Oculus Rift helps dying woman take one last walk outside

Game artist Priscilla Firstenberg used an Oculus Rift dev kit to help her grandmother experience the outside world before passing away, The Rift Arcade reports. Cancer patient Roberta Firstenberg had become too weak to enjoy her favorite pastimes or walk around her yard. At the time, Priscilla — who worked on stealth survivor game République at Camouflaj — had a discussion with her co-workers about next-gen systems. After their talk, she got the idea to contact Oculus VR and request a kit.

Despite attracting a $2 billion buyout by Facebook, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset remains very much a niche product that’s some way off mass mainstream adoption. We occasionally get glimpses of the device’s huge potential though, such as this one from video game artist Priscilla Firstenberg — she used an Oculus Rift development kit to enable her sick grandmother to take a final tour of the yard outside her home. Roberta Firstenberg was losing her battle with cancer and lacking the strength to go outdoors when her granddaughter contacted Oculus VR asking for a development kit. Despite a long order backlog, the company provided her with a returned loan unit almost immediately. “I pretty much cried at my desk reading [the email],” Priscilla told The Rift Arcade.