On April 2nd 2017, Jack McNee set the new official Guinness world record for the longest time spent in a Virtual Reality environment. The previous record, was set by Derek Westerman who spent 25 hours immersed in VR.
The requirements for the record specify that the player must spend all the hours in a single application. Meaning that record setters must choose wisely as the wrong choice of a game may make the experience more miserable than it already is. Both record setters used the same application – Tilt Brush.
Tilt Brush is a VR painting platform which allows users to create pretty incredible masterpieces in the virtual environment. The unlimited possibilities for the creations and the amount of hours that can seemingly fly by when playing Tilt Brush makes it the perfect choice for setting this record.
During the course of the marathon, Jack’s team even fed him pizza to keep him going through the seemingly endless experiment. After the full 36 hours passed Jack said he couldn’t really feel anything below his neck and how most of his sensation was in his head. He said:
“I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel nothing from like my neck down. It’s just all in my head.”
As Virtual Reality becomes more and more immersive and realistic, spending dozens of hours wearing a headset may be as common as those 24 hour gaming streaming marathons you may find on twitch.
Rest assured that Jack McNee isn’t the first or the last person that will attempt to break this record. In fact, Berlin-based Thorsten Wiedemann already spent 48 hours immersed in VR. However, Thorsten’s record was never made official so the current record still sits at 36 hours.
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