Oculus Rift Guillotine Simulation

An anonymous reader tipped us to news of an interesting hack for the Oculus Rift: a simulation of being beheaded by a Guillotine. Thrown together in a couple of days at the Exile Code Jam, the simulation lets you... "look around to see the blade above, the crowd of onlookers around them, and the executioner who signals the blade be dropped. It also enhances the experience when someone watches the blade falling on a nearby screen and taps the user on the back of the neck at the time of impact." Just a bit morbid. There's a video of people "playing" (nsfw language in a few reactions to being virtually beheaded).

Comments

It's cool and all,

[centipedes.in.my.vag]

...but it's nothing to lose your head over.

Re:It's cool and all,

[Rizimar]

If you guys keep making lame puns, I swear, heads are gunna roll!

Re:It's cool and all,

[ArsonSmith]

Hardware on the cutting edge rarely is. This is not going to allow the Rift to get ahead of the game. The idea is all right, but the execution is all wrong.

Re:It's cool and all,

[SeaFox]

I don't know... some of these puns are pretty sharp.

No monitor required.

[Anonymous Coward]

The simulation runs headless.

Re:Funny to tap them on the neck

[femtobyte]

Even funnier if they're still around for the aftermath of the joke. Don't decapitate --- just a precise shot of paralytic to the top of the spinal cord, followed by a photorealistic rendering (through the goggles) of the goggles being removed... to reveal the severed-head's view of the "real world" simulation room. Dim lights to black; leave them there to contemplate.

Re:put it on death row and people may not want to

[Jeremi]

put it on death row and people may not want to end up there.

As opposed to now, where people are clamoring to get in?

Laughter and emotional response

[SpectreBlofeld]

I find it fascinating that the universal response of the 'victims' in the video is laughter. They're not laughing because anything is particularly funny. It's the sort of laughter that is created by an inappropriate joke or a stressful situation that is avoided.

This speaks to the quality and efficacy of the simulation - it elevates stress enough that it causes participants to need to 'laugh it off'.

This leads me to consider the possibility of use of simulations like this ones to test for things like psychopathy. A psychopath will remain calm and unaffected by things that will trigger stress response in typical individuals. I know this is a dicey road to go down in terms of law enforcement and personal rights, but it could be a useful tool for psychologists.

In writing this, my mind went to the Voight-Kampff test in 'Blade Runner'. Perhaps, instead of an inquisitor reading off questions, a potential psychopath/replicant plays out a VR simulation of a tortoise stranded on its back...

Re:Laughter and emotional response

[femtobyte]

So, when does a "first person shooter" become too "first person"? In the past, it's been obvious that video game players stomping on turtles and blowing away enemies on a tiny computer screen can easily tell the difference between real life and game realities --- whatever keyboard-mashing reflexes they develop won't correspond to real-world actions. But, is there some point when game realism becomes so immersive that deep physiological responses to your virtual character's fate are invoked, and the human brain stops clearly drawing the line between reality inside and outside the computer world? When interaction with game opponents is done through the same whole-body movements, with realistic visual/sensitive feedback, as real-world actions? At the subconscious level (which, according to numerous fMRI studies, often decides actions before the conscious mind rationalizes choices), can we still distinguish between virtual and real worlds once the technology for fully realistic virtual interactions catches up? Will the crippling PTSD experienced by soldiers involved in real combat start to show up among early adopters of overly realistic simulations?