Oculus Rift Allowed Dying Grandmother To Explore The World

Cancer is one of those horrible words we all hope we never hear, it hits so many peoples lives and while many forms of it are now treatable, it can also be fatal. For Roberta Firstenberg, her long battle with cancer had left her weak and no longer able to venture outsite. Roberta’s granddaughter Priscilla, just so happens to be a game artist and developer, giving her a unique position to help Roberta, allowing her grandmother to step outside again by using the VR technology of Oculus Rift.

The Oculus Rift headset is a virtual reality device, allowing you to look around your digital surroundings with incredible accuracy, and having used one myself I can confirm that the sensation is nothing short of mindblowing. However, I can’t imagine how incredible it much have been for Roberta to feel some sense of freedom again. Priscilla contacted Oculus in the hopes of getting Roberta a dev kit to use, and they responded with exactly that. As you can see in the video, Roberta got straight into the action of the Oculus Tuscany demo, allowing her to glide around, climb stairs, explore and toy around with butterflies. She even managed to explore using Google Maps thanks to a special mod. Unfortunately Roberta passed away just four week later, but this is an awesome use of technology and Priscilla did a truly great thing, which may inspire new ways of helping those unable to venture into the world due to illness.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/o5eIHyFYFMM[/youtube]

Thank you The Verge for providing us with this information.

Images courtesy of The Verge.