On Twitch there are all sorts of interesting livestreams. One of them comes from GingasVR, who built a VR setup for a mere €14,000 that can cause real pain.
What kind of VR setup is this? The VR setup from GingasVR on Twitch goes far beyond the usual home VR kit. For about €14,000, the person has assembled a set of various components to experience The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim as realistically as possible.
The set consists of 2 haptic vests. One of them vibrates and simulates touches, while the other vest causes pain when it occurs in the game. For this, small electric shock pads are embedded in the vest, which shock the user. Of course, the set also includes a VR headset.
To make it even more realistic, GingasVR has added several fans to the room to simulate wind and temperature. These can also be controlled by the in-game experiences. To top it off, the person has installed a modification that gives NPCs in Skyrim life through Chat-GPT.
The NPCs respond with real dialogues and one can converse with them.
Here you can watch the trailer for Skyrim, with which it all started.
A lot of money for a lot of pain
How does Skyrim play with the setup? Mostly painfully! GingasVR streams their experiences live on Twitch and shows how painful Skyrim actually is. When you feel pain, fights become really exhausting and you try to keep enemies at a distance.
However, it does not always go so well for GingasVR. Throughout the run, the person gets beaten up repeatedly and even lands in dragon breath, which must have really hurt.
To give you an impression of how the whole game feels, you can check out the post on X (formerly Twitter) here
No matter how hard the person tries, in the end, there are just so many ways to suffer pain in Skyrim that GingasVR always somehow ends up in a fight, and these do not always turn out in their favor.
Is this the future for games? Whether the future of games lies in such experiences is rather questionable. When watching, you realize why no commercial developers have taken off with it so far. The pain that one constantly has to endure is simply not really something to look forward to – even if it is realistic.
Skyrim is not the only RPG that can be experienced with a VR headset. World of Warcraft can now also be played this way: World of Warcraft is now playable in VR: You’ve never seen Azeroth like this
