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Lay your head on this virtual anime woman's lap with Oculus Rift

Lay your head on this virtual anime woman's lap with Oculus Rift

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Japanese company 'Up Frontier' takes the Oculus Rift to its next frontier...

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Screenshot from Up Frontier's video of a lap simulator app
Screenshot from Up Frontier's video of a lap simulator app
Up Frontier

We've seen the pioneering virtual reality headset Oculus Rift used for all sorts of exciting, fun, groundbreaking demonstrations, from Star Wars to Seinfeld's apartment to body swapping. But now a Japanese software development company called "Up Frontier" is taking virtual reality to its logical next frontier: an anime character's lap. Using your garden variety leg-shaped pillow and a custom application, the setup allows anyone wearing the headset to interact with a 3D version of Unity-chan, an open-source anime character, who may or may not welcome a person's head on her lap (depending on how the player approaches her). Approach Unity-chan the wrong way, and she'll get angry, throw your head up and walk away. There's no overt explicit sexuality in the app from what we can tell. But are there troubling, sad, and potentially sexist connotations with the entire setup? We would have to say yes.

Still, Oculus Rift is an open platform and it's up to developers to decide how to use it — and many have already started work on far more explicit applications. We're just not sure this is precisely the kind of future of virtual reality Facebook had in mind when it purchased Oculus Rift earlier this year.