Last year, the Journal of Medical Case Reports published a study about an otherwise 31-year-old German man who broke his neck while playing a VR game that involved "a combination of shoulder, arm and head movements while wearing a VR headset." He came into a clinic while suffering pain in his neck and it was there that doctors discovered he had a traumatic fracture at the nape of his neck that they determined was caused by the "intense" and "repetitive" motions he made during the unidentified game. While the WSJ details a number of other injuries sustained by VR gamers from falling over or coming into contact with solid objects while gaming, not all of the accidents are the result of onetime mishaps, either. "Next time I’ll just let the tiger eat me," Masters, who has had to have months of physical therapy to deal with the injury, told the paper. What's more: Masters had injured the same shoulder in an IRL boxing match years earlier, and although he wasn't "supposed to do real boxing after the first injury," he thought playing the VR game would be alright because it wasn't real. That exact scenario happened to North Carolinian Jake Masters, who told the WSJ that last year he dislocated his shoulder and needed physical therapy while "fighting" in a virtual coliseum. Moreover, VR's selling point also presents major safety hazards: the immersive, interactive games that require you to stand up and move around, which is not dissimilar to actually undertaking strenuous physical activity. While video game injuries are far from new - remember how often people got hurt playing Wii when it first came out? - VR presents a very specific category of risk because you literally cannot see your surrounding while wearing it. The Roto VR is set for a July 2016 launch date.To the shock of no one, more people are getting injured using virtual reality headsets than ever before - because, well, more people are buying them than ever before.Īs The Wall Street Journal reports, the growing popularity of VR headsets has had the all-too-predictable side effect of people hurting themselves because they can't see where they're stepping, punching, or kicking when in gameplay. Motorised turns gives us a sense of weightlessness, effectively a blank canvass for our imagination when in VR.” “We give people the ability to explore 360 degrees without needing to physically touch the floor with their feet - scratching around a swivel chair base is an immersion killer. "Ultimately we wanted to create something that adds value to every type of VR experience," Elliott says on the company’s website. Among these technologies are motorized features that sync in-game movement with real life movement to help eliminate motion sickness double rumble packs meant to mimic engine throttle, gear shifts, and crashes touch pedals that allow users to walk, run, and jump while remaining comfortably (and safely) seated and the Roto VR HeadTracker, which clips onto the VR headset and communicates its movements with the base of the chair to rotate it accordingly.Īll the technologies incorporated in the chair work together to add to VR’s immersion.
Overall, Roto VR incorporates over 20 different technologies, reports. The chair boasts “the ultimate seated VR experience” and works with all VR headsets. For $599 ($499 if you take advantage of a special pre-order offer) the Roto VR provides users with an “immersive, endlessly revolving experience” that includes motorized turns, a tangle-free cable system, and double rumble effect, according to Roto VR CEO, Elliott Myers. Cables can tangle and movement becomes limited, thus, having the same effect as tripping over a desk or walking into a wall in terms of ruining the illusion VR is meant to create.īut that is where the Roto VR chair is meant to help. But while sitting down may solve the problem of hurting yourself or breaking something while wearing the headset, it can make the overall experience very awkward. The solution to these problems is simple sit down. With the headset on you may be seeing a wide expanse of rolling green hills, a proposed skyscraper, or even an alien planet, but if you stub your toe on the corner of a desk or trip and fall face first into a wall, you will be brought back to the real world pretty quickly. If you aren’t careful, the illusion created by a virtual reality headset can be broken pretty quickly.
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