unimaginable to take away or destroy the headset.
Even so, there are an enormous number of failures that would happen and kill the person on the mistaken time. This is the reason I’ve not labored up the balls to really use it myself, and likewise why I’m satisfied that, like in SAO, the ultimate triggering ought to actually be tied to a high-intelligence agent that may readily decide if circumstances for termination are literally appropriate. At this level, it’s only a piece of workplace artwork, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in recreation design. Additionally it is, so far as I do know, the primary non-fiction instance of a VR system that may truly kill the person. It will not be the final.