From the moment the Occulus Rift was announced scaremongers have worried that we could get lost in a virtual paradise, and now one brave pioneer has spent more than a day in the VR world.
The record was set by Derek Westerman a filmmaker who decided to see if he could spend a whole day wearing the HTC Vive, playing Tilt Brush, Mashable reports.
Westerman spent an amazing 25 hours in the virtual world, in the process setting a an official Guinness World Record for the most time spent in Virtual Reality while playing a game.
YouTubeThe game he chose wasn’t a traditional adventure though, instead Tilt Brush is a VR painting app which meant that he couldn’t just get lost in the game, he had to remain active and engaged to create line drawings while playing.
And while Derek may have set the record his experience wasn’t always a pleasant one.
Apparently around the 17th hour Westerman suffered from a bit of vertigo and vomited into a bucket which was thankfully provided for him by an assistant.
The bucket had also come in useful during the sixth hour when Westerman was caught a bit short and pissed into it.
Things got particularly desperate around the 21st hour when Derek seemingly lost his sense of self, babbling incomprehensibly and saying: ‘I don’t know where I’m at…’
The entire 25 hour VR slog was displayed on a monitor so that Westerman’s producers and assistants could watch the Tilt Brush masterpieces, which slowly devolved into incoherent scribbles.
Guinness claim that the record was achieved on April 7, however the video of the record breaking game was only revealed on Wednesday.
Despite Westerman’s marathon feat let’s be honest it won’t be long before someone else manages to break his virtual reality record and creep into two-days-in-VR territory.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.