Thank goodness for wearable technology. How else would we slowly realize our world’s collective fever dream to experience Star Trek’s holodeck in real life? To that end, there is the Oculus Rift. We’ve written about this amazing VR-enabled headset many times before. The hook is, simply, being inside the game. Once you slap this cumbersome, yet cool, device on and turn on your favorite PC game, you are standing inside of it. Wherever you move your head, your avatar moves their head. The immersion can be terrifying and utterly breathtaking. A few things happened in the world of the Rift this week. Let’s go over them.
First of all, game publisher Valve has announced they will be porting their massively successful Half Life 2 to the Oculus Rift. This is a great step to ensuring that games of all stripes will be Rift-enabled. To that purpose, they have already shipped out a beta to developers for modding and “look at me” purposes. We’ll let you know when the impressions start rolling in, but, it has to be awesome. It’s a virtual reality version of Half Life 2. Nuff said.
In other, and slightly more disturbing news, it seems an innovative and macabre set of game designers have created a virtual guillotine for the Rift. Have you ever wanted to experience what it was like for all of those Europeans to lose their heads during the Inquisition? Now you can realize that dream! This, well, mini-game of sorts is set in the French countryside and ends with you having your head chopped off. We hope the Rift isn’t like Inception where if you die in a dream you also die in real life. Check out a video of the Guillotine Simulator below.
